A global movement you might not have heard of has finally reached Cape Town! Since 2012, Silent Book Clubs have sprouted up around the globe, creating a public space where readers can come together and read silently for an hour, simultaneously forming connections among like-minded individuals. The best part: You can read whatever you want! It is a book club without the homework. With around 1300 chapters worldwide, each Silent Book Club looks a little different. While some are smaller events, like a couple grannies sitting around a table, others are more mass reading events, like the one that appeared in Cape Town in May 2024.

Shawn Buck, the founder of the Cape Town Silent Book Club, originally came to Cape Town from Atlanta, Georgia, for a three-month internship at Ubuntu Football NGO in 2012. Instantly falling in love with the city, Shawn permanently returned in 2014. “I’m obsessed with Cape Town,” he tells me over coffee. Shawn was a big reader in primary school, fervently devouring middle-grade fiction. But then, in high school, he “discovered he likes girls” and actually became That Guy who brags about not having read any of the set-work books for class. He didn’t take to reading again until 2022 when his mother bought him a Kindle.

In April 2024, Shawn travelled back to his hometown, where his friend invited him to join the Atlanta Silent Book Club. Previously, the only book club Shawn had ever been a part of was his bible study at church. He made sure to get there extra early to get himself a seat and ended up talking to the organiser, Sophie. Immediately enamoured with Silent Book Club, he told Sophie that he wanted to start the Cape Town chapter, and she gave him some pointers and advice. People started piling in, sitting at tables, or when these got too full, retreating outside on the lawn, spreading out on picnic blankets. Over three hundred people attended that day, sitting at this brewery in Atlanta to read in silence. It was “such a weird and beautiful thing”, Shawn remarked.

When Shawn returned in May, he started organising the Cape Town Chapter, pitching it to some of his friends. He didn’t think it would take off, believing that it would amount to him and his five friends sitting around a table. But that’s not what happened. The Cape Town chapter’s popularity sky-rocketed. The Instagram account reached over 15k followers in just six months and is growing daily. The first meeting had around sixty participants who travelled from all over the city to attend. 

Shawn originally planned on having one meeting a month, but the demand was so overwhelming that the Cape Town Silent Book Club now meets three times a month in scattered locations all over the city, from Seapoint to Muizenberg to the Northern Suburbs, from restaurants to breweries to parks.The members of the Silent Book Club embody the spirit of the organisation. Shawn says he purposefully chose a couple of locations based on the set-up. Breweries have long, stretched-out tables, which force you to join a group and socialise with new people. It is super easy, too. You have the perfect ice-breaker, Shawn explained: “What are you reading?” “Some of my favourite parts of the gatherings now are watching people that came by themselves and then at the end they’re like in a big group of people all chatting about their books,” Buck notes. 

Contemporary culture has seen a resurgence in reading. BookTok and Bookstagram are partly to thank for this, bringing certain books into a specific pop-cultural discourse. With a surge in ‘Romantasy’, it is common at the SBC to see people reading their smutty books under the sun. Additionally, there are more accessible avenues to obtain and consume books: audiobooks, second-hand books and the Libby app are a few examples that Shawn mentions.

Shawn would like to see more Silent Book Clubs appear in Cape Town. Happy to be the bearer of the umbrella organisation, Buck is advocating for the creation of satellite chapters, situated in the various suburbs and areas that are harder to reach. Recently they have started a Northern Suburbs chapter as part of this expansion.

The Silent Book Club is an incredible addition to the Cape Town literary scene. Providing that much needed space to read in the demotivating rush of late-stage capitalism and creating welcoming bookish communities, it is an event that you do not want to miss! Make sure you follow @cptsilentbookclub on Instagram to keep up to date with their events!