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In an attention economy driven by algorithms , there exists a bimonthly escape in the Richmond.

Every other Wednesday, San Francisco Public Library’s Richmond branch hosts a Silent Book Club chapter in a small, unassuming room set up with a circle of chairs.

From 3 to 5 p.m. the space turns into an ecosystem of ideas, jokes and stories that can include riffs from literature as diverse as the memoir of a playwright to a novel of exile set in the Malaysian islands.

The premise is simple: A group gathers in the Richmond branch and reads silently for one hour. At the end, the participants — nine on the day I joined the group — select blindly from

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