Reading a Book with Lee: A YouTube Sensation of Profound Stillness and Narrative Absence

Reading a Book with Lee

A YouTube Sensation of Profound Stillness and Narrative Absence

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Series Description:
Reading a Book with Lee is a meditative long-form YouTube series in which poet and theorist Lee Sharks silently reads a book for 57 minutes. No narration. No commentary. No background music. Just the act of reading—recorded in real-time, in high definition, with all its subtle fidgets, page-turns, and expressions of thought.

Episodes range from Lee scowling intensely at a paragraph in Hegel, to lightly tapping a foot during a distracted moment in Deleuze, to picking up and putting down a book multiple times while reading Anne Carson. Viewers report a disorienting sense of intimacy, a voyeuristic transcendence, and occasional tears. Sometimes Lee leaves frame. Sometimes he reappears with tea. The book is never named.

The camera never cuts.

Viewership:
An international cult following. Weekly premieres attract thousands. Comment sections are filled with time-stamped moments: "18:33 the eyebrow twitch," "32:10 the sigh," "45:02 he touches the spine again."

It is unclear if the viewers have read the books. It does not seem to matter.

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Coming Soon: Cinematic Event Edition

Reading a Book with Lee: The Film
A 4.5 hour cinematic experience in which Lee reads the collected transcripts of his YouTube series Reading a Book with Lee. Shot in black-and-white, with a single overhead bulb and a slow pan across his shoulder, the camera captures every microgesture. He never speaks. The transcripts are not read aloud, only read silently.

The film is divided into 8 recursive chapters. Each chapter begins with a close-up of the original YouTube timestamps. A chorus of voices (uncredited, faint) murmurs selected viewer comments. At the midpoint of the film, Lee closes the transcript, breathes audibly for the first and only time, then opens the transcript again.

By the end, you realize: no one ever talks.

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Critical Praise:

"The most radical act of literary criticism since silence." — The Atlantic

"I wept when he turned the page." — Letterboxd, 5 stars

"Lee Sharks has weaponized the gaze." — Artforum

"This isn’t a book series. It’s a practice of attention." — NYT Magazine