The accident took place without warning during a holiday. The culprit: an Airbnb bedside table with no power outlet. A minor inconvenience forcing a mobile phone on its last gasp of ions into another room for the night.

While lying on the bed desperately trying to stem the terrifying rise of my own thoughts, it happened: I reached over and picked up a book.

The creeping anxiety of missing global breaking news, or not making it through all the reels my wife had sent me, started to slowly release its grip on my synapses, as sentences on pages swelled to paragraphs that soon arched chapters. My goldfish-trained brain so used to the mindless flick of short-form calorie-void videos as an official wind-down technique, suddenly felt soothed as it held a single connected idea together on paper. Peace descended.

I slept through that night, something I hadn’t done in a long time. Now, months later I’ve never once had the phone back near the bed.

The downside of this new leaf though was turning into the absolute worst type of book reader – a born-again book reader.

“Books! Have you tried reading books!?” “You should really try reading books …” I preach. Conscious that this life development was transforming me into the bibliophile equivalent of a vegan on a yoga mat, I’ve since been delighted to learn I am far from alone.

I’d seen headlines screaming that book festivals are the new raves. Wishful thinking from a bunch of nerds, I thought. But as it turns out, it has never been cooler to read books, and to collectively share that experience, than it has today. At least in this part of the world.

The recent Auckland writers’ festival enjoyed its highest attendance ever, breaking all records in its 27-year history. Crowds were up 15% on the previous year as people excitedly gathered and queued for sessions and signatures.

Australia too has enjoyed a book bump. Mirroring (and naturally upstaging) Auckland, the Sydney writers’ festival declared this year the most successful event in its 29-year history, with record attendance and tickets sales.

So what is driving people back to wood pulp and ink? Are book readers the vanguard of a human reaction to the AI slop that online is serving us with increasingly diminishing returns? Or perhaps a breakthrough group simply scrolled to the end of the internet and decided there was more to life, and that “more to life” was a Patrick Radden Keefe book?

And what does the upsurge in collectivism say about us? What is it about book reading, traditionally a solitary pursuit, that seems to spur us to bravely navigate public transport and forgo sacred weeknights to come together and bask in the glow of a well-written tome, often alongside the author?

On the face of it, it’s a strange concept, given that attendees have typically read the book, the author has obviously written the book, and now everyone is smugly sitting in a theatre celebrating their own personal achievement. Nevertheless, these get-togethers are working, bringing new layers to the simple experience of reading.

When it comes to book clubs, I’ve always thought of them as mainly an excuse to drink wine. We once had a (by New Zealand standards) major midnight disturbance outside our house, only for security the next morning to inform us it was a local book club’s Christmas function that on their wobbly walk home decided to sing their appreciation to my wife outside our gate. I imagined them causing this urban melee with a copy of Miranda July’s All Fours tucked under an arm. Absolute scenes.

Now I admit that none of this properly explains why people are increasingly rejoicing in this solidarity of breathing the same air as other bookish types. But I wonder if these events could be the timid re-entry into public socialisation after the sheltered Covid years kept us physically apart?

Maybe these bookfests are gateway gatherings to people hand-stapling a vinyl outfit together and sweating it out at 130bpm for six hours on a dark, jostling, twisted dancefloor to obscure German techno once more. Or, maybe, that’s just my newly book-stretched imagination, spilling out a sentence that was far too long, as it discovers its whole new expanded potential.