Reading is not necessarily a solitary activity. If you do it in company it takes on an even deeper meaning. Reading the same book, one next to the other, in silence, distant but close: that’s the concept of collective readingthe new summer phenomenon born to combat the loneliness of the digital age. With the name of Silent Storm also arrives in Italy, thanks to the writer’s initiative Alessandro Bariccotransform your life in Rome into your open-air library.
There Silent Storm by Alessandro Baricco
“Reading is a gentle, gentle gesture. A silent gesture of peace. A gesture of peace for oneself and for others”: with these sweet words Alessandro Baricco presents his Silent Stormthe event that will bring together hundreds of people in Rome to read, each alone but together, The white nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky. This is the second edition of the collective reading event, after the first – very successful – experiment in Gorizia.
“It is a period where those who give in violence are particularly spectacular and brilliant – continues the writer – And so are we who we believe in gentleness and peace we have to become very bright and very spectacular. And we play the best things we have, like this.”
There Silent Storm it’s very simple: anyone who wants (subject to free online registration) will be able to meet in the chosen centers of the capital and start reading their book. The first pages will be decanting from the Barrico to the Palatine Stadium, the final ones will find the voice of Isabella Ragonese. In the meantime, sweet music will be the background to the reading, broadcast live in all reading venues.
The main positions are the Palatine Stadium, the Ara Pacis, Villa Torlonia, the Testaccio slaughterhouse, the Opera House, Piazza del Campidoglio and the Casa del Jazz. These will be joined throughout the city by associations, bookstores, libraries and cinemas. Because anyone can become a little mild storm. Once the reading is finished, we will start a party with a DJ set to release the accumulated energy and dance together until late at night.
Appointment Wednesday 17 June starting from 8.47pmcoinciding with the setting of the sun. It’s also about selling out in just a few minutes, already convincing the community to expand the locations involved. There are already more than 200 places of the storm, in Rome and its surroundings, from the historic center to Fregene and who knows, in the future, the experience may not reach the rest of Italy too.
Collective reading, the antidote to loneliness
This is a return to the past. Once upon a time it was customary to gather to read together, because artificial light was not within everyone’s reach and neither was reading itself; those who had the opportunity to learn to read did so for everyone. With the help of electricity and literacy, reading has transformed into a solitary gesturebut ultimately, this is the standard: therefore more and more people all over the world gather to read together.
In England and the United States the social readingevents in which we each have a conversation with our own book, to continue reading as we do at home, but with someone else at our side. They exist reading party and even real ones reading retreatsholidays in quiet and secluded places to spend immersed in the pages.
And the phenomenon is spreading tothan in Italywhere such events are often organized by some of the most followed BookTok influencer. Because we are always hidden behind a screen, but the desire to influence remains strong and invincible, we continue to feel the need to have others close to us, even without the need to speak.
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