The Reading Room

A Reading Room for the Music World

When you think of music, you might picture headphones.
When you think of reading, you might picture silence.

But what happens in between?

Somewhere between the library and the record store, a space opens: The Reading Room.

Why a Reading Room?

Reading has always been shaped by sound — whether it’s the silence of a library, the low chatter of a café, or the hum of a vinyl record in the background.

In the 1990s, engineers at Microsoft reportedly played cassettes of classical music to improve their focus. Harvard and Stanford ran studies on whether Mozart could make you smarter. Bookstores sold jazz CDs to set the mood for browsing. And today, millions stream lo‑fi hip hop as their reading soundtrack.

The Reading Room is HollowBookCo’s answer to this lineage: a place to explore how sound and text live together.

What to Expect

The Reading Room isn’t a magazine. It isn’t a playlist. It’s a corner of the archive — curated weekly, written slowly, always changing.

Here you’ll find:

• Studies — what science says about music, memory, and focus.
• Archives — cassettes, playlists, and cultural artifacts from the past.
• Soundscapes — environments that shape how we read.
• Lore — stories, fragments, and myths about books and sound.
• Notes — field observations from our own experiments.

Each week, one new piece arrives. Some are practical. Some are historical. Some are poetic. All are part of the same question: what does it mean to read with sound?

Our Place Beside StudioRich

Our sibling imprint, StudioRich, collects records: loops, broadcasts, playlists.
HollowBookCo keeps the library: fragments, archives, atmospheres.

Together, we form a house where loops live — some are listened to, some are read.

Closing the First Chapter

Every Sunday, a new read appears.
Sometimes it’s science. Sometimes it’s story.
What binds them isn’t subject, but atmosphere.

Welcome to the Reading Room.
Turn the page. Turn on the loop.