How the Silent Book Club Gave Me Back My Reading Life

I walk into a dark pizza restaurant, two books stashed in my purse, prepared to do something novel—attend my first Silent Book Club.

The premise for this book club is simple. It’s a gathering of people who go out to a public space for the purpose of reading together. Unlike traditional book clubs, there are no mandatory reading selections, and nobody facilitates a discussion. Think of it as cocktail hour for introverts.

At my local Palm Springs gathering, the table is set for 17 people, and I’m the last to arrive. The server collects our orders. While we wait for food and drinks, everyone chatters for a bit about what we’re reading, the books topping our to-be-read lists, our favorite authors.

Then it’s reading time. I pull out Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki, and the real world slinks away. The pizza counter becomes the dysfunctional Hollywood Hills home of Lady Daniels, the bar is the booze-soaked casita of Lady’s live-in nanny. The pizza in front of me grows cold.

There aren’t enough words to convey how good this feels. I’m the mother of a toddler, and carving out reading time for myself has been a challenge. During the day, I’m either working or playing with my child. At night I can’t crack open a book without the crushing guilt of the dirty dishes or the overflowing laundry hamper or, hell, my actual professional work.

The moment I heard about Silent Book Club, I got it. Here was an opportunity to be social but to also reconnect with my reading life. Time to relax in a bar without a stranger interpreting my book as an invitation to chat. A chance to read something beyond Dragons Love Tacos.

That’s a standard reaction, says Guinevere de la Mare, Silent Book Club founder and author of the forthcoming book I’d Rather Be Reading.

“For those who are our people, it just clicks and it makes sense,” she says. “For everyone else, they just look at you like you’re crazy.”

Silent Book Club was born in 2012 when de la Mare, then a new mother, realized she would have to leave the house if she wanted to get any reading done. She desired the social aspect of a book club without the pressure of finishing a reading selection or contributing to a conversation.

“With an infant or a toddler, to be able to sit in your house and read a book, it’s a luxury and a privilege you just don’t get,” she says. “I needed to grant myself time on the calendar to give myself permission to do nothing but read.”

She and two friends, Laura Gluhanich and Kristin Appenbrink, formed the first Silent Book Club, meeting in bistros and wine bars throughout San Francisco. For the first few years, these remained small gatherings among friends. Then when Appenbrink moved to Brooklyn, the group began hosting bi-coastal SBC meetings on the same night.

“Reading in solidarity,” de la Mare laughs.

That seeded the idea of encouraging other people to do it. Toward the end of 2015, de la Mare built a website, put out the word about Silent Book Club, and made herself available as a resource for other readers who wanted to run with the idea and start their own chapters.

“Our goal has been to put it out there and let people make it their own,” de la Mare says. “The whole philosophy behind the group was that we were getting rid of the rules and expectations of a traditional book club, so we didn’t want to create a rigid framework.”

There are now more than 40 Silent Book Club chapters around the world, from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Some chapters meet in libraries, markets, and bookstores. Others gather in coffeeshops, martini bars, cafés, and restaurants.

“What’s great about the chapters themselves is that every one is unique to its community, its location, and its host,” de la Mare says. “Because it’s entirely run by volunteers, every host has a say about what Silent Book Club looks like to them.”

My local chapter is run by two young librarians, Jade Valenzuela and Sarah O’Brien, and it’s true they’ve curated something that works for this community. The location changes each month, bringing together fantasy fans, graphic novel enthusiasts, and literary lovers in chic cocktail hotspots, breweries, and taquerias. Membership exploded almost as soon as the chapter was established, growing from a handful of friends to nearly 100 within a few months.

“Readers want to meet other readers,” Valenzuela explains. “This makes it easy.”

At the meeting I attend, seating is limited due to the space constraints of the restaurant, and the waiting list is full.

Most of the people I meet are just like me: book lovers who are stretched thin by work, family, or other obligations, and must plan uninterrupted reading time in order to get it. The woman sitting to my right, for instance, is the full-time caregiver for her adult granddaughter who has special needs. Leaving the house on a regular basis to indulge her passion for books has become a necessary form of self-care.

“There are people for whom Silent Book Club has become a meaningful part of their social lives,” de la Mare says. “The kind of interactions they are finding in this community has been really welcome.”

Years ago, pre-baby, I attended a silent disco in Goa, in which a few hundred people wore wireless headphones and experienced the DJ’s music by listening solo but dancing together. I still don’t understand the point, even now. At one point I slipped off my headphones, and the hush of bodies swishing together to nothing became the loneliest thing I’ve ever known.

But Silent Book Club is precisely the opposite. Bringing the solitary act of reading into a shared space actively cultivates connection, despite the fact it involves long stretches of silence.

“The shared passion for reading is a strong bond. It makes you understand your fellow humans,” de la Mare says. “I’m a person who loves getting lost in a book, and that’s our common ground.”