Why reading is officially sexy

Reading is being embraced by the rich and glamorous, but is it literature or the literary look that’s so alluring, Anna Moloney asks

A recent exposé on the London Library, a private member’s literary establishment in St James’s Square, uncovered scandal. Incestuous members, fumbles between the bookshelves and bags of literary tension. The findings of the investigation, led by Gus Carter for The Fence, were unequivocal: the appeal of London’s poshest library has very little to do with books, and very much to do with sex.

But we should hardly be surprised; reading, if you didn’t know, is now officially hot.

Vivienne Westwood once said the best accessory was a book, and the stylish took note. Fanned by Gen Z enthusiasm and solemnised by the participation of A-list celebrities, reading is now firmly the domain of the ‘it’ girl. Dua Lipa, Kaia Gerber and Kendall Jenner all host their own book clubs, while supermodel sisters Gigi and Bella Hadid have both been papped glamorously toting around their reads between fashion shows.

Care should be taken not to slip into assumptions that are ultimately misogynistic, the (gasp!) beautiful-women-might-have-brains-too mentality. When a 1955 photograph of bathing suit-clad Marilyn Monroe reading a worn copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses surfaced, for example, unfair accusations of posturing were abundant: a way to recast her ‘dumb blonde’ image, commentators suggested. But Monroe was genuinely a keen reader, with a personal library of over 400 books and, some suggest, more photos were taken of her reading than of her nude – an endorsement indeed of reading’s sex appeal.

After all, it is the glamorous languishing of Audrey Hepburn in the New York Public Library that proves impossible to resist for Breakfast at Tiffany’s leading man, who declares his love for the disinterested Holly Golightly as she bats her eyelashes from behind a chunky stack of books (and oversized shades).

But there is reason to have some healthy suspicion towards the fashionable’s embrace of the literary world, for it may not be so much reading that is in vogue, as it is the aesthetics of such. The gaining traction of ‘book stylists’, for example, often tasked with curating bookshelves not only by title but by design gives some cause to raise eyebrows. Gwyneth Paltrow asked her literary curator for “light, inviting and easy to grab” books in her family room and a “palette of black, white and grey” in the dining room.

It is not only the words on the page that are being flouted, but the whole ‘literary look’. Slim, horn-rimmed glasses were ushered in as the new “geek-chic” must-have by Vogue earlier this year and no mondaine has ever been papped proudly carrying round an Amazon Kindle. It is the worn paperback, undone hair and cool nonchalance which makes this look – the “oh, I didn’t see you there”. But you can be sure they were reading something chic.