I Tried Reading With a Group of Strangers
I read for an hour with a group of strangers and something magical happened.
OK, full disclosure – this was actually at an event my wife and I organized as a bit of an experiment. We wondered if people would actually attend an event with complete strangers to sit down and quietly read together? Just…you know…read? What would make a person leave the comfort of their own home, their own luxuries, their own planned schedule to instead arrive at an unknown location to read in an unfamiliar setting, with people they don’t know? It turns out, many people desired, actually clamored, to do just this.
Speakeasy Reading Club
Something palpable is happening in society. I have noticed more people reading. I figured it may have been my own observer bias as I had recently re-kindled my own passion for reading. But the more I researched, the more I found that there is a resurgence in reading. The popularity of book clubs is at an all time high. Bookstores are thriving, independents and big box stores alike. Barnes and Noble is planning to open 60 new stores in 2026 alone. I live in Mexico where I thought the trend might be different from the likes of European cities or in the United States. But I found out that that was not the case.
Barnes and Noble is growing
But something else even more profound is afoot. People seem to be searching for community. Covid shut our world down for two years and isolated us. I believe we are like proverbial groundhogs finally, timidly, exiting our abodes and are not seeing our shadows any more. And, in an increasingly polarized world, I believe people are yearning to just be together and share a common interest without all the screaming and fighting.
And so, this search for community coupled with a renewed interest in reading makes for a perfect marriage.
One could rightly say that reading is a solitary activity, and there’s no reason to perform a solitary activity in an assembly of people. And yet, something improves, magnifies actually, when there is a collective mindset of a group of people focused on a single intention.
One could easily access a reputable YouTube fitness channel and build muscle, endurance, flexibility, and mobility from the confines of their own house. But gyms, yoga studios, Pilates, and Barre studios are still popping up like mushrooms after a heavy rain in the forest.
One could sit at home in peace and without distraction and pray to their chosen God. And yet, worshipers continue to attend churches, mosques, and synagogues to pray alongside similar people of faith.
One could easily make (or learn how to make) a delicious soy cappuccino in their own kitchen, and yet there seems to be a line out the door of my local Starbucks each and every morning.
An infinite selection of movie titles is accessible from the ease of your remote control 24 hours a day. And yet, people will still opt to go see a Hollywood Blockbuster at a predetermined time and pay an exorbitant amount for an Icee and stale popcorn at a Cineplex. (Okay – this is on the decline, I will admit. A topic for another blog on another day)
The point is, people still like the company of other people despite what you might believe from your Facebook feed. There’s something innate about being a human and being in community with each other. I’ll save the sociology and bioevolutionary explanations for later, but the impact one feels when in community experiencing a shared experience is undeniable.
And this is exactly what happened at our reading event. Readers with a variety of native languages paid to show up to a secret location, order a cocktail, and read silently for an hour. Attendees read books in Spanish, English, and French. Non-fiction. Fiction. E-Readers. Hard cover. Paperback. Everyone was completely absorbed for the hour. You would have literally been able to hear a pin drop. There was a palpable energy. A silence. A calm. A purpose. It is hard to capture the exact words to describe the feeling. But most attendees shared afterwards that the hour seemed to fly by.
Speakeasy Reading Club: Chapter 1
We were curious if this experiment would work, and it worked beyond our wildest expectations in ways we had not even considered.
People are interested in books again. And people are interested in finding community. And, perhaps not so surprisingly then, people are interested in reading books together in community.
Our second event sold out one day after we announced it.
