The chemistry between readers

I attended the Writers Fest on the weekend and was shocked to find it didn't send me scurrying away in a sweat, clutching my bottle of Lorazepam like huge events normally do.

This weekend I attended the Auckland Writers Festival… along with some 85,000 other people. Aotea Centre heaved with bodies, many spilling out into the surrounding park and courtyard.

With a packed schedule spanning the three main days, moving from session to session was slow as I tried to carefully navigate my way through the tens of thousands of others who were trying to do the same thing.

As someone on the Autism spectrum, this should have been my nightmare. And one which I wouldn’t normally survive without my handy-dandy bottle of Lorazepam.

But surprisingly, it wasn’t. A nightmare, that is.

I bought way too many books for someone who's supposedly on a self-imposed "book buying ban"

Instead, my heart was brimming with joy and I felt more connected and inspired than I can ever remember feeling. I made new friends whilst waiting in the book signing lines, connected with online ones in real life, and even bumped into an old high school friend I hadn’t seen in fifteen years.

I left the venue Sunday night with a notebook full of ideas, a big fat smile on my face and a desperate yearning for the weekend to continue on forever. 

So what made this experience different to the similarly anxiety-attack-inducing experience of attending a music festival or concert?

Bonnie Garmus! Lauren Groff! Celeste Ng! Not pictured: Ann Patchett! Jerry Pinto! Heaps of others!

Along with being a person who attends writing festivals, I’m also queer and have ADHD. There’s a commonly shared experience in the queer community, that feeling when you meet someone and realise they are also queer. There’s this synergy and connection that sparks like tiny little electrical currents between you.

A single moment of understanding:

You’re just like me.

I am safe with you.

I can be myself.

I’ve felt that too with fellow ADHDers. When you find out there’s a person like you, who thinks like you, and so you let out the breath you are always holding around “normal” people, because you know that this person with ADHD won’t mind if you talk too fast or ramble off on a tangent, or interrupt them mid-sentence by accident.

But there’s another, less obvious sub-culture that shares this deep, almost chemical sense of connection too: The book community.

I’ve never thought much about how books connect us. I mean, I’ve always known they do in theory. But when I started a book account on Instagram in March 2024, that’s when I truly became aware of it.

Knowing someone is a reader tells you a lot about them:

• They appreciate this art form like I do.

• They actively prioritise time to read.

• They love words.

• They feel enriched by stories.

When you meet another reader, instantly you understand a little bit about who they are as a person, and whether or not you’ll “gel”. There’s a mental checklist of pre qualifying factors that you can immediately answer.

All of my closest and most treasured friendships are with other readers. This wasn’t by design, it's just a fact I came to realise as I seamlessly connected with other readers at the festival. So much of our friendship stems from our shared love of books, and often it’s that love that formed the very basis for our friendship in its early stages.

If I make a new friend and the initial connection is good, it grows deeper much quicker if we realise we both love books. Suddenly, there are infinite worlds to talk about and interpretations to debate.

When I met my boyfriend for the first time, we hit it off when we both realised we loved to read. We talked for hours and hours about our favourite books, and then fostered a friendship from providing recommendations back and forth over the subsequent months. Today, our shared love of reading is a huge, fundamental part of our relationship and one of the most cherished aspects.

So at a book festival, surrounded by 85,000 other passionate readers - who are passionate enough to have traveled far and wide for a dedicated event - it’s like utopia for a little book nerd like myself. I could not have been in a safer place with more like minded human beings, and my ridiculously overly-anxious brain knew this.

Met Bonnie Garmus and she signed my book and also remembered my Spongebob meme so that was fun

Queueing to have the incredible Bonnie Garmus sign my copy of Lessons in Chemistry, I easily engaged in meaningful conversation with the women around me. Women who not only love to read but specifically love this same book as I do, enough to stand in line for an hour for a 30 second interaction with its author.

That is a synergy you don’t find very often.

Stephen King famously said that “books are a uniquely powerful magic,” and although he was probably referring to their ability to transport us to different worlds and lives, I also think it applies to the ways in which they connect us.

Books stir powerful emotions within the reader. Meeting a person who understands those emotions and can appreciate your vulnerability is like fast-tracking to whatever the friendship-equivalent of third base is.

And in this increasingly lonely, solitary world we live in, that powerful connection is more important, and more nourishing than ever.