Meet the Readers Turning Santa Monica Sidewalks Into a Book Club
SANTA MONICA - Generation Z has gained a reputation as the online generation seeking offline connection. Young entrepreneurs Samantha Dockser and Morgan Messing are using social media to bring people outside through their walking book clubs. Preoccupied LA is the duo's hub for weekly book event roundups and their signature monthly book clubs on Instagram and Substack. Since launching in 2024, the platform has gained thousands of followers and expanded to include 12 book club chapters across the U.S. and Canada. Dockser and Messing met shortly before forming Preoccupied. Messing's author-focused social media company Logue Social, of which Dockser is now a partner, hosted an event and invited Dockser, who has her own social media following as a book influencer. The two hit it off and became friends, bonding over the fact that there appeared to be no centralized resource for finding book events. "There are so many book events," said Dockser, "and we were just feeling frustrated that we couldn't Google a place that would list all of them for a week." Preoccupied was their solution. As their community grew, the pair realized that they had created a group of people who might be interested in an event of
