📖 Why I Started a Silent Reading Club

Fighting Back Against Attention Capitalism, One Page at a Time

The Best Minds of My Generation

I’m sitting on my couch at 9PM on a Thursday — the kind of midweek evening that should feel like free time. The workday is over. I’ve been to the gym, cooked dinner, and done the dishes. I’m in my pajamas, ready to finally crack open the book that’s been gathering dust on my nightstand for months.

I pour a glass of wine, put on some music, and open my book. I feel proud — virtuous, even — for choosing to read instead of doomscrolling. A quiet evening alone awaits. I promise myself two or three chapters before bed.

Three pages in, my phone buzzes.

Bing! A notification. I ignore it.

Bing! Bing! Another. What if it’s my crush? Don’t, I tell myself. Stay mysterious.

Bing! Bing! Bing! Just one quick check.

It’s not my crush — just Uber Eats and some app updates. Still, the phone’s in my hand now. I open Instagram. Just for a second.

An hour later, I’m still scrolling. I’ve consumed an endless stream of content: ICE agents detaining fruit vendors, dating advice blaming the opposite gender, and assorted ragebait designed to make me both furious and addicted.

That’s when it hit me: my mind has been hijacked by the attention economy.

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Yours truly pitching the book “Careless People” to my friends.

The Great Attention Robbery

Few things feel more personal than our own minds — that quiet inner space where thoughts unfold and identity takes shape. From Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” to the Buddhist practice of observing thought without attachment, philosophers across centuries have agreed: what we pay attention to defines who we become.

But what happens when that attention is no longer our own?

The landscape of consciousness — once shaped by curiosity and choice — is now colonized by algorithms. Our attention is no longer guided by intention but manipulated by design. Ragebait, outrage politics, curated envy — each one optimized to provoke a click, a comment, a little more time on the platform.

Attention has always been sacred — the most tangible form of agency we possess. Yet that power has been captured, commodified, and sold to the highest bidder by the very companies that once promised to connect us. They’ve hired the world’s top behavioral scientists not to enlighten us, but to keep us addicted — to shape our thoughts, feelings, and actions in ways we barely notice.

The results are everywhere: shrinking attention spans, constant distraction, and the compulsive urge to doomscroll even when we know better. The ripple effects are massive — political polarization, rising teen anxiety and suicide, and a measurable reduction in sustained attention and working memory capacity.

All this translates into steep decline in reading and literacy.

#MakeReadingSexyAgain

A decade after the smartphone went mainstream, Americans now read only 12.6 books a year, down from 15.6 in 2016. Reading for pleasure has fallen by 40 percent in two decades. Less than half of 18-year-olds say they enjoy reading for fun. It’s not that we don’t want to read — it’s that we can’t stop reaching for the dopamine slot machine in our pockets.

It’s not just distraction. It’s dispossession.

That realization — that my mind was no longer entirely mine — is what led me to start a silent reading club. A modest, personal act of rebellion. One hour of uninterrupted thought at a time, a deliberate attempt to reclaim attention as an act of resistance.

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The Rise of the Offline Rebels

And yet, something’s shifting. Social media usage peaked in 2022. Many full-time creators now report abysmal organic engagement as Meta prioritizes ads — often written by AI — over human connection. The Internet, as we once knew it, feels hollow.

Enter the “Luddite teens.” A small but growing segment of Gen Z and Alpha are ditching smartphones altogether. They’re buying flip phones, embracing ‘digital minimalism,’ and craving slower, more tactile, more human experiences.

That same impulse inspired me to launch Cuéntame Storytelling in 2021. After the pandemic, these monthly story circles became a small sanctuary for connection in Mexico City — a room full of strangers listening to each other’s stories IRL.

But storytelling takes courage. Despite the popularity of my event, speaking in front of a crowd remains many people’s top fear. Reading in silence? Much easier.

That’s how Cuéntame Reading Club began. Not a traditional book club — there’s no assigned reading, no homework. This both reflects the death of monoculture and adapts to it. It’s less about reading the same book, just reading at the same time.

The rise of remote work and digital nomadism has elevated independence to the point of fracturing the few collective rituals we have left. There is a rising desire to trade our hyper-autonomy for shared experiences, such as reading together.

I’ve always believed that a private need often points to a public demand. And if even I — an author — struggled to focus, surely others felt the same.

I thought back to my sophomore year at UCLA, before smartphones, when I challenged myself to read a book a week. I’d pull The Dharma Bums off the library shelf, borrow a Chet Baker CD, and read on my couch to the sound of trumpet and vinyl crackle. No notifications, no distractions.

As awareness grows around the cost of constant connectivity, people are longing for that kind of presence again.

So last month, I booked out the lounge at Hotel San Fernando — all stained glass, soft lamps, and art deco corners — and invited twenty-five people to bring a book, turn off their phones, and read together. Call it a #ThrowbackThursday to 2004, but IRL.

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Reading in silence, together

The Experiment

When doors opened at six, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d planned a “book swap” for the first hour, but my WhatsApp was flooded with questions. Honestly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Still, people arrived — spare books in hand. The small table I’d set up overflowed within minutes.

The book swap somehow worked out

At seven, I kicked off the night with the statistics above and declared the mission of the Cuéntame Reading Club: if attention is a muscle, this is the gym. Our goal — to put away our phones and read for a full hour, the intellectual equivalent of a cold plunge.

We went around the room introducing ourselves and our books. Then came the ritual. Everyone wrote their name on a sticky note, stuck it to their phone, and dropped it into a tote bag. A collective exhale.

Guests got to pitch everyone their book

Then I pressed play on our album of the week — Thelonious Monk’s Monk’s Dream (1963). The room fell into rhythm: pages turning, glasses clinking, jazz humming softly in the background. Some people shared couches; others perched by the stained-glass window. The silence was thick, electric — focus as a shared experience.

An hour later, the album ended and we came up for air. I invited everyone to give a 30-second pitch for their book, then mingle. Laughter filled the room. Books and numbers were exchanged. One person said she’d read more in that single hour than she had all year. Another admitted she’d forgotten what it felt like to be present with others, even in silence.

The Meaning of It All

Watching that room — candles flickering, readers leaning into dog-eared pages — I realized we weren’t just fighting distraction. We were rediscovering the joy of doing something together. In a world where we can work whenever and wherever we want, the price of freedom is often loneliness.

The freedom promised by technology — to work anywhere, live everywhere, scroll endlessly — has turned out to be hollow. Real freedom is choosing where your attention goes.

So now, once a month we gather again at Hotel San Fernando to trade books, listen to full albums — maybe next time Pink Floyd’s Meddle or Fela Kuti With Ginger Baker Live! — and reclaim one quiet hour from the chaos.

Because sometimes the most radical thing you can do in a distracted world is to sit still, turn a page, and settle into a good book.

Our next event is this Thursday Oct 16th. Follow @cuentamereadingclub on Instagram and bookmark our Linktree for future events.

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