Is the set of people who can only enjoy, or even read, books in silence pretty large? There is certainly a threshold of noise where I lose reading comprehension, but it's quite loud.
Do other people need silence, like absolute silence, to read?
Before I worked for myself, I never worked in any office that remotely came near to silence. Most were roughly the equivalent of moderately loud cafes, at least.
But to get excited about a book you have to be immersed in it, and that requires reading it and really focusing on the subject matter.
If people are talking all the time, they're not reading books, and others aren't able to enjoy their books.
> ... not a coworking space for old curmudgeons.
Old curmudgeons aren't part of "everyone"?