People Are Paying $1,000 to Read Among Strangers

For James Lackington, an 18th century British shoemaker turned bookseller, one good reason to marry was to secure a reading partner. “I was in raptures with the bare thoughts of having a woman to read with, and also to read to me,” he wrote in his memoir. In Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1866 novel, Wives and Daughters, the Hollingford Book Society was “the centre of news and gossip, the club, as it were, of the little town.”

Only recently has reading come to be seen as a niche activity — just 16% of respondents read for pleasure every day, according to the American Time Use Survey — as well as a solitary one. In part this is due to electricity and widespread literacy. “The average amount of light was the same as that coming out of your fridge,” according to Abigail Williams, an English professor at King’s College London and author of The Social Life of Books. But shared reading wasn’t just about saving candles; it provided “a prompt for social engagement and discussion,” says Williams. Now it’s considered more acceptable to stare at your phone around others than to crack open a book.