Whos going to fall in love this time?
Who's going to fall in love this time? Courtesy of Sorrento Hotel

It's the first Wednesday of the month, which means the silent-reading party is tonight.

You know what it's like at the reading party, right? You've heard this radio segment about the silent-reading party, right?

And you heard about the couple who fell in love coming to the silent-reading party and got engaged at last month's party, right?

It's a romantic atmosphere—it can't be denied. You bring whatever you feel like reading and sit there and read silently, to yourself, while Paul Matthew Moore plays piano and waiters bring you things. Paul plays from 6 to 8 pm, and the reading-party menu is served until 9 pm.

The silent-reading party started in Seattle, and it has since expanded to other places, including Brooklyn (The New Yorker called it "a literary social gathering for people who don’t like readings"), Phoenix, Portland (where they have "a beautiful old bell, like something a Victorian schoolmarm would have on her desk, that we ring at the end of the session"), San Francisco, and Scotland ("Silent reading party craze from America creating a noise in Dundee").

According to Poets & Writers's magazine, it's also sprung up in Washington, D.C.; Birmingham, Alabama; Des Moines, Iowa; Oakland, California; Andover, England; and Melbourne, Australia.

But we started it in Seattle, and we do it best. Here's where the reading party happens. It's all ages, and it's free.