Silent Book Clubs Are Giving Manila's Introverts a New Way to Socialize

(SPOT.ph) On a table at every one of these gatherings is a small acrylic sign that reads, “Shhh... we’re reading.” Around it, dozens of people, many of them strangers to one another, have come together to do something unusual for a social event: not talk to each other.

For the next hour, everyone disappears into a different book. Classics share tables with young-adult, literary fiction, fantasy, manga, local literature, and even fanfiction from Archive of Our Own. Hardcovers, paperbacks, Kindles, Kobos, PDF files on your phone are all welcome. The talking comes later—and only for those who feel like joining. That is the appeal of Silent Book Club Manila (or SBC).

“Because there’s no pressure, no judgment, you can read whatever. You don’t have to be at a certain philosophical caliber like what other [book clubs have]. You don’t even have to be well-read,” SBC Manila ambassador Gizel ‘Gee’ Salabo says. “It’s really just a room full of passionate people who share the hobby of reading.”

The format began in San Francisco in 2015, when two friends started SBC at a neighborhood wine bar. The network has since grown to more than 2,000 chapters across over 60 countries, all built around the same bring-your-own-book format.

In Manila, that low-pressure setup has grown into a Discord community with around 2,200 members. Regular in-person gatherings now attract 50 readers, while special events can receive close to 100 sign-ups.

SBC Manila traces its beginnings to 2020, when social entrepreneur Janelle Almosara-Capiral thought to herself: If body doubling—or doing a task alongside someone else—could help her stay focused on work, could the same concept help her sit down and read?

She teamed up with her friend, KB Meniado of Bookbed, to test the concept through small reading sessions: Bring whatever you were already reading, spend some time with it in silence, then stay for a breakout-room chat if you felt like it. Most local book clubs at the time revolved around one assigned title that everyone had to finish before the discussion—a format she found intimidating as a slow reader with an unpredictable schedule.

“I wanted to create a space where people could simply enjoy reading without feeling pressured. The pandemic was already difficult enough, and I thought it would be nice to have a community where people could lean into a hobby they loved while feeling connected to others, even from home,” Almosara-Capiral says.

Early sessions drew around 15 to 30 readers, all of them stuck at home and looking for company. The online gatherings eventually became a regular affair, with members meeting over Zoom for the reading session before carrying the conversation into Discord. People became regulars, brought friends, and eventually gave Almosara-Capiral enough reason to make it official: She applied to SBC to create a Manila chapter.

By the time the group finally held its first in-person gathering in 2023, though, no reading took place. SBC Manila moderator Gerard Santua recalls that reunion with great fondness: “Walang nagbasa, nagusap lang kami. Nabitin pa kami.”

That experience created a need for structure in future gatherings—one they borrowed from SBC headquarters—to ensure that members actually got to read. This became what is now known as “gather, read, and share.”

These days, a typical meetup runs for about three hours, with SBC Manila taking over all kinds of spaces—from Fully Booked and The Book Nook at SM Podium to Common Room and Arroceros Forest Park. One gathering at Krispy Kreme was even cheekily dubbed “Doughnut Disturb.” The first 30 minutes are kept loose, giving everyone time to arrive, find a seat, and chat with the ambassadors before the room eases into silence.

For the next hour, reading time is sacred. No phones, no reading aloud, and no chatting with the person beside you—unless you want a gentle tap from a moderator reminding you what you came for. You don’t have to finish your book, but you do have to stop when time is up.

“We don’t always have to be on the same page to feel connected,” Meniado shares.

Once the books are closed, the sharing portion begins. Large-group discussions proved too overwhelming—especially for a community full of self-professed introverts—so attendees are divided into smaller circles of three to five people. First-timers are grouped with other newcomers, so no one has to break into a circle where everyone already knows one another. For the next 30 minutes, each group is given simple prompts: What book are you reading? How are you finding it? Would you recommend it? Even then, participation is optional.

“The guide questions are really just a guide,” Santua says. Readers can share as much—or as little—as they want.

The shift from silent reading to actual socializing may feel effortless to its attendees, but SBC Manila does plenty of work behind the scenes to make it that way. Before the meetup, attendees complete a short online questionnaire to help the ambassadors plan smaller discussion groups. Santua says they plan to take matchmaking even further at future gatherings by grouping members based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality type they are most likely to click with.

“You don’t have to talk about work or your personal life. Just books,” Santua says. “Kahit sabihin mong introvert ka, magiging extrovert ka.”

“It has always been a no-pressure space. You can drop in whenever you want, and there's never an expectation that you have to attend every meetup to belong. Whether you read more than 100 books a year or only manage to finish two, you're just as welcome. If you love reading, there's a place for you here,” Almosara-Capiral says.

Every now and then, SBC Manila gives the session a theme—not an assigned title or even a genre, just a mood to follow if you need one. This July, it was “cozy rain reads.”

“That’s up for interpretation. You think romance is cozy? You think this murder mystery is cozy? That’s fine. It’s all up to you,” Salabo says. Some sessions end with more than a discussion, as book swaps and trivia nights occasionally make their way into the program so regulars have something new to look forward to.

Once the official program ends, members are free to leave or linger for as long as they want. Online, the conversation can last even longer. A meetup scheduled from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. has once ended with several people still talking in the voice channels at midnight.

“Makikita mo, they’re still there,” SBC Manila ambassador Tin Dela Cruz says, still sounding surprised. “Are they still talking?”

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Book clubs are hardly new—and to claim that SBC Manila is the first wouldn't be fair to all the established circles that came before them. Seasoned readers might remember or might even be part of Flips Flipping Pages, The Filipino Group, and Pinoy Reads Pinoy Books, which have been gathering readers since the late 2000s and early 2010s. But it would be just as unfair to ignore the new wave of book clubs now fueling a reading renaissance of sorts among the younger generations.

“We were the first to use that word, ‘silent reading.’ Now all these other book clubs—there’s no competition, we actually talk to each other—they’re using the term as well,” Dela Cruz shares.

One such book club is Book Buddies PH, a Facebook group 52,000 members strong; it’s hard to be an online bookworm in the Philippines without coming across it. It began with the traditional Book of the Month setup, but eventually made room for members to bring whatever they were already reading.

“As the community grew, we recognized that readers carry different rhythms, genres, and passions. To honor that diversity, we embraced a model where Buddies could read their own books,” Book Buddies PH admin Efram Cortes says, adding that “Book of the Month” is still practiced as “ceremonial centerpieces” every now and then.

Book Buddies PH may be one of the biggest—and easiest to spot—but much of the current reading boom is happening in the quieter corners of social media. Search through meetup.com or linger on BookTok long enough, and you will find reading circles organized by city, province, or even neighborhood, inviting nearby strangers for a silent reading session.

That shift says more about what book clubs look like now: not one format replacing another, but more ways for readers to find the kind of gathering that suits them. For example, Third Decade Reads (TDR) still builds its monthly gatherings around one assigned title, only without treating it like homework. Members are encouraged to see a book through, but even a DNF—short for “did not finish”—is fair game; why someone might give up halfway is just as interesting a discussion to have.

“Discussing the same book allows members to experience the story through perspectives different from their own. It creates a space to exchange ideas, theories, notice details they may have missed. We even have had members who changed their book rating after the discussion!” TDR founders Mia Gallardo and Redg Camarse say.

What’s particularly interesting about TDR is that the club limits its membership to readers who are in their 30s. The age limit is meant less as a barrier than as common ground, giving members a chance to discuss the same book with people navigating a similar stage in life.

SBC Manila has also helped inspire other chapters beyond Metro Manila, with most of that growth taking place in 2026. As of writing, there are 13 SBC communities across the country, including groups in Davao, Iloilo, Bohol, and Subic. As Meniado puts it, “Each chapter has its own story and community, but we're all part of the same bookshelf.”

The irony of a book club for introverts, by introverts, is that someone still has to go out and organize it.

“There’s no regular schedule. It depends on our social battery,” Santua says with a laugh. The answer explains the occasional silence on its social pages. This interview nearly fell through after weeks without an Instagram post from SBC Manila, which made it seem like the club had gone dormant. It had not—the organizers were simply catching their breath and working around everything it takes to mount the next meetup.

Pulling off a meetup in Metro Manila takes more than picking a date and venue. SBC Manila is keen on keeping events completely free, but cafés are not always willing to host large groups without a minimum spend. Organizers also have to consider accessibility, parking, and whether the space is quiet and comfortable enough for a few hours of reading.

Even something as undisruptive as reading is not always easy to do in public. Large gatherings at places such as UP Sunken Garden and Arroceros Forest Park may require permits, if not payment to use the space for a few hours. Santua pointed out how even the National Library of the Philippines is closed on weekends, when most working members are free.

Still, charging attendees is out of the question. When asked whether SBC Manila would ever collect a fee to secure larger venues, Dela Cruz shuts down the idea almost immediately: “Communities are supposed to be free!” Book Buddies PH shares the same sentiments.

Because core organizers cannot always host, SBC Manila encourages members to arrange their own gatherings through what it calls “member-initiated meetups.” Anyone can propose one—even someone who is relatively new to the community—as long as they inform the ambassadors.

“We’re just doing minimal social media recently. It comes down to the members na. They’re the ones spreading the word about our community,” Santua says.

Naturally, some of these connections outgrow the book club itself. At Book Buddies PH, a shared love of reading has spun off into smaller circles for crochet, hiking, running, walking, self-development, and even swimming.

“Most people are really just after a sense of belonging, the low-pressure kind,” Book Buddies PH admin Josiah Eufemio says. “They want a reason to go out and be around others, to feel part of something without having to perform. The books make that easier because they give everyone a shared starting point.”

Sometimes, that starting point becomes something people build a life around. We need not look further than Santua, who actually met his girlfriend through SBC Manila. Other former members have also gone on to date, marry, and even start families. It's not bad for a social event built around not talking.

While book clubs gave other people a reason to go out, they gave Dela Cruz a reason to stay. SBC Manila almost lost her as an ambassador when she announced in January that she was moving back to the province, until members began sending her affordable rentals, broker contacts, and whatever leads they could find. Somewhere in that flurry of messages, she changed her mind.

“I stayed in Manila for this community,” Dela Cruz shares. She eventually found not only a reason to stay, but a roommate in fellow ambassador Shey Angeles. “It’s not like we went into the club looking for a partner or roommate or anything. It just happened.”

For all the talk about shrinking attention spans and longer screen times, the growing crowds at these meetups suggest that the interest in reading is still there.

“Outside of social media, beyond reading goals and aesthetic book set-ups, there is a hunger from Filipino readers to genuinely connect with each other over the books they have read,” Gallardo and Camarse say. Whether it is a thick classic, a literary-award winner, or “a fun smutty romance,” the point is to keep people talking about stories—and returning to them.

Beyond building community, these book clubs share a larger goal: getting more Filipinos to read in a country where nearly 25 million people aged 10 and 64 were not functionally literate in 2024.

“Moderating book clubs is our simple act of resistance to the status quo. It’s us manifesting a hope that one day, the Philippines can have a vibrant and mainstream reading culture,” Juliuis Azucena from Book Buddies PH says. “And as we’ve learned in our community forum, the interest to read is there.”

For SBC Manila, that mission plays out in both small and big ways. It can mean helping a parent whose child is struggling to read, giving someone tips to improve their attention span, or introducing members to local authors they might not have picked up otherwise. To mark its fifth anniversary in 2025, the group also donated 135 books to the Quezon City Public Library.

Of course, readers don't join book clubs with the intent of solving the Philippines' literacy problem. A nationwide reading culture may be the hope, but the goal rarely begins at that scale. For Santua, it began inside SBC Manila’s Discord server, where he volunteered to moderate just because the community mattered to him. Everything that followed came later.

“When I reached out to help moderate the community on Discord, hindi ko naisip lahat ito,” Santua shares. “At that moment, I just wanted to organize. Hindi ko naisip lahat ito—the growth, the collaborations, the new members. I just wanted to take care of the community I belong to.”

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