I’m obsessed with hot men reading (and don’t care that it’s performative)

Celia WaldenTue, August 18, 2026 at 11:00 AM UTC

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An Instagram account dedicated to sexy men reading books? It’s the gift that keeps on giving - @hotdudesreading/Instagram

I don’t feel particularly well-inclined towards algorithms. They tend to be both arrogant and wrong, which isn’t a great combination. No, I don’t want to read that book, listen to that album or buy that dress with the silly shepherdess flouncing at the bottom. Also, I don’t own a dog, so you can stop trying to flog me chew toys, Amazon. But there is one thing I’ll forever be grateful for, and that’s the Instagram account some data bank decided to introduce me to six months ago.

The handle @hotdudesreading is the gift that keeps on giving, largely because it does exactly what it says on the tin. Every day, it’s just image after image of hot dudes – reading books.

They’re all over the world – from London cafés to South Korean airports to Florence footbridges – sent in by passers-by, male and female, for the past 11 years. (Simon & Schuster even published a coffee table book of the hottest hot dudes back in 2016.)

The men are supposedly unaware they’re being snapped (although many are clearly posing). But even if the whole thing is, in fact, an exercise in performative reading – which has gained traction of late, thanks to the rise of celebrity book clubs and the likes of Vice magazine declaring that “Reading Is Now Sexier Than a Six-Pack” – I don’t think I care.

Seeing any human engrossed in something other than a phone gives me a zing of joy. And I love that the site has a “no Kindles” policy. Technology is many things to many people, but it will never make women weak at the knees. But undoubtedly the best thing about @hotdudesreading is the hilariously predatory captions.

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Take the James Spader lookalike reading The Power of Good News by Hal Urban on Westport Beach in California back in June. “Good news: it just turned summer, the beach is empty and there’s a shirtless dude at the waterline who doesn’t know I exist yet. Bad news: that book is about to get sandy because I have absolutely no intention of letting him finish it.”

Or the Victoria line “hottie” immersed in a book somewhere between King’s Cross and Finsbury Park. “This handsome stranger pulled out a paperback instead of his phone, and suddenly the entire carriage felt like the opening chapter of a Sally Rooney novel.”

You’d be crucified for writing this stuff about women. You’d be branded a stalker and a creep. But the predatory female gaze is having a moment, as anyone who has enjoyed recent hit series like Off Campus and Every Year After will know.

Every other scene seems to feature an absurdly ripped, semi-nude male protagonist, and I had to explain to my teenage daughter how surprising this was to my generation, who grew up with lingering shots of women in bikinis. None of the characters sit around reading Steinbeck, though, which does slightly lessen the appeal, to be honest.

Vice was right – reading is sexier than a six-pack. But flaunting both at once? That’s the dream.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”