On a Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at DSSOLVR Durham, a brewery on Riggsbee Avenue, to a soundtrack that varied from Green Day to Counting Crows, a group had gathered for an atypical bar activity: reading.
With drinks entitled “Cold Caprese Pizza,” “Freakazoid,” “Chemical X” and “Magic Doom Mountain,” DSSOLVR is the weekly meeting point for Durham’s Silent Book Club (there is also a similar gathering at Letters Bookshop). Members believe this chapter to be the first silent book club to have started in North Carolina.
“This is the silent book club ‘proper,’ although there are plenty of other book club opportunities,” said Gabbi Ferguson, 31, the host for the evening.
“Not ones you can drink at, though,” said Olivia Richard, 38.
The Silent Book Club begins with chatter.
Each meeting usually starts with a spiel by Greg Youngblood, 32. Unfortunately for me, the night I went, Youngblood was busy hosting a Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
Youngblood and Ferguson have been friends for many years, and he recruited her to join back in 2023. Ferguson has been a co-host since the end of 2025.
On this night, the group was small but mighty: five in total, plus me. Ferguson noted that they might move the meetings back to every other Thursday in an effort to make it a lower commitment. “I know me myself, I’m like, ‘Oh, I can always go next week, right?’” she said.
Sans Youngblood, Ferguson gave me the run of show: the group goes around and each person describes what they’re reading (“If you want to talk about it, you can. You don’t have to,” Ferguson said.) Then, one hour of silent reading commences.
“We’re all adults here, though,” Ferguson said. “If you leave early, if you don’t want to sit and read the whole time, if you want to go outside because it’s nice there and you want to read, please feel free to.”
Ferguson was reading “Lightning” by Dean Koontz, at the recommendation of one of her coworkers at her “real-person job” in IT at N.C State.
“I have questions for him about why it’s his favorite book. Overall as a concept it’s not bad, I think there’s some fun things that are going on, but it’s like, I don’t know if ‘spell binding’… is what I would call this,” she said, pointing to the blurb on the back cover.
Then came Mark Natanawan, 27, who was met with applause and cheers of “yay” when he said it was his first time at book club. A Duke Law student, he was reading “The Undoing Project” by Michael Lewis, which he called “fascinating.”
“There’s a few people that come in regularly, and then other folks kind of rotate,” said Ferguson. “It’s very much a ‘pop in when you can’ opportunity.”
“So we have some consistent people. Timothy is here. Shout out, Timothy, my dedicated day one, whether he meant to be or not, ” Ferguson said with a laugh.
Timothy Kang, 38, a software engineer at Google, lives just above DSSOLVR and learned about the Silent Book Club from a poster outside. The club is one of many community events hosted here, including Tuesday trivia, Wednesday bingo night, and a once-a-month Sunday clothing swap. Now, he’s a veteran of just over six months.
“I think, Greg is kind of the long-time, real life, OG, though,” he said. Youngblood has been coming to the book club since October 2022.
Kang said that while Ferguson covered Youngblood’s spiel “pretty well,” she missed one important thing that he always pitches.
“Giant Robot Fight Club,” said Kang, to choruses of “of course” and knowing nods from the group.
Perhaps I was the only one unfamiliar with such a thing, which Ferguson described to me as “WWE meets cardboard robots.” Youngblood’s stage name is “install wizard,” and while he’s the underdog, he’s had two wins this season.
Ferguson has other community involvements, too. Besides the Silent Book Club, she helps host Sofar Sounds, which hosts hyperlocal music concerts at area venues, breweries, houses, and apartments. Attendees don’t know who the artists are until they get there.
“The whole shtick is to really experience music as it is,” she said.
Ferguson laughs that she’s only now realizing — after laying it all out — how much she and Youngblood know about Durham.
“Between me and Greg, we make sure that if you like a thing, we know where to go for it.”
The rest of the group is certainly passionate about Durham as well.
“Raleigh is for basic bitches,” said Richard.
Rounding out the cast of characters was Alex Goodfred, 30, who has been friends with Richard since 2020 when they worked temp jobs stuffing envelopes for discount card companies. The two started coming to the book club together recently.
Now, Goodfred is pursuing a remote masters in museum studies at Johns Hopkins, and Richard is an electrical engineer at Wolfspeed.
“I’m gonna be doing more grad school readings,” Goodfred said with a grimace.
“It’s nice to have an hour of peer-pressured reading.”
Richard was about to begin reading “Legendborn” by Tracy Deonn.
“This was recommended to me by a friend. Apparently, it’s about a student who goes to UNC-Chapel Hill. I know there’s like demons and other magical elements, and apparently people that hunt down these evil forces, and that’s literally all I know.”
Next up was Kang, reading “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens.
“I finally got to the point where it’s about the length of a normal book,” he said. “I think maybe I see the glimmer of a plot, but there’s like 50 different subplots, and then I see the main plot, but yeah, so we’ll see how it goes.”
I gave the group the rundown on my own current read, “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, a 1963 semi-autobiographical tale of a college girl descending into madness as she navigates coming of age.
“That sounds right up my alley,” said Ferguson. “I need a break after . . . this,” she said, gesturing towards the Koontz book in front of her.
“Happy reading,” said Ferguson, as she pressed begin on the one-hour timer on her phone.
As the timer ticked away, some readers commented on the drinks while others chatted about the soundtrack (Was that song a Rolling Stones knock-off? And what is the state of copyright law in music?).
Between the loud music, other people walking into the brewery, and tangential comments (mostly from Goodfred, Richard, and me), the Silent Book Club wasn’t very silent.
“Other book clubs that I’ve been to have definitely been more about, like, show up, read and leave. Like no one talks, right?” said Ferguson.
“I feel like, right here, there’s a lot of just talking, and sometimes that is about the book, sometimes about what you’re doing at grad school and how that’s going.”
“I’m trying my best, you know,” piped in Goodfred, looking up from their iPad.
“Lots of gluten-free beers here, definitely mention that,” Richard said to me as she came back to the table from the bar with a drink.
“They’re very good!” chimed in the bartender.
About halfway through the hour of supposedly silent reading, Richard laughed and said she had read about three pages. For the next 20 minutes, silent-ish reading finally did happen.
Kang and Natanawan were especially focused on their books, flipping through pages while “1985” by Bowling for Soup played in the background.
Then 8 p.m. arrived and silent reading time was up.
Each person debriefed their progress.
First, on Ferguson’s book: “Is it the kind of book people read before they get on an airplane and that’s why it’s good?” Goodfred asked.
Ferguson laughed. Her toxic trait is she will finish any book, she said.
Richard said she once gave up on “Lord of the Flies” with 19 pages left. Natanawan said he was enjoying his book, which he first learned about in class. He and Kang began chatting about the “deep controversy in the academic world” that spawned from the book.
Kang shared his progress on “Bleak House,” including some characters reappearing 200 pages after they were first mentioned and one of them passing away.
“Well, it is a Dickens book,” said Ferguson.
Kang said he will definitely be taking a hiatus from long fiction after this and reading a shorter book.
Ferguson said he can join her and Youngblood in reading a “Chuck Tingle proper.”
(Another thing I didn’t know — Chuck Tingle is apparently well known for writing “very strange erotica,” as Goodfred put it.)
“It’s very internet,” added Richard.
“He’s got a book for every identity, it’s very sweet,” said Goodfred.
“Dinosaurs, vampires . . .,” said Richard.
After two hours, I had read 40 pages and was nearly done with “The Bell Jar.” As I left DSSOLVR, Richard, Kang, Goodfred and Ferguson were still there, the conversation extending far past their books.
“I feel like it’s like in that good middle ground of getting a little social in and then doing that thing that I told myself I was going to do as a new year resolution, and I should read more,” said Ferguson.
And hey, now I know about the Giant Robot Fight Club and Chuck Tingle. A world of possibilities for how to spend my next couple weeks.
Pictured above (from left): Alex Goodfard, Gabbi Ferguson, Mark Natanawan, Timothy Kang and Olivia Richard held court at a recent meeting of the Silent Book Club. Photo by Fiona Shuldiner — The 9th Street Journal
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