There comes a point in every friendship ecosystem when someone suggests starting a book group. It’s a beautiful moment, the platonic modern equivalent of the 1950s “shall we go steady?” It means you want to see one another at least every six weeks, preferably on a fixed day in the calendar, so that when someone tries to pinch that day for another, less interesting thing, you can in perpetuity reply: “I can’t, I have book group.” Since nobody ever disbands a book group, it is adult‑speak for “friends for ever”, which, if you stare at it hard enough, is almost tearjerking.
So, anyway, this poignant moment arrived with my newish friends R and S, then immediately hit the road hump that none of us wanted to read a book. Nothing against books, guys, it’s just I am generally reading something weird that I wouldn’t want to impose on you. S suggested a poem group; R nixed that. I said maybe we could read Poems on the Underground while we were on the underground on our way to the poem group. That was nixed, too.
