The world sleepwalked into a loneliness epidemic. Is the humble book club the remedy?
Twelve years ago, Melburnian Shay Leighton was grappling with this question. “I was lonely. I’d made a mess of things, and the question was, ‘How do you find friends as an adult man?’”
Australians are cottoning on to the benefits of talking about literature. The number of book club events in Australia quadrupled between 2019 and 2023, according to figures by Eventbrite, while the number of participants grew by 306 per cent, with more than 10,000 people booking a ticket to a book club last year. Canada and the UK are reporting similar upswings.
This theory is that those of us who feel lonely exist in a prolonged state of fight-or-flight – we feel like we don’t have a tribe to protect us. We live our lives on high alert. It stresses us out.It’s a good thing people are joining book clubs, says Leighton. But it also shows that people have been struggling for a while. “We walked blindly into an epidemic of loneliness, and I think people are trying to find different ways to fix that for themselves,” he says.
“No, thanks,” was Faraj’s answer. A change manager at ANZ, and with two kids under six, Faraj simply didn’t see how she could fit it into her calendar. A little while later, another woman asked her. Again, Faraj politely declined. But when a third woman asked, Faraj relented. Research commissioned by The Queen’s Reading Room using portable brain scans and skin conductance tests found that reading for five minutes can reduce stress levels by 19 per cent and improve cognitive focus by 11 per cent. It also found that reading fiction can reduce feelings of loneliness.
But when RMIT behavioural economist Meg Elkins set out to study the link between reading and curiosity last year, she and her team found something interesting. “With this political polarisation we’re experiencing, there’s not an openness of ideas. But when you’re talking about a book, it gives you an opportunity to disagree and discuss. Not in a combative way, but in expressing your own views,” says Elkins.
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