Thomas Yeomans experiences a storytelling session at a weekly book club where Elizabeth Day brings back reading out loud in fashion.

Thomas Yeomans didn't know what to expect when he suddenly decided to attend a storytelling session for adults. "For me, reading has become more formal over the years; it's something I do on my own," explained Yeomans, a 26-year-old artist. "So I swept into this at the last minute, not knowing what to expect."

He attended a session where Elizabeth Day was reading stories out load at the Simon Oldfield gallery in London's Mayfair. Day reveals that she first developed the idea with gallerist Simon Oldfield, because they both felt that the tradition of reading aloud and sharing stories with each other was something that had been lost in modern times.

Day also reveals that though people have long lost the "knack" of reading out stories, there still seems to be "an appetite for it." According to Day, revenue from downloaded audiobooks has risen by 32.7% since last year.

"What happens with shared reading is that people experience a very intense thing together, but everybody has their own personal, private, inner response to it," says Jane Davis, founder of The Reader Organisation. "A lot of people don't understand how poor literacy is in our country. For many, reading aloud gives you access to things you would simply never read otherwise."

Day feels that "while there had been a welcome resurgence of book groups and literary festivals over the past decade, there was little chance for adults to engage in group reading without some sort of self-improving literary discussion at the end of it, or a nagging sense that one should really be buying the author's newest work as part of an unspoken commercial transaction."

"What I liked about it was that this was an informal setting and a gentle, welcoming environment where my defenses were down," Yeomans said after the session. "It really pulled at my heart strings. I felt like a defenseless child again."

Helen Ervin, a 38-year-old marketing executive from New York, agreed: "There's an intimacy that happens when you get a whole bunch of people together... There was a moment in today's story where I thought I might cry. There's an emotion brought to the surface when you're reading aloud because it's being performed."

Another gentleman who visits such sessions regularly said he had come because "the idea of reading is hard work to me. I'm dyslexic, so I prefer to listen to radio plays and things like that. I was completely sucked in today. It was really engaging."