Between the Sheets

So if reading — in this sense of pleasurable invasion — is a sexual experience, then the book club is the equivalent of a locker room. It’s the place where we gather to swap and compare notes after the fact, clumsily recounting the deed in a way that can’t help but undermine and cheapen the very experience we’ve gathered to celebrate. Sure, it can be a fun way to burn off the occasional weeknight, but no one’s going to mistake it for the act itself. (Not to mention the feeble, thrice-removed thrill of reading about people talking about reading, as per the Globe’s Clubland.) And, as we all learn eventually, certain experiences are better when you don’t go blabbing about them afterward. Was it good for you? Then that should be more than enough.