The Ambient Book Club is a silent reading event with live music. Readers bring a book or take one from the shelves, find a seat anywhere they like, and read for two hours while the music plays around them. Nobody is asked what they are reading, and nobody has to talk to anybody.
The music is looped as it goes, so readers are wrapped in a bath of sound. It adds to the inner journey of whatever you are reading, and it helps people sit together by taking away the awkwardness of absolute silence. If you have ever tried to hold in a cough in a theatre, you know the feeling.
The set is wordless from the first minute to the last. You can hear a full performance before you decide anything.
What the reading feels like
You walk into a library with the overhead lights off and the corners lit amber, chairs where the tables usually are, and the music already low enough that a few heads come up to check whether it has started.
The first note is a flute. It loops back on itself, a glockenspiel figure lands on top, a guitar line goes underneath, and within a few minutes a piece is running that came out of nothing, in front of everybody. Then people stop watching and start reading.
Somebody coughs and it does not matter. Somebody gets up for tea and it does not matter. At the break people stand up, swap a book, say something to whoever is beside them, and settle again.
Everyone can take part
Anyone who would rather look out the window or up at the architecture can do that for the whole two hours. Beside the shelves stands a second table of graphic novels, art and photography books, adult colouring books, blank paper, pencils and journals.
A whole graphic novel can be read in the time it takes to watch a film, and read that way, inside a live surround-sound performance, it stays with people the way a night out does.
Reading parties and silent book clubs
The Ambient Book Club takes its lead from formats already running in libraries and bookshops.
- Silent Book Club runs in seventy countries and exists to take the discussion out of a book club.
- Reading Rhythms has taken its reading parties to the New York Public Library, Lincoln Center and the Folger Shakespeare Library.
- Blind Date with a Book already runs in libraries and bookshops, and it sits well beside a reading event.
At the Ambient Book Club the music is composed and played live.
What readers said at Wexford
Music sat so well with reading — almost created a cinematic experience in the mind merging the book content + music composition.
Paula, Wexford
It was divine! I could have sat, listened and read for the whole day!
Tina, Wexford
Plenty of substance without being intrusive in any way.
Terry, Dublin
More photographs and feedback are on the Wexford event report, and upcoming dates are on the events listing.
Booking the Ambient Book Club
Libraries and bookshops book the Ambient Book Club as an afternoon or an evening, and the length is set with the branch.
Plan an Ambient Book Club at your branch for the set-up, the dates and the fee, or send a date and the space you have in mind and make a booking enquiry. You get a reply within the week with a plan and a fee.