One of my fondest memories as a teenager and reader in Muscat is my father dropping me at the Al Seeb City Center every Wednesday in the afternoon. I would walk around a bit, then head into the big Borders bookshop. There I would:

• Browse All The Fantasy Shelf
• Look for great Titles
• Find a nice comfortable chair
• Read for around 2-3 hours until it was time for me to leave

and about once a month or so, I would buy a book. At the time, I was one of the only avid readers in my high school, the other being my friend Ahmed Al Sinani (who also became an author, by the by).

Honestly, it felt a bit tiresome. I tried talking to people about my favorite books, but none of them were interested.

Are There Readers in Oman?

Recently, I wrote a post about 5 Magic Steps to Help You Start Reading Again. But sometimes, it can feel like you’re the only reader in Oman. This is something we highlighted during a panel discussion with Fatma Makki, Anisha Bhatia, Abdulaziz Al Jahdhami, And Mohammed Al Rawahi during the Oman Book Fest which took place early in Jan at the Indian Embassy.

It turns out that there is a good number of readers in Oman, but they’re split apart like a mosiac, not knowing that there are others like them. This makes it harder for people to continue reading, since they’re not connected with others who encourage them.

What’s the best way to fix this? Why, it’s to join a reading community. This can be a group of people to encourage you, share your interest, and make you feel accepted.

Here are Some Reader Communities You Can Join in Oman

To that end, here is a list of Book Communities You Can Join in Muscat:

• Oman Book Lovers Club: This is a Facebook Group and Instagram Page created for the love of reading in Oman. It mixes together expats and locals, and also has a book sale/book borrowing option. The leader Anisha Bhatia also organizes events.
• The PaperCut Club: The papercut Club is an IG-based monthly book club covering Midle-East Oriented books. The leader, Fatma Makki, also does a radio show on Oman FM 90.4 upon occasion.
• Hayya Naqra هيا نقرأ: Hayya Naqra is a bookshop of used books based in Avenues Mall in Muscat. However, it also has reading clubs and reader events for kids. The leader Jan Jaffar also sets up other initiatives and is an author heself.
• Asdiqa Al Kitab أصدقاء الكتاب: This is a Sinaw-based initiative focused on encouraging readers to read.
• The Fantasy Majlis: This is my very own anti-book-club-book-club. It’s a Whatsapp-based reading sprint group where we all get to read whatever we want. The only rule is that at 8 PM each Saturday, I send out a message to everyone urging them to do a reading sprint for half an hour. After that half hour, we need to tell each other what we thought about what we read. The goal is to set up a weekly reading habit for everyone and to encourage each other to share our thoughts with each other.

End

That’s it! Thanks a lot for looking through this post. I hope that the different reading communities in Oman can interact with one another to have different great initiatives and events to bring us all together.