It's a Thursday night and outside the Chelsea Library the rain is pouring down. Inside, in a dark, book-lined room a group of strangers eye each other nervously over glasses of red wine. I'm one of them and, given my problems with speed dating, I'm starting to wonder if coming here was one of my better ideas. Maybe I should leave before taking even one sip.

The only thing preventing me is that this event is not an ordinary speed dating occasion, all beer and bells and braying chat-up lines. This is 'read dating' and after half a glass of wine my companions start to look less like terrifying predators and more like the sort of pleasant, slightly shy types that, well, you'd expect to meet in a library on a quiet Thursday night.

Read dating started, as such things inevitably seem to, in America where events have been hosted in New York libraries and college town bars. In this country Wormholes bookshop in York recently held a read dating event and now Speedater, one of the UK's biggest online dating agencies, has decided to hold three events in libraries across London.

So how does it work? First, instead of the traditional speed dating questions such as 'what do you do?', read daters are asked to write down their favourite book and display its title alongside their name tag. This is supposed to encourage some light chat about literature and then, assuming you have time, other interests.

Claire, Ruth and Sarah, three of the women attending the Chelsea event, find it a welcome relief from loud bars and cheesy chat-up lines more common at such events. 'I found it relaxing,' says Ruth. 'It was a more intimate event and there was less of the pressure to perform that you find in normal speed dating events.'

Yet there are still pressures. Arriving at the library I spend most of my time agonising over which book to pick. I can rarely decide what to read at night, let alone choose my favourite. Besides, it's impossible not to imagine that you will be judged on your choice. If I say Jilly Cooper (a favourite comfort read) will people think I'm shallow? Does name-checking Proust mark me as pretentious? In the end, noticing that everyone else has picked a book and is waiting expectantly, I choose Crime and Punishment, largely because it's the first title to come to mind.

After a general explanation of the rules by the Speedater representative, Josh - favourite book Donna Tartt's The Secret History - the event begins. In quick succession I meet Richard, who has picked Hyperion (whether he means the sci-fi novel by Dan Simmons or the Keats poem is never quite cleared up); Adam, who's never been speed dating before and thought this would be easier than going to a pub; and John, a slick and slightly smug barrister, who cheerfully admits he is looking for 'a shag'.

Just as it's all beginning to get a bit overwhelming, it's time for a quick break and some more wine. By the second half of the evening, possibly due to the alcohol, everything starts to blur. Mandeep, a nervy physicist, attempts to explain string theory to me; James loves Lampedusa's The Leopard and uses his three minutes to tell me he has nothing against socialists, albeit in a tone of voice that equates that last word to something akin to mass murderers.

At one point someone admits that this is all a bit more civilised than the typical dating event. The atmosphere is ever so slightly genteel, as though the very fact that we are in a library has provided a hallowed hush to the proceedings. Then it hits me. This doesn't actually feel like a speed dating event at all.

The becalmed atmosphere, the air of polite desperation overlaid with mild, alcohol-induced flirting, the eager girls and awkward young men - it's like an English department party in some small university town. I might have come expecting a scene from the more desperate moments of Bridget Jones but instead I've wandered into Lucky Jim

So will read dating catch on? Josh thinks so. 'It's different from the usual sort of events we do but it seems to work well,' he says. 'I think because the groups are smaller people tend to get on better, they're not constantly thinking "I hope the next one's a bit more interesting".'

And, as befits an event where literature is the main subject, read dating appears more friendly than the average speed dating event. Even my biggest worry was unfounded: no one cared which book everyone else picked - and my greatest admiration goes to the bloke who proudly chose Sidney Sheldon, on the grounds that he liked it even if it was trashy. And in doing so provided the key to why the evening worked: it's not what you read, it's how easily you discuss it that counts.