For years, people have been begging for more chances to come to the silent-reading party, where you bring whatever reading material you want and read silently while servers bring you snacks and a musician plays piano. We started doing it in Seattle in 2009, and since then it has been replicated in cities around the world, but we did it first, and we do it best. There’s usually a line out the door before the party even starts.
On April 15, 2020, we held our first reading party on Zoom, and five times as many people bought tickets as can even fit into the Fireside Room at the Sorrento, where the parties usually take place.
“It would be the highlight of my lil quarantine life if the parties happened weekly,” people wrote to us afterward. It was “nothing short of a miracle,” another person said, adding, “I felt a tear slip down my cheek when it ended.” Another said, “It was just lovely to see so many good human faces; many fondly familiar, many excitingly new, all subtly checking each other out with guileless smirks between flipped pages. Felt a little like a vision or whiff of life after this calamity.”
If you’re having trouble picturing the reading party on Zoom, here’s what it looked like:
