Annie Lincoln, a 35-year-old dental lab technician, said she struggles to find silence in her day-to-day life.
Her world is filled with noise as she runs a business and takes care of her family – not to mention her tendency to mindlessly scroll on the internet, she said.
It is only when Lincoln started to attend a book club that she found an hour of her week to shut out the noise and focus on herself.
Silent Book Club Gainesville is unlike any traditional book club, according to its members. During the club’s “introvert social hour,” members commit to one hour of complete silence to read a book of their choice.
The book club chapter is part of Silent Book Club, an organization based out of San Francisco that organizes opportunities for readers to meet in local public spaces and dedicate an hour of complete silence for reading.
The Gainesville chapter meets at Cypress & Grove Brewing Co. on the second Wednesday of every month, and at The Alchemy Work Club on the last Sunday of the month.
Silence is hard to come by, whether you are intentional about it or not, according to Justin Zorn and Leigh Marz in a July 2022 article for Vox news. More people have a harder time incorporating silence into their daily lives, they said.
Social media, work and home life are all types of noise that prevent people from being mindful and present in the world around them, said Zorn and Marz.
Ani Smith, 47, a licensed mental health counselor, said she practices intentional silence through her professional and personal life as she tries to be more present in the modern world.
“There’s a lot of noise in people’s lives, and I think that one of the things that we lose is the ability to sit with our own thoughts and engage with the world from that place of quiet,” Smith said.
“I believe that silence is really critical to allowing the mind to relax, to reset, to refresh and to kind of activate that discipline in remaining in the state of silence because that alone is actually very therapeutic," she said.
Mindfulness counselors, like Smith, encourage people to practice meditation or being in nature as a way to be more present with their thoughts and emotions. Smith has found that her patients have a hard time or find that traditional methods of silent mindfulness are not manageable long term.
Hannah Lester, 26, a program coordinator, said she has found that reading is her way of being mindful and disconnecting from the buzzing world.
“I’ve tried meditation, it didn’t really work as well for me as having a calming effect,” Lester said. “I do think reading does help with that, for sure.”
Not only does reading allow Lester to find a sense of calm, but she said that attending the book club holds her accountable to commit at least one hour of her week, twice a month, toward being quiet and disconnected from potential distractions.
Attendee Lucie Germain said she struggles to find silence and finds reading – and the Silent Book Club — bring her a sense of calm and a community.
“When I’m home with my child, it’s actually hard for me to read in silence,” Germain said. “Having that time, even though you have people around you, you still have that time to be with yourself and read.”
Although silence is hard to come by, the members of Silent Book Club have found a community that provides a quiet space to reconnect with themselves and find calm within the noise.
“Everybody has so much going on in their lives, like I am a wife and a mom, so just being away and having that nice silent hour is great,” Lincoln said.