The Sound of Turning Pages
On finding connection in silence, presence, and the rhythm of shared attention.
There’s something about the idea of a silent book club that feels like an exhale to me.
Last week, I read a book called The Forgotten Book Club by Kate Storey. Among other things, it is about a small group of people who gather every other week in a quiet bookshop. They talk for a bit, catching up on life, then fall into an hour of silence, each reading whatever book they’ve brought along. Afterward, they share a few thoughts about what they’ve been reading, or not, and then they leave.
No one has to prepare anything. No one has to talk if they don’t want to. Everyone belongs, even in silence.
When I first read that, it felt like permission.
I mentioned the idea to a few friends and was met with confusion.
“But isn’t the point of a book club to talk about the book?”
They weren’t being snarky. Just curious.
But something in me softened in defense of the quiet. I wanted to tell them that maybe conversation isn’t the only way to connect. Maybe the quiet between words has a purpose of its own.
I’ve spent much of my life needing recovery time from being around other people.
It’s a strange paradox — to crave closeness yet be overwhelmed by it. I’m an introvert with AuDHD, which means I often mask without even realizing I’m doing it. I track the flow of conversation, the tone shifts, the facial cues. I rehearse possible replies before I speak and worry afterward if I said too much or not enough.
Evenings spent in good company can still leave me feeling drained the next morning, like I’ve used up some invisible reservoir of energy that takes a full day to refill. I’ve joked about having a “social hangover,” but it’s not quite funny. It’s more like the ache of having stretched too far outside myself.
So when I read about this quiet book club, this space that held both connection and solitude, something in me recognized it as magical.
It felt like a blueprint for the kind of community that honors nervous systems like mine.
We live in a world that fears silence.
We fill pauses with small talk, scrolls, and commentary because we’ve been trained to read stillness as failure. Quiet moments make people uneasy. If no one is talking, someone must be bored or upset. We rush to fill the space, to prove our interest, to keep the current moving.
But what if silence isn’t the absence of connection, but the deepest form of it?
There’s a kind of intimacy that exists in shared quiet. Sitting next to someone lost in their own book, their own breath, their own life, is its own kind of togetherness. It doesn’t need explanation. It just is.
In the silent book club model, there’s a rhythm that feels almost ritualistic: a little conversation, an hour of silence, a gentle return. It’s a rhythm that honors both solitude and community. You arrive as yourself, retreat into your own world, and then reemerge when you’re ready.
You don’t have to prove you’re engaged. You don’t have to pretend to have deep thoughts about a book you couldn’t bring yourself to finish.You don’t have to fill the silence with something clever. You don’t have to perform at all.
You get to belong as you are.
That, to me, is the quiet revolution.
So much of modern life is built around proving our presence. Even connection has become performative: documented, curated, optimized. We gather in ways that require output: opinions, insights, updates. We tell stories that make us sound healed or wise, even when we’re exhausted.
But in the kind of space The Forgotten Book Club imagines, no one needs to justify their existence. You can arrive tired or tender. You can bring a half-read novel, a poetry book, or even a magazine you’ve barely touched. You can sit in the company of others and still keep your energy close.
It’s a practice of mutual permission.
And permission is one of the rarest forms of compassion.
There’s something quietly sacred about reading in the same room as other people. The soft rustle of pages. The steady hum of attention. The shared air of people who are all present, yet elsewhere.
I imagine it must feel like being part of a larger heartbeat; everyone moving at their own rhythm, yet together in pulse.
This kind of togetherness asks so little of us, yet gives so much. It reminds us that belonging doesn’t require performing interest or enthusiasm. It simply requires presence.
Sometimes, the kindest thing we can offer each other is space to be alone, together.
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When I think about the way most of us move through the world, I see how starved we are for spaces that don’t require us to constantly speak, fix, or react.
Silence feels like rebellion because it refuses the demand to perform. It asks us to be instead of explain.
For people living with anxiety, neurodivergence, or trauma, that’s not just comforting. It is sometimes necessary for survival.
Many of us are constantly scanning for cues. Are we too quiet, too much, too intense, too absent? The unspoken rule is to stay interesting enough to be liked, calm enough to be safe, and present enough to prove that you care.
It’s exhausting.
Which is why a space where you can show up exactly as you are, without having to manage anyone else’s perception, feels like liberation.
There’s another layer to it, too — one that goes beyond neurodivergence or introversion.
We’ve built a culture that values expression over observation, commentary over contemplation. Every thought is expected to be shared, every experience turned into content.
But reading, and especially reading together in silence, is a counterspell to that. It’s the art of internalizing instead of externalizing. You absorb, process, integrate. You let something touch you without needing to prove that it did.
That’s what I imagine a silent book club offers: a collective practice of inner worlds. A room full of people giving themselves permission to think privately.
And maybe that’s what belonging truly means; not losing ourselves in sameness, but resting near one another in difference.
I think about how, as a child, I loved reading under the covers late at night, the flashlight beam making the world feel smaller and safer.
Maybe a silent book club is the grown-up version of that; the safety of shared quiet, the comfort of knowing others are near without needing to talk. The recognition that connection doesn’t have to be loud to be authentic.
Sometimes the truest form of companionship is sitting beside someone who doesn’t need you to fill the air.
I’ve begun to wonder what other parts of life could benefit from this kind of structure, a little conversation, an hour of silence, and then a soft return.
How many relationships might feel more alive if we didn’t insist on constant dialogue? How many communities could deepen if we allowed quiet to hold us together?
We’ve been taught that connection is built through words, but I think it’s sustained through attention.
If I ever start a group like that, which I am seriously considering, I imagine it would be in a cozy café or maybe under the trees at a park. People would arrive with their tote bags and half-read novels, order tea, chat for a few minutes, then fall into a gentle hush.
For an hour, the world would soften. Pages would turn. Someone might smile into their book or giggle or even shed some tears. The air would be full of unspoken understanding.
And when the hour was up, maybe most people would linger. They’d talk about what they were reading or not talk at all. Either way, everyone would leave feeling a little less alone.
That’s what I love about this idea. It’s not about escaping people, but finding new ways to be with them.
We don’t always need to talk to be together. Sometimes, the most human thing we can do is to share silence with kindness.
When I think about belonging, it looks less like constant communication and more like permission to arrive as you are. It looks like showing up, setting your book on the table, and knowing you don’t have to say a thing to be welcome.
It looks like the soft sound of pages turning in unison, each of us lost and found at once.
Love today,
Heather 🌸
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