The Audacity of Reading in Public

It has recently come to my attention that reading in public is apparently now an act, done for 'the aesthetics.' Which, honestly, is a strange way to describe something that mostly involves squinting at small text while trying not to spill your coffee all over the page. The word 'aesthetic' is being thrown around these days- aesthetic cafés, aesthetic notebooks, aesthetic lighting. And now, it seems, reading too, has been aestheticized. If you’re reading in public, someone somewhere will probably assume that you’re being performative. This notion is extremely odd- when did the act of reading, what we once considered near sacred, become a problematised hobby?

Maybe this is the inevitable consequence of living in an age of relentless documentation. The line between doing something and being seen doing it has become extremely thin. You cannot even sip on a cappuccino without some stranger assuming it is for content. So, when I open a book in public, I sometimes sense an invisible eye staring down at me, not necessarily in reality but in perception. This societal gaze always asks: “Are you actually reading, or are you just pretending to?” But here’s the thing: sometimes I just want to read. The world is messy and chaotic, and reading outside the boundaries of my bedroom is extremely therapeutic. I don't want the world watching me, rather, I want to watch it through the lens of my chosen book!

As an English major, I spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about how we consume words- who we read for, where we read, and what it means to read in an era where attention has become akin to a currency itself. Reading in public is my decision to participate in the world without being consumed by it. Sitting with a book in a café, on the local train, or under a tree is NOT performative. You’re surrounded by motion, chatter, the sound of cups clinking or trains pulling in, and yet your attention belongs entirely to something else. Hence, I may be physically present but mentally inhabiting a completely new world: a nineteenth-century manor, an alien planet, or someone’s most crushing heartbreak. 

And yes, I get it, we sometimes do romanticize the act. Most of us are guilty of carefully positioning our cup of coffee or matcha besids a dog-eared copy of our latest read, trying to capture the scene with the best possible lighting, our hand hovering just-so above the page. The curated “reading in public” aesthetic is very real (and a little amusing too). But even so, I’m not sure it deserves the cynicism it gets. If a person chooses to document that they’re reading, is that really performative? Or is it just a way for them to express themselves? We share everything else online, right from our meals to our outfits and our playlists. Why does sharing our reading have to suddenly feel like an artifice? If someone pretends to read for aesthetic validation, that’s up to them. But even in this pretense, they might, possibly, stumble upon something interesting, something worthwhile. The line between imitation and authenticity is often where many habits begin.

I sometimes think of how different the judgment would be if we were talking about public writing instead. If someone sat in a café, typing away on their laptop, most would assume they’re working on something meaningful- a research paper, a screenplay, or an assignment. Yet, someone engaging in the subtler act of reading is treated with suspicion. The irony, of course, is that reading is one of the few acts that truly demands attention- an attention we seem to reserve, these days, only for our screens (sadly). 

I also find it interesting that reading in public is defined based on who is doing it. If it is a college student reading Pride and Prejudice at a café, it’s aesthetic. If it is an old man reading the newspaper on a park bench, it's normal. If it is someone on a crowded train reading a romance novel, it’s cute. The same act, infinitely redefined and reframed depending on who holds the book. If I read a classic novel during my train ride, people will assume that I am trying to project my intellect rather than genuine interest(or the fact that my syllabus demands me to read it). But maybe the truth is not this complicated, for I personally read to stay awake through another tiring day, and the book often happens to be the best company I can find.

Men often seem to face even sharper scrutiny when they carry this habit into public spaces. A man walking around with a tote bag and a book seems to flummox the world. It doesn’t tie in with the stereotype of casual masculinity that we have often been conditioned to expect. Social media has exacerbated this problem, with men who read in public either being fetishized or mocked as trying too hard to appear sensitive. Literature and reading have become increasingly feminized spaces, leaving males to justify what they are reading and why, because why would a man read, right? 

If reading in public is really performative as it is touted to be, I honestly do not think it a crime. Maybe we readers should perform our love for literature. If someone notices you with a book and feels inspired to pick up their own, isn’t that performance worth it? After all, much of human behaviour is performative. We dress in ways that express our identity, speak with words and styles we’ve borrowed from others, post photos that capture only a part of the reality. Maybe in performing our love for literature, we are also helping keep it alive in the collective imagination. When I think about it, every reader performs in some way. We perform when we annotate a passage, underline a line that feels too close to home, or carry a book around until the pages begin to fray. So if sitting with a book in public is called performative, I’d argue that it is one of the very few performances left that doesn’t demand recognition or applause. 

I suppose the heart of this debate comes down to intention. Why do we read? And does it matter where or how we do it? Maybe the act of reading is inherently private, but the love of reading is something we must share in public, for the greater good. To read where others can see you is to provide visibility to the invisible, and remind the world that stories are still part of our collective experience. The performative tag, then, ends up saying more about the observer than the reader. 

In the end, that’s all we can do, really, just keep reading. Keep allowing words to challenge what we know, to comfort what hurts, and to confuse what we once thought was certain. Because reading, in all its subtlety, teaches us to pause in a fast-paced world, to listen when all everyone wants to do is speak, and to imagine when cynicism feels like the easier way out. And if this looks like performance to some, then so be it :)

~Veenaaz