“Everyone open your books to page 75,” is never something you’d hear at a Silent Book Club.
The name itself seems counterintuitive: book clubs typically function where all participants are required to read the same text, and then share something like “which character they find the most relatable.” If they’re lucky, somebody might have brought in cookies to make the experience more bearable.
“This is exactly why some people find traditional book clubs so unappealing,” said Marie Plumb, the mastermind behind the Silent Book Club operations in Ann Arbor. “The joy of reading is stripped away and replaced with other objectives that take away its value.”
Plumb first learned about Silent Book Clubs when she visited her cousin in Texas, who happened to be in one.
“It’s a place where people of all ages can meet for an hour of uninterrupted reading with any book they want. Afterwards, they can discuss their book, or just socialize,” Plumb said.
The idea is so simple, but also so freeing: having no restrictions means people of all ages and interests are welcome, and the conversations afterwards become way more diverse than something an English teacher could write on a whiteboard.
The idea was so good, Plumb knew she had to bring it back home.
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“It turns out there was already a Silent Book Club in Ann Arbor,” she realized after a quick Google search. What she didn’t realize, however, was that she was going to become its savior: the original organizer was stepping down, and needed someone to take up the role.
“I was immediately offered, and I couldn’t say no,” Plumb said.
And that brings us to today, where an unsuspecting guest could walk into a park, cafe, or even a brewery, and find a group of people deeply immersed in their books. “Each meeting is two hours long, and the locations can vary immensely,” Plumb added.
Silent Book Clubs offer many benefits that regular book clubs typically don’t: the most appealing being a break in the daily life.
Plumb, for example, has to balance being a mother, a realtor, an ER nurse, and someone also training for an Ironman. So it isn’t crazy to say that she deserves an hour of reading her favorite book to rejuvenate. “And I never ever have to worry about falling behind on reading, because I work at my own pace,” Plumb highlighted. “Everyone does.”
The flexible time commitment is exactly why the club attracts so many different age groups. Senior men and women often make it a part of their schedule to stop by every time there’s a meeting, and they bring both their books and experience for the conversations they have afterward; but the audience that made Plumb really feel her impact was the youth.
“I always believed that younger generations felt like book clubs weren’t for them,” she explained.
Maybe they attributed it to a pastime only for older people, or something that would only take up their time. “I feel like the Silent Book Clubs are changing that,” Plumb said.
Now all of a sudden, a war veteran reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee could be sitting right next to a high school athlete reading “The Crossover” by Kwame Alexander. That would most definitely be a “turn and talk” for the ages.
“It isn’t even always books,” Plumb recollected. A lot of older students would often just work on their homework for the assigned reading hour, being able to get a productive session in. “The different people who come here every week truly make this all feel like one collective household.”
Maybe that’s because at the end of the day, Silent Book Clubs were never just about organized reading. They were about creating a community where people of all ages could share their experiences and perspectives with others, and everyone could collectively grow.
“You can tell a lot about a person based on the book they’re reading,” Plumb agreed, and the conversations you would have with them after would only reinstill this.
So the next time you feel out of touch with literature, give the Silent Book Club a quick search: your new local family might just be around the corner with no assigned reading required.
