A woman pulls into a desert town at sunset. A writer sees her mother rooting through a dumpster. A Herald of the Almighty stumbles upon a dying stone monster, and a businessman admits to the shame of being a businessman.
Pages of books slowly turn. Readers have fallen under their spells.
They made their reservations days in advance, found their way to a coffee shop in Silver Lake, where they greeted their host, paid $17 and quietly let the world outside slip away.
Rain falls on Lake Geneva, 1816. A Buddhist monk remembers a monastery in Thailand. A children’s author recalls playing beneath tables and inside forts.
The readers number just shy of two dozen. They have scattered throughout the bright early evening space — “closed for a private event,” the sign outside reads — slouching in upholstered chairs or along a bench, leaning over small tables, sitting alone or with a partner.
The Silver Lake Reading Club — every Tuesday evening, 6 to 8:30 p.m. at Lamill Coffee — is now in session.
Readers during a Silver Lake Reading Club meeting at the Lamill coffee house. The group meets every Tuesday night for two hours.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Few activities are as simple and complex as reading. Neuroscientists have charted the mind’s incantation of words that lights up the temporal lobe, the frontal lobe, ridges in the cerebral cortex, triggering impulses that transform squiggles of ink into letters, letters to words, words to sentences and meaning and comprehension and empathy.
The magic is learned in childhood — from Clifford, hungry caterpillars and pigeons that shouldn’t drive buses — and once mastered, is taken for granted. For many adults, the skill is saved for practical purposes: recipes, owner’s manuals, street signs, websites or newspapers like this.
Reading for pleasure is increasingly rare. Battles must be fought to find time and to quiet the monkey mind of modern life.
“I’m still in shock at how popular this has become,” said Helen Bui, the reading club’s founder and organizer. “Even though we’re selling out every week at this point, I still can’t believe it has become a thing. I’m in awe of it.”
Organizer Helen Buil, second from right, meets with locals during a Silver Lake Reading Club meeting at the Lamill coffee house.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Bui, a youthful 42 (blue jumpsuit, Dodger cap, blond hair, glasses), sits near the front door greeting arrivals. She takes out her phone for a picture of everyone with their books — actual books, for only a very few read off phones or computers.
Bui’s vibe is part librarian good for a recommendation or two and part yoga instructor eager to set the mood for everyone’s practice.
She’s cued a piano melody to play softly in the background. She’s set small tea lights on each table. She’s laid out brownies and lemon and currant loaves that she baked hours earlier.
Sunlight lances through the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Silver Lake Boulevard. Commuters crawl home through the traffic. Dogs and their humans stroll by. Students gather for mat work at a Pilates studio, and early birds tuck into shellfish at a neighborhood oyster bar.
So much of L.A. life is about coming and going, but the readers here inhabit an in-between space where motion has stopped and time is suspended, filled with the wonder, anger, humor and passion of writers — Paul Murray, Thich Nhat Hanh, Kurt Vonnegut, David Sedaris. They sip coffee or tea included in the price of admission and nibble at the snacks that Bui has brought.
Daughter of Vietnamese refugees, Bui grew up in Los Angeles, worked as a business manager for the Wall Street Journal and News Corp., and at 32, having attained the dream (“an immigrant and successful”), she realized she was unhappy and she quit.
Living abroad for a few years, she came home during the pandemic, first to San Francisco, then back to L.A., finding an apartment in Silver Lake, where she writes cookbooks, fiction and, every three months, her obituary.
A cancer survivor (breast, BRCA gene), she reflects on who she is, how she wants to be remembered, what she’d like to leave behind — and that includes this moment of reading.
Enthusiasts read during a Silver Lake Reading Club meeting at the Lamill coffee house. The group meets every Tuesday night for two hours.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
The idea came to her late last year, and she started looking around for a location. The public library closed too early. Some coffee shops were too trendy. Lamill seemed perfect: the space, the aesthetic and the seating. “The chairs aren’t steel,” she said, “like they want you to leave.”
Silent…