Reading is one of the loneliest activities and also one of the most social. You're alone with the book, alone with your responses to it, alone in the particular configuration of experience and knowledge that you bring to the reading. And then you talk to someone about it and the loneliness resolves into a particular kind of intimacy.

The intimacy of shared reading is different from other kinds of intimacy. You've both been in the same place — the world of the book — independently, and the comparison of what you found there tells you things about both of you that direct conversation might not reveal.

I've had some of the most honest conversations of my life about books with people I didn't know well. The book is a third party in the conversation, and its presence makes it easier to say things that are difficult to say directly.