Tuesday, 1:10 p.m.
“Have you heard of Hush Hour?”
So my editors, E. and M., ask at a chance meeting in downtown Missoula.
It’s a free literary event, hosted multiple times a month at hip Missoula venues like Gild, Montgomery Distillery, and Western Cider, they explain.
“Anyone can come, but you can’t talk,” E. says.
“You’re supposed to bring a book—and read,” M adds.
As introverts, they’re intrigued but skeptical.
Is reading a solitary or a social activity?
“The next one is Sunday afternoon at Brasserie Porte Rogue,” E. says.
M. sidles closer.
“Can you go for us,” he whispers, “and check it out?”
Thursday, 9:30 p.m.
“What book will I bring?” is the “What will I wear?” of a silent reading party.
Roaming bedroom, office, and living room bookshelves, I make a preliminary stack and try toting each in front of the bathroom mirror.
Heartfelt, hilarious new indie novel?
Penguin Classic?
Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry?
Memoir blurbed by Ernest Hemingway?
Bestselling social commentary?
Now I know how Lily Gladstone felt choosing between Gucci and Versace for her Oscar dress.
My wife and daughter knock, asking if they can brush their teeth.
I hustle out the entire pile and stuff them in a white canvas tote bag.
Problem solved: I’ll take them all.
Sunday, noon
Damn it.
I pre-partied.
Last night before dinner, I started paging through the indie novel.
I found it so gripping that I holed up in bed and read almost start to finish while my family watched a movie.
Then, this morning, still on my book bender, I went to a café to wrap up the novel and ended up going straight from the last page to the whole first half of the poetry collection.
And those were the only two living authors represented in my tote bag.
This is no time not to be au courant.
I duck into Fact & Fiction and leave with three fresh “staff picks” novels.
No pain, no brain, I tell myself, pocketing the receipt.
Sunday, 2:57 p.m.
The silence doesn’t start for more than 30 minutes, but fellow readers are already streaming downtown toward Porte Rouge.
I can distinguish them from the usual Sunday afternoon bar crowd by their steady gait and the texts they carry under arm.
For anyone unsupplied, Audra Loyal, owner of a book restoration and bindery business, the Vespiary, has parked Bessie, her white-VW-van-turned-bookmobile, outside the restaurant.
“I’ve worked from home since the pandemic, so this is a chance to interact with people again,” she says.
Today is her first time selling used books and handmade journals outside Hush Hour, but Loyal has gone to several earlier events in the series as a reader.
“I was absolutely blown away,” she says, “by (a) how many people show up and (b) are willing to read together in silence.”
Sunday, 3:30 p.m.
A bell rings, bringing the last half hour of increasingly clamorous conversations in the brasserie’s packed booths, bar, and first and second floor to a sudden halt.
By now, the restaurant has been filled with eager readers, and waitstaff have delivered ordered beer, wine, tea, coffee, cheese and charcuterie boards, and chocolate coffee cream cake.
“Welcome to Hush Hour Happy Hour!” announces one of the organizers, Aimee McQuilkin.
She thanks the brasserie for hosting and then previews upcoming gatherings back at Gild and Western Cider, expanding soon, they hope, to the Missoula Art Museum, Missoula Public Library, and even outdoors this summer.
“It takes a village to be a village, so if you want to host one in your backyard, just tell us,” McQuilkin says. “We’re winging it—so let’s wing it together.”
I look around the room.
There are several singletons and plenty of couples, but the dominant grouping seems to be triads of friends.
There are more 20- and 30-somethings than any other age group, yet still enough midlifers to field a kickball squad.
We hold paperbacks, hardcovers, and at least one Kindle e-reader.
Most have asked what the others near them are reading, but nobody seems judgmental.
In my immediate vicinity, at one end of a long wooden table, I see history, literary fiction, sci-fi and fantasy, and even a cookbook among other genres in attendance.
Authors include Stephen King, Debra Earling, Colson Whitehead, Joy Harjo, and Ross Gay.
“In a moment, we’re going to ring the bell,” McQuilkin announces.
“We’ll have one hour for silent reading until the bell rings once again.”
Sunday, 4:11 p.m.
We’re more than two-thirds through, and Audra Loyal was right: People really are reading, and they really are silent.
Instrumental tracks curated by Slant Street Records discreetly play as background music.
Otherwise, the low murmur of pages turning is our only audio accompaniment.
It feels funny to focus with other people.
And by funny I mean: wonderful.
I’ve consumed 20 sonnets and moved on to one of my new novels.
It’s set in a space station, which is a great metaphor for Hush Hour itself, it occurs to me.
Locked in.
Away from it all.
Alone.
Together.
With a new view on the world.
I check the room again to catch if anyone is on their phone, or secretly chatting.
They’re not, though.
Only when brief cross-talk in the restaurant kitchen breaks the reverie do I see a few gazes lift.
“Sh! Sh!” our waiter silences his colleagues.
They obey, and we all return to orbit.
Sunday, 4:31 p.m.
“Time goes by so fast!” announces Niki Vanek, another organizer, when the bell rings again.
Optional discussion questions decorate the tables, with additional one-word prompts from “avuncular” to “tragic” hung about the room.
Across the restaurant, people catch up and report out to one another from their reading.
It’s loud, but not noisy—the difference, I realize, between true conversation and empty chatter.
It’s been a long time since I witnessed this many non-distracted people connecting.
“I noticed before reading that my mind was anxious,” the woman closest to me puts it.
“Now I’m more centered.”
She has a demanding, client-centered job, and asks to remain unnamed, but shares that she got to page 827 of 835 of the third book in a fantasy series.
“Weekdays, I read for professional development,” she says.
What brings her to these gatherings is, one, she comes with a friend, and, two, “I love to get to read a book that I enjoy.”
Sunday, 5:15 p.m.
The restaurant has nearly emptied, but Niki Vanek, Aimee McQuilkin, and a third Hush Hour stalwart, Connie Brueckner, finish their drinks at the bar.
All three are members of the same Missoula book club, Book Club for Mayor, founded in 2005.
Whatever their selection of the month, the group arranges an associated activity.
This has included hot-tubbing and cross-country skiing, a 100-mile bike ride and a float down the Missouri River, taking over the Dirty Shame Saloon in Yaak, Montana and reenacting a murder mystery on the Amtrak train to the Izaak Walton Inn in Essex.
“I think that’s what sets our book club apart—the adventure component,” Brueckner says.
“And we read the books,” says McQuilkin.
“We’re a bunch of doers,” summarizes Vanek, who first heard of silent reading parties through a mid-December New York Times trend piece.
“I read this article—should we do it?” she asked the others.
Two days later, the first Missoula Hush Hour was booked.
Whereas their L.A. and Brooklyn equivalents are all ticketed, Missoula’s version is free.
“There’s no pressure to buy anything except maybe a drink,” McQuilkin says.
An Instagram page spreads the word.
Each time, about 75 people come.
Missoulians who want to read more like it because, says McQuilkin, “It’s like an exercise class—I could do it alone at home, but would I?”
But Hush Hour also attracts anyone who wants to be out and about but not necessarily drink alcohol or stay up late, they say.
“Introverts get to be extroverts for a minute,” says Brueckner.
“It’s feeding the community—quietly,” Vanek says.
There’s your answer, E. and M.
Is reading solitary or social?
Yes.
Find Hush Hour events and information here.
