Read Along with the Silent Book Club in Denver

Good friendships are formed over a shared passion or interest, and the best friendships are the ones where you can comfortably sit in silence with one another. In this vein, Silent Book Club Denver offers locals sure-fire friendship: several monthly gatherings in beautiful local bars and coffee shops where you can join the company of others to do little more than cozy up with your current favorite read.

“It’s a shared love of literature,” says Sydney Ivey, one of the organizers of the local Silent Book Club Denver chapter. “People will share what they’re reading, where they are in their books and ask questions. It’s a great opportunity to bond over shared reading.” Sydney says that she has watched deep friendships form from Silent Book Club gatherings. “It creates a deeper connection—you automatically have something in common with people. I met one of my best friends at Silent Book Club.”

At the same time, co-organizer Jenn Dencklau says, it’s low-key and easy, a delight for bookish introverts—introvert happy hour, the Silent Book Club website advertises. “It’s low pressure—if your social battery is drained, you can take off right away, but still get in your structured reading time.” 

Silent Book Club was founded in 2012 in San Francisco, by book lovers Guinevere de la Mare and Laura Gluhanich, who also founded the Denver chapter. Rather than the commitment and work of book clubs, the friends enjoyed “reading in companionable silence at [their] neighborhood bar.” It was a means of both connection and personal quiet time, both necessary for a healthy lifestyle, and the two were not alone in finding the satisfaction of both meeting to read, silently, but together. Silent Book Club is now a worldwide organization with more than 600 chapters across the globe.

The Denver chapter has gotten especially active in the last year. Originally, the group met at Book Bar; when their location closed in December of 2022, Jenn came on as an organizer, starting a relationship with Room For Friends Wine Bar on Santa Fe. “We love working with small, local businesses,” Jen says. “We started meeting at Room For Friends, once a month. And they were opening early for us, so it was just us.”

Within the year, Silent Book Club Denver added more organizers—and more events. “We’ve gained a lot of traction and grown so much in the last six months. We try to host at least four events per month. We went from about 15-20 people at each event, to about 70.” 

All upcoming events are listed on MeetUp, and RSVPs are not required, but strongly encouraged as space for the growing community of readers can be tight. For the truly introverted who need to know ahead of time what to expect, Sydney shares a basic run-down of the events.

“We tell people to arrive 30 minutes before, grab a drink or food, then take a seat wherever. We used to all introduce ourselves and the books we brought, but that would take hours now! So we make host introductions and give a minute for people to share with those around them. We start a timer for 45 minutes and that’s our ‘silent’ part—and we ask people to respect the silence. After the timer, some people chat, and some keep reading. Some people leave right away.”

Silent Book Club has created an idyllic community experience of personal care, intellectual connection, great food and drink and a collection of individuals bound to bond over shared interests. 

“You automatically have something in common with people,” Sydney says. “A love of reading, and there’s nothing like connecting over your favorite book. Someone comes up to you afterward and says, ‘I love that book,’ and it creates an instant connection. Silent Book Club is a good environment for someone who wouldn’t walk up to a random stranger in a bar, especially if they were reading. This is an easy way to start a conversation. And there are so many different types of people who come, from different walks of life. We’re not all the same, we just all love reading.”

To learn more about Silent Book Club Denver, follow along on Instagram at @silentbookclub_denver.

Link to original article