reading a book in a cafe sucks?

yeah i said it

It’s not that important I know, I know, but I’ve discovered that reading a book in a cafe is yet another example of a romanticised lie we’ve been fed by the mainstream media/Big Cafe and it’s pissed me off.

People are walking around out there posting videos on Tiktoks of themselves reading books in cafes as though it’s great. For a hundred years, scenes in films have depicted cute people getting lost in a novel with a cup of coffee and I’m sick of it actually????

Some might say I’m quite stressed, am projecting said stress onto the relatively harmless concept of the book-in-cafe trope, and that it’s good I’m going on holiday tomorrow. Some might say this but I’d call them a liar and then start crying due to stress.

Right so yesterday I had an afternoon off from the job I’m doing, so did some work (making SoCiAl MeDiA aSsEtS for a fun announcement that’s coming next week, but it took me ages because I’m resentful of having to make SoCiAl MeDiA aSsEtS) then decided to go to West Hampstead on the tube and walk to Actual Hampstead. These are places in London, by the way.

I then thought I might walk from Actual Hampstead to Notting Hill and listen to some podcast episodes, enjoy the cherry blossoms, and lean into the affliction I’m sometimes struck by which can only be described as the opposite of poverty tourism. Posho tourism?

One of the houses I walked by in Belsize Park was so massive I laughed out loud. It had four turrets. When I saw how far it went back, I felt a sort of dizziness at how much wall there was and how it just kept going. Walls have no business going for that long.

Then in St John’s Wood, which is equally posh, I was looking into the window of a gigantic mansion at a family hanging out in one of the rooms, because I wanted to see how people hang out in mansions that are so gigantic (for example, do they use megaphones when talking to each other), so crossed the road to get a better look and nearly got hit by a van.

This is why Posho Tourism is morally superior to the alternative, because the tourist is hurting nobody but themselves.

On the way, I stopped off at a couple of cafes with the intention of reading my book which I was really looking forward to. I thought about it loads the night before while reading my book in bed (boring!!!!), because a cafe is where you’re supposed to read books, isn’t it? It’s the ultimate reading place other than perhaps a library, except you can’t get an almond matcha latte in a library and they’ve all been closed down by the Conservative government.

Obviously I’ve read a book in a cafe before, but only while waiting for someone or some train. I mainly go to cafes to catch up with friends or leech the wifi/ambience so as to focus on making SoCiAl MeDiA aSsEts. I rarely go to a cafe with the sole intention to read my book, despite being bombarded my entire life with cafe-in-book imagery, as previously explained. Anyway, I was looking forward to it.

Horrified to discover at 36 years old that images depicted in TV, films, books and social media aren’t real. Why do I keep falling for this?

I suppose we’ve all fallen for it, because cafes are full of people having suboptimal reading experiences. I read in three different cafes (and a ramen bar, which was admittedly mad because the broth kept splashing on the pages every time a noodles bellyflopped back into the bowl due to my inability to use chopsticks. I like the challenge, though. Not the challenge of chopsticks, but the challenge of consistently doing something I’m bad at, over and over again. My thirties has been all about letting go of my asphyxiatingly high levels of perfectionism, and eating slowly so I don’t get tummy ache all the time. Bad chopsticks knocks both of these stones down with one bird, as the saying goes) and every single cafe ranged from ‘impossible to read a book in’ to ‘would have been more enjoyable to have read a book literally anywhere else’.

Okay, not anywhere else. Home. It would have been better to have read a book at home. Obviously a cafe is a better place to read a book than, say, a log flume.

Anyway, here’s why you need to de-influence yourself and stop thinking ‘god I don’t read in cafes very much, what a shame’ because it’s not a shame.

1. The noise

You can’t focus on the book because a group of friends will sit down at the next table and discuss how their nipples bleed while breastfeeding but there’s this really good cream you can buy, so you end up googling nipple creams despite not having children because it’s good intel to pass onto your pregnant friends.

If that doesn’t happen, a baby will start crying.

If that doesn’t happen, someone’s dog will start barking.

If that doesn’t happen, your own dog will start barking (terrible idea to bring a dog to a cafe if you want some Me Time).

If that doesn’t happen, a man will complain his oat latte wasn’t hot enough and when the waitress says: ‘Oh, I’m sorry about that, I’ll get you a hotter one’ he replies: ‘No, no’ and then she’s like ‘Honestly I’m happy to swap it’ and he’s like ‘No, no honestly it’s fine’ and then she says ‘Are you sure?' while hovering uncertainly, to which he responds ‘yes’, she leaves and an odd atmosphere remains because why would you tell someone a drink is too cold if you didn’t want it made hot? What did he want to get out of this scenario?

Noise cancelling headphones don’t work, by the way, because you can often hear a tiny soupçon of noise (a soupçon is an absurd way to describe noise, but I’m keeping it for the sophistication/French readers) leaking through the cancellation waves (I don’t know how noise cancellation headphones work because I’m not a scientist) which is actually more annoying than full blown ear-noise.

Also if you’re fully noise-cancelled, how will the waitress check if you want a refill, or tell you about the specials or inform you that the building is on fire.

2. The comfort

Why would I read a book on a wooden chair at a table, when I could lie horizontally on my sofa? Or horizontally on my bed? I like to change positions when reading and conduct a little tour of all the soft furnishings in my home. I say ‘all’, there’s only three possible tour venues: bed, sofa, squashy chair. Actually, I sometimes balance on the arm of the squashy chair because the dog is sitting in it, which counts as a valid fourth venue.

Sometimes I sit on the floor which freaks my partner out, but it’s nowhere near as bad as when I do it in a cafe. They hate it.*

*Obviously I’m exaggerating, I haven’t done this in a cafe. Although I once sat on the floor waiting for my phone to charge in the National Theatre lobby and a man told me to get up with such disdain that I got a bit teary-eyed, and he didn’t even work there. He was just a theatregoer. Theatregoers have so much disdain for floor-sitting, but that’s not for now.

3. The food/drink

Maybe this is a personal thing, but I can’t focus when there’s food and bevs (beverages) on the go. I can’t dip pitta in houm (houmous) while absent-mindedly lost in the pages of a tome because it takes two hands to read - one to hold the lad down, one to turn his pages - or three if you’re wielding a hardback, so how are you supposed to do the eating and drinking without stopping reading to eat/drink? Or stopping reading to build a contraption that functions as a third arm? Both equally annoying options.

4. The placement of the plate, mug and book is all off

I stopped taking books to restaurants for the same reason - if you put the snack plate in front of you, where does the book go? In your lap, so you’re hunched? My posture is bad enough, I can’t be hunching.

If you put the plate to one side and the book on the table, between the drink and the food, the book effectively becomes the plate and gets covered in crumbs/noodle - unless you crane yourself to the side every time you want a bite of cake/nood.

The third option is: plate in front of you, elbows on the table either side, while you read the book at face-height while dangling it over the cake but that’s fucking unhinged.

Sofa, bed, soft furnishings, floor. Home wins again.

5. You’re paying

Sorry, you’re actively paying to read a book hunched on a wooden chair, distracted by houmous and covered in noise soupçons? This makes no sense in the current financial climate.

6. The fact you’re reading a book in a cafe

A large reason I couldn’t focus on the book yesterday is because all I was thinking was: look at me, just a woman reading a book in a cafe. I become so taken with the romance of it all, I barely get through a page. When I ordered a mint tea in the first cafe, it arrived in one of those tall glass mugs which is just not the right aesthetic for book reading, so I left. I hate myself?

To be clear, I didn’t leave a cafe because of the mug aesthetic consciously, I thought ‘nah the vibes are off here’ when on reflection the problem was me obsessively perceiving myself.

That last point is psychologically horrifying, but I back the first five. Cafe’s are sociable places for catching up with friends or plotting to overthrow governments who are closing down libraries; don’t bother taking a book there unless you want a sore arse and uncomfortable levels of self perception.

While writing this I’ve just realised I left my fucking headphones in one of the cafes so, if it’s okay with you, I’m going to stop writing and kick off.

Feel free to tell me how much you love reading books in cafes in the comments but I will argue with you, I’m afraid.

I will discuss the announcement I made sOcIaL mEdIa AsSeTs for next time because I’m not really meant to talk about it yet or tell you that it’s my UK tour announcement. So thank god I didn’t do that. Thank god I didn’t say ‘when you see it on social media can you please share it about because I’ve got 450,000 tickets to sell’ or anything.