Some contributors post straight-up writing-process playlists: the one from Bret Easton Ellis for Lunar Park, for example, is an eclectic assortment of songs by musicians ranging from Barbra Streisand to Mavis Staples. The Book Notes series on the blog Largeheartedboy invites authors to create a playlist that relates in some way to one of their recent works. Here again Twitter (#amwriting #playlist) is a good starting place. Occasionally, readers can also track down the music that authors were listening to as they wrote. A quick search of Twitter (#amreading #playlist) turns up some intriguing pairings: My Chemical Romance/ The Iliad, 8 Mile/Jorge Luis Borges, Art Pepper/Michael Connelly, the soundtrack from the video game Fantasy VI/ The Giver. More inventive readers – or ones who are reading something that hasn’t been filmed – might choose a particular artist or album that they think pairs well with a specific author or book. Some readers enjoy listening to music tailored to what they’re reading, perhaps the soundtrack of a movie or TV show based on the book.

But for me, music – unlike ginger snaps – is a distraction from, not an enhancement of, the reading experience. I myself have a happy childhood memory of taking a tall glass of lemonade and a stack of ginger snaps out to the hammock with my latest library find, so I’m on board with the idea of piling pleasure upon pleasure. I know that playing music enhances the pleasure of reading for many folks, in much the same way as settling down with a glass of wine or a mug of coffee, or sharing the armchair with a cat. This is my favorite way to read: no bells and whistles, literal or figurative, but complete immersion in the words on the page. Apart from the whisper of turning pages (I saw no e-readers), attendees sat and read their books in complete silence.

Not long ago I went to a silent-reading event at the Colonial-era Loring-Greenough House in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. Silent Reading at the Loring-Greenough House.

The phantom tollbooth audible