This article examines the role of conversation in aristocratic reading culture in late eighteenth-century Sweden. Taking Queen Sophia Magdalena (1743-1813) as example, the study examines the criticism raised by other members of the royal family against her supposed disinterest in literature. By contextualizing what "reading" meant at the Swedish royal court, and by investigating the catalogue of Sophie Magdalena's private library, I argue that being judged as "well-read" and "cultivated" was not necessarily as much connected to the time spent reading or the number of volumes owned, as the capacity to converse about literature in a way deemed proper.