Reading on vacation has evolved to a reading vacation.

Have you read Strangers yet? The question that continues to be heard at social gatherings this year is one indication of a shift in the zeitgeist: What are you watching?, the social ice-breaker for our modern times, has increasingly been replaced by What are you reading? While the statistics around reading remain dire—a December 2025 YouGov survey found that four in 10 Americans didn’t read a single book last year and an August 2025 study by the National Library of Medicine tracked a sharp decline in reading for pleasure since the millennium—there has been an undeniable cultural ground-swell, spurred on in part by the success of #booktok (which has hundreds of billions—yes, billions—of views). In 2026, reading may be a big determinant of one’s cool factor.

Mark Ronson and Dua Lipa, who chose the DJ’s memoir as her Service95 Book Club pick for January 2026. Getty Images.

Fashion brands have taken note: there is Miu Miu’s Literary Club, Margaux’s Footnotes book club, whose spring gathering featured a conversation with Strangers author Belle Burden, and Warby Parker’s Book Report, whose events are among the most coveted invites. (To celebrate the release of Famesick, New York’s McNally Jackson bookstore founder Sarah McNally moderated a conversation between author Lena Dunham and Gloria Steinem in Steinem’s Manhattan apartment.) “Summit Goes Analog,” courtesy of publishing house Simon &amp; Schuster’s imprint Summit Books, has been throwing sold-out events for buzzy authors like Nelio Biedermann, and bookstores themselves like Brooklyn’s Books are Magic and The Ripped Bodice, Santa Monica’s Zibby’s, Ojai’s Bart’s Books, and Godmothers in Summerland, California, have developed their own fanbases, becoming meccas for avid readers.&nbsp;Dua Lipa has a book club, and so do Emma Roberts and Natalie Portman; Library Science, cofounded by Kaia Gerber, just released its first publication, a collection of essays and poetry; and Sarah Jessica Parker has her own literary imprint and has served as a judge for the esteemed Booker Prize.

Miu Miu Literary Club’s April 2026 event celebrating Ama Ata Aidoo, the first published female African dramatist. Courtesy of Miu Miu.

Kaia Gerber carrying 'Just Kids' by Patti Smith during Paris Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2019.

Something long considered a solitary activity has become a way to socialize that extends far beyond the traditional book-club model. And reading is now an impetus for travel too, with retreats that take the high-profile–book gathering approach on the road increasing in popularity. According to Google Trends, reading retreat was searched more than ever before in 2026.
Hyatt debuted Camp Unwritten last year, a collaboration with Reese Witherspoon’s book club, part of Hello Sunshine, that invites guests on glamping excursions to places like Yosemite and Moab. Publisher Avon Books (an imprint of Harper Collins) broadcast its literary podcast,&nbsp;The Book Was Hotter, live from Grand Hyatt’s Baha Mar this spring, and the hotel also hosted a literary getaway with best-selling author Tessa Bailey. “We’re seeing travelers gravitate toward vacation experiences that feel creatively fulfilling,” says Christopher Watson, director of sales and marketing for Grand Hyatt Baha Mar, of the appeal of reading vacations to guests who want to disconnect. “Reading on vacation naturally gives way to slower, more intentional, and restorative travel.”
An indication of the popularity of this new generation of reading retreats is how quickly they sell out. Like Book Huddle, whose recent sold-out trips ventured to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the Oregon coast, and Ladies Who Lit, a U.K.–based company, which shepherds readers everywhere from the Swiss Alps and Bali to the Balearic Islands and Italy’s Emilia Romagna. Spots on its January 2027 trips to Svalbard, Norway, for a retreat complete with dog sledding and tundra walks backdropped by the Northern Lights were quickly claimed. Mikey Friedman, founder of Page Break, which takes New York City–based readers to more bucolic upstate settings, says that their retreats offer participants a way to unplug and connect around reading during a brief getaway, minus any of the pressures of the classic book-club format. “A lot of book clubs fail because people are busy and don’t do the reading or they can’t make a meeting, and then they fall behind and feel bad about it,” says Friedman. “My idea for Page Break was to do the whole book club in a weekend.” The reading is done as a collective activity, with participants gathering over the course of the weekend to take turns reading the entire book together aloud—something, Friedman notes, few of us do as adults. “When you read a book aloud, you really get to experience the story together,” says Friedman. “It’s an active consumption that is way more engaging than reading a book quietly on your own.” Unsurprisingly, it’s a bonding experience that ends up forging new friendships. “The main value we offer is connecting people in a substantive way,” says Friedman.

Group dinner during a Page Break retreat. Courtesy of Page Break/Natura Collective.

Connection is also a core value for Common Ground, a reading retreat company founded by Vanessa Zoltan, who has a master’s degree in spiritual care from Harvard Divinity School, where she also teaches. Zoltan’s vision for Common Ground was to treat classic novels by female authors with the same attention and rigor as a spiritual text, and to look for a deeper meaning in their pages through a feminist lens. “Out of that, the physical component of going on literary pilgrimages, and walking where these female authors and characters walked, was born,” says Courtney Brown, Common Ground’s director of programs, adding that the pilgrimages incorporate talks, reading, sightseeing, and lots of walking and delicious food. This year’s itinerary includes trips to Florence for E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View, Cornwall for Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (with author Carmen Maria Machado joining), and East Sussex and the Seven Sisters Hike for Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. “There’s something about being able to share space with these ancestors of literature and think about the many people that will do it after us that is a nice invisible thread,” says Brown. Tour operator Timbuktu recently crafted its own literary vacations with trips to Kenya, inspired by Karen Blixen’s memoir Out of Africa, and to Botswana, inspired by Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series.

A Common Ground visit to Groff Park’s Emily Dickinson Trail in Amherst, Massachusetts. Courtesy of Common Ground.

Hotels have also been leaning in to the literary moment. Guests at Brown’s Hotel in London can stay in the Kipling suite, named for author Rudyard Kipling, who wrote The Jungle Book there. The Oberoi Vindhyavilas Wildlife Resort in India’s Madhya Pradesh, where the novel is set, offers a Jungle Book experience, where you can spot Bengal tigers. At New York’s Beekman Hotel, you can order cocktails named for author Pablo Neruda and journalist Jessica Pressler in the Bar Room. There are storytelling sessions by the fire about local folklore at Duisdale House Hotel on Scotland’s Isle of Skye and scholar-led discussions on Greek philosophy at Anthology of Athens, which boasts, conveniently, a view of the Acropolis and the Temple of Zeus. The formidable libraries at Dunton Hot Springs in Colorado, Palm Heights in Grand Cayman, The Proper in Santa Monica, and the Park Hyatt in Tokyo have become their own destinations, and many hotels are now partnering with local independent bookstores to curate what is on their shelves. Hotel Lilien in Tannersville, New York, tapped Brooklyn’s Books are Magic; Shinola in Detroit relies on Source Booksellers; and the micro-libraries at The Line in Washington, D.C. are curated by Lost City Books. One of the highlights of the newly renovated duplex penthouse at The Gansevoort in New York’s Meatpacking District is a custom library called The Evening Edit; if guests don’t finish their selection during their stay, they can take it home.

The Kipling Suite at Brown’s Hotel in London. Courtesy of Rocco Forte Hotels.

This heyday of reading and bookcations comes at a time when analog practices like needlepoint, bird watching, and gardening are attracting new and younger audiences who are keen to log off, have experiences that aren’t dictated by an algorithm, and forge meaningful relationships offline. The irony may be that many of us are finding out about these books and retreats by scrolling.

The Rise of the Book Retreat

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