The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Bay Area version of the silent reading party, which started in Seattle in 2009, will happen next month at the Hotel Rex in San Francisco. Like the reading party in Seattle, there will be a pianist. Since 2009, the reading party has also been replicated in Tacoma, Brooklyn, and Scotland, and elsewhere.

Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snickett, is one of the hosts of the San Francisco party, and he's adding a charitable component. His co-host, Dan Stone, editor of Radio Silence, a magazine about the intersection of literature and music, introduced himself to me at the reading party in Seattle last September, and I strongly encouraged him to set up a party down there. "It’s really a terrific thing you’ve got going, and we’re excited to duplicate it in San Francisco," he said by email afterwards. He was particularly fond of the Seattle reading party's resident pianist Paul Matthew Moore, which may explain their having a piano player at their party, too.

The first-ever San Francisco reading party is on April 5, one night before the next reading party in Seattle, on April 6. So, if you're really, really into reading in large rooms full of people silently reading to themselves while listening to someone play the piano, you could technically go to the one in San Francisco, hop a flight, and then come to the one in Seattle. Not that I recommend it. The party is here is crowded enough.