Reading a Book in Public Is Basically Flirting Now.

Sam Hetherington

1 hour ago

4 min read

Reading has always existed as a means for me to get out of my own head and go somewhere else. Learning something and, God forbid, developing some empathy for people whose stories are unlike mine are just natural, positive by-products. Regularly reading for pleasure was never something I thought was particularly exceptional until I realised how common it had become for my friends and family to say they hadn't picked up a book in weeks, months or even years.

And I get it. When deadlines, children, hangovers, side hustles and catch-ups that need to be pencilled in weeks in advance because apparently that's how friendship works as an adult constantly intrude on the windows of opportunity to pick up a book, it's easy to see how reading becomes the last thing on the never-ending list of things we ought to be doing. What good is setting aside a little time to pick up a vessel of imagination when we have 10,000 steps to reach and our entire bodies to shave?

While the West's current obsession with optimisation and overemphasising skill over enjoyment in every facet of our lives has a big part to play in why people are reading less for enjoyment, the most obvious culprit is digital media's damage to our attention spans. In the hours when we would usually reach for a book, we instead find ourselves in the insatiable vortex of the online world. But does this mean that, as a society, we have lost the art of reading for pleasure entirely, never to return? I'm not so sure.

In 2021, I visited a small shop in London where I had to call a number to make an appointment. Up three flights of stairs, in a tiny room, I was greeted by a lovely lady named Angela Hill, with impeccable style, who handed me tea and Scottish biscuits as I perused the 'store'.

The store in question was IDEA Books, home to one of London's most highly curated book and magazine collections and a sanctuary for the digitally drained. During my visit, I found a 1970 French edition of Vogue worth £350. Not something I particularly needed, no, but something I knew would bring me immense pleasure whenever I sat down to flick through it.

And it appears I was not alone. Four years later, Vogue dubbed IDEA the coolest bookshop in the world (true), and it expanded to a space in Dover Street Market while opening a permanent location in Soho.

While it is Angela's eye for curation that has garnered IDEA its cult status, its success and continued expansion point to an obvious love for the analogue that is still highly sought after. Buying a book is like buying yourself time offline, and the appetite is high. IDEA is a case in point.

Similarly, Climax Books, fronted by Isabelle Burley, former editor-in-chief of Dazed magazine, so you know her heart is in the right place (print), is another champion of the pleasures of print through hard-to-find books and other ephemera in her New York and London stores, as well as online.

Recently profiled in The New York Times as 'Finally, a Bookstore That Sells Mesh Underwear', Climax's positioning within the bookselling market is obviously and strategically sexy. Sex sells, but it also invites curiosity and speaks to the wider cultural shift where reading is just about the sexiest thing we can be doing.

Oh, you're reading a book on the train instead of doomscrolling? Please take my number. No wonder performative reading is having a moment.

If booksellers like IDEA and Climax are becoming cult cultural signifiers that reading is not a lost art, so too is the rise of book clubs.

Where the attention economy has impacted people's reading, book clubs have revived it as something communal, propelled even further in recent years by our connection starvation following COVID.

Jess Trevaskis, founder of Naarm-based book club ReadMyBlurb, started on Instagram in 2022 and held her first in-person book club meet-up with a handful of friends and strangers. By the second meet-up, word had got out, and the next club filled up within two minutes of being announced. All strangers who usually come on their own without knowing anyone there, might I add.

With over 10,000 followers on Instagram, monthly book clubs and events that have consistently sold out, ReadMyBlurbsits among the plethora of book clubs popping up locally and around the world, including one of the world's most talked-about book clubs, Service95. Its founder, who you might know by the name of Dua Lipa, was also recently announced as the curator of the London Literature Festival, taking place in late October.

While a pop star fronting the literary world might seem somewhat silly to the more serious side of it, it is inarguable that Dua loves books. And isn't that what it's actually all about? If there is any correlation between reading more books, marrying Callum Turner, travelling around the world and living out a dream life, then who better to influence us to read more than the poster girl of aspiration?

So while the old adage that print is dead and no one is reading rings on and on like an annoying idiot at a party you don't even want to be at, I'd argue that if you look up from your screen, you'll find the opposite to be true.

Now more than ever, in a world obsessed with optimisation, digitalisation and going to war with each other, perhaps the act of reading for pleasure is our greatest rebellion against the times.

The act of slowing down, sitting down, reading, dog-earing a page to return to, leaving it in the sun to fade, returning again and again until the pages are worn from the hands that found their joy by flicking through them, and perhaps even passing the book on, is and always will be one of life's greatest and simplest pleasures.

And like a gelato after a long beach day or staying just a little longer with friends on a weeknight catch-up, isn't that kind of the whole point of what a good life is all about?