Rural areas play a crucial role in promoting reading, and farmers' reading clubs serve as a significant force in driving rural reading initiatives. Examining the mechanisms of farmers' reading clubs for advancing rural reading is beneficial for the sustained progress of such efforts. Weizhuang village—a village near the Yellow River—is a typical case of how farmers' reading clubs can advance rural reading promotion. Relying on the Weizhuang Village Farmers' Reading Club, the village has achieved a remarkable transformation from having a long-dormant village library to becoming one of Zhengzhou's top ten bookish villages. On the basis of the three-dimensional analytical framework of institutions, rituals and emotions, this case study explores the mechanisms and value of farmers' reading clubs in promoting rural reading. The study revealed that farmers' reading clubs promote rural reading and achieve long-term operation through the three-dimensional mechanism of institutions, rituals and emotions. (1) In the design of institutions, farmers' reading clubs guide farmers to adopt widely recognized norms through practice, thereby encouraging voluntary participation in reading activities, which helps rural reading promotion initiatives gain support from the target audience. (2) Through the ritual process, farmers' reading clubs imbue reading activities with a sense of sacredness and achieve collective effervescence, which is conducive to enhancing the practical effectiveness of rural reading promotion. (3) By fostering long-term emotional connections among participants through reading, farmers' reading clubs gradually cultivate a group of highly motivated activists, providing intrinsic motivation for rural reading promotion. However, in practice, the constraints and their impact on the role of farmers' reading clubs in promoting rural reading cannot be overlooked: (1) There is tension between the guiding nature of the reading club's design of institutions and the 'flexibility' of actions taken by potential and actual participants. (2) Environmental changes can not only alter the ritual process of participants' engagement in reading but also affect the outcomes of these rituals and even lead to participant attrition. (3) Differences in participants' enthusiasm inevitably result in emotional energy stratification during interactions, ultimately affecting the sustainability of rural reading promotion driven by farmers' reading clubs. The practical value of farmers' reading clubs in promoting rural reading includes implementing rural reading promotion-related systems, integrating rural reading promotion resources and enhancing farmers' communication, interaction and collective identity. Consequently, there is potential to enhance the operational mechanisms of farmers' reading clubs by establishing communication platforms between farmers and system providers at various levels, organizing unique village-based reading ceremonies, and reinforcing recognition and material incentives for active members within organizations such as farmers' reading clubs. These measures ensure the continuous advancement of rural reading promotion.