going deeper into reading at Summer Read - Fiona Capp on surfing

As I reviewed Musk & Byrne a while back elsewhere, I did not comment on Fiona Capp's post on reluctant blogging on the State Library's Summer Read blog, but I am going to quote her here on writing and writers' festivals because I think she has written something rather fine about the matter.

I have been nattering there to Nam Le, who has written at length about  blogging and festivals, but Fiona's come up with a physically evocative simile that begs to be shared more widely. (Also there's a commenter on this post who has a ripper suggestion for festival promotions, too.)

I love writing because it’s a solitary activity and because I don’t have to be there when other people read my books. I love surfing for similar reasons. You can be sitting out in the water with a bunch of other surfers, everyone quietly waiting for a set, and you can enjoy the company of your fellow surfers without having to say a thing to them. Everybody knows why they’re there. Everybody knows why they love it. Occasionally, I do fall into conversation with other surfers. Once, a surfer told me about the death of his daughter. But most of the time, I’m happy to remain silent. To treat the whole experience as a form of meditation.
The thing that puzzles me about Writers’ Festivals and similar events is that writing and reading, like surfing, are silent activities in which one loses oneself, and yet these festivals are all about performing and talking. What I would love to see is a Readers’ Festival where everyone gathers – if they want company – at a particular venue and sits quietly reading, and occasionally talking to people around them about the books they are reading.

As in the work of Robert Gray where simile is deliberately favoured above metaphor, we are left to consider for ourselves deeper questions posed by this perfect picture - are readers, then, surfers on an ocean of writing, waiting for a wave?
And with regard to  Fiona's Readers' Festival, I can't help wondering if that's what we do when we talk about books online. Is it?