Social Reading

Reading has always been a mostly solitary pursuit – until now. Time to step away from the fairy-light reading nook you flaunted on #booktok and venture out. Don’t worry: you can still read.

Enter reading parties. The post-Covid craving for human connection is well-documented, and in an age of algorithm-driven misinformation, paper books are enjoying a very real comeback.

But let’s rewind. Before Gutenberg’s printing press, knowledge lived with royalty, clergy and oral tradition. Print blew that world wide open – publishers became cultural gatekeepers, mass media connected nearly everyone to the printed word. Then the internet happened, and print’s reign began to crumble.

In The Gutenberg Parenthesis, Jeff Jarvis argues that the internet closed the era of print and nudged us back toward conversation as the dominant mode of sharing ideas – a trip to the past that feels oddly comforting. But digital life also shredded our attention spans and strained our social ties, wounds deepened by Covid. And yet… maybe hell isn’t other people after all.

That’s the pull of the reading party: in a world where everything changes at warp speed, books offer the illusion that some things don’t. Talking about them has always brought people together – think book clubs – and in our omni-crisis, discussing a book over wine beats doomscrolling for three hours. Event organisers and indie bookshops have simply levelled up the concept – complete with wine and music, or maybe an altogether bigger experience in a Tuscan retreat. 

Naturally, the trend has been commodified. How dare you read without a glass of skin-contact wine, a Soeur “Books” cap, and Online Ceramics “Practice Magic” t-shirt? If you’re not scoring it with curated ambient tracks or grilling the author live, will your reel even trend?

The commodification of something so innocent reminds me of DJ Dixon’s label Together We Dance Alone. Together we read alone. This collective experience of deeply felt connection has a strong merchandise game with book bags and hats, event tickets and subscriptions. Although, thankfully, nobody can charge you for the lasting impressions – and perhaps even love – that spark at these events.