At Silent Book Club, there’s no assigned reading. SBC members gather in bars, cafes, and bookstores to read together in quiet camaraderie.
All readers are welcome— ebooks or audiobooks, poetry or prose, fiction or nonfiction… it’s BYOBook.
About SBC:
Silent Book Club is a global community of readers, with more than 1500 chapters in 54 countries around the world led by local volunteers.
Silent Book Club started in San Francisco in 2012 with a couple of friends—Guinevere de la Mare and Laura Gluhanich—reading in companionable silence at our neighborhood bar. They loved books, and reading with friends, but most of their previous attempts at book clubs had fizzled out.
Often with traditional book clubs there's the scramble to finish the selected book, and the pressure to have something smart to say. Wouldn't it be great to have a book club where you could just enjoy books, friends, and drinks—without any homework?
At Silent Book Club, there's no assigned reading, and all readers are welcome. Our events are free and support local businesses. Friends and strangers gather at a set time and location, order food or drinks, share what they're reading, and settle in for an hour or two of silent, sustained reading. At the end of the hour, attendees can socialize—or not!
We started Silent Book Club because reading with friends enriches our lives and makes us happy. We love hearing about what people are reading (often in their other book clubs) and we think it's important to put down our phones and be social. Real, live, breathing-the-same-air social, not hearting-you-on-Instagram social.
Silent Book Club is about community. Everyone is welcome.
