Reading in public is neither radical nor performative

I read an article called when did reading in public become performative & pretentious? and I can’t stop writing responses to it in my head.

When did reading in public become performative and pretentious? Because as far as I’m concerned, it’s neither — but the idea that others think it is gets to me.

I took my daughter to the dentist recently. While the dentist was working on her teeth, I leaned back in my white fold-up chair, propped my feet up, and opened my book. I waited for the typical, what are you reading? chatter.

I love it when people ask what I’m reading when I’m in public. It requires a passerby to stop, interrupt me, and engage me in a conversation about my book. To go through all that effort makes me believe they are curious and genuinely want to have a discussion about books. I love these moments.

But when I’m somewhere like the dentist, where talk is pretty base-level, I assume questions about what I’m reading are disingenuous, like they are trying to kill time and can’t comment on the weather because they’ve already done so. As time went on and I kept turning the pages of my book, the dentist never asked about the clover green book in my hands. I was relieved to not be questioned or positioned as other.

Reading is not a performance to get you to think some type of way about me. God forbid I just want to read while my daughter gets her teeth cleaned.

says in her post about The Performative Male, “If you’re sitting alone and reading a book in public, you must be putting on a performance. You need everyone to know that you’re clever. It couldn’t possibly because you like just like reading.”

Those who say that reading is a performance are speaking more loudly about their insecurities about not reading than their annoyance with the so-called “performance” of it all.

In other words, it’s them, not us.

Actor Aubrey Plaza was photographed in 2024 reading during a WNBA final. It spread around the internet with captions claiming she was pretending to read. I think it would be better if she was pretending to read. She was probably making fun of the people who consider reading performative, not those who actually do read in public.

My friend, a mother of four boys under eight, started reading for pleasure a couple of years ago. Due to her ADHD, she struggles with reading a physical book, so she buys a digital copy and an audio copy so she can read along while it’s being read to her. She has read 60+ books this year. I know this because she told me, not because she’s posting about it all over social media. Though if she was, I think that would be great, too.

In when did reading in public become performative & pretentious?, the author asks when reading stopped being a quiet hobby and started being “a costume we wear to look smart.” She says:

When everyone else is staring at a glowing screen, holding a book becomes a loud statement. It says, “I am not like the others. I have a long attention span. I am cultured.”

I brought Lonesome Dove to a busy playground while my children played. At first I was embarrassed. I worried the group of CrossFit moms beside me would think I was performing. What if they thought I was saying Look at me, I am not like the others. I am cultured?

I ultimately decided I cared more about capitalizing on my fleeting free-time than what those women thought of me, so I opened my library copy of the 857-page book and sat in the sun and read at a public park, the picture of performance grounded in the reality that I just wanted to read my damn book.

So I did.

Questions for you:

• Do you find reading in public to be performative and pretentious? Do you worry about coming off that way when reading in public?

• Why do you think so many people claim that reading is performative? How do you think we can move beyond that and celebrate the fact that people are reading in general?

Thanks for reading! Love, Kolina

- What are you reading? What are you underlining?
- What I’m reading: Still reading Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. I suspect I’ll be working on it for another couple of weeks at least.

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