Last night I went to a meeting of a book club that focuses on post-apocalyptic plots. This group jumped out at me not so much for the genre itself, which I think is fine but not one of which I feel driven to make an exhaustive survey, but because in my experience the book clubs with a very focused remit tend to be much more engaging. They read a book every two weeks and meet on off-weeks to play board games, so I will never reach the status of a regular. But like the Women's Institute, they struck me as a group of people who could give extremely granular and knowledgeable answers to specific topics which can be very helpful for a newcomer.

We read The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway. It was fun but extremely dense and shaggy, and the weeks since I'd read it had rubbed away memory of the many, many plot particulars, so I didn't have too much to say about it. It was a lively conversation nonetheless, since about half the group hated it so much they hadn't finished it. During the scheduled bar break (I have gone to a lot of book clubs, and none in America have had this feature), I gave my 90-second story about why I'm here. I said I was glad I didn't have to pick a football allegience. Someone leaned forward and said "Actually this is not really a crowd where you're going to have that issue." At the end, everyone rated the book out of ten. Two different people were logging the scores on spreadsheets, and there was a brief sidebar as they conferred over their differing means and medians. All in all, aside from the bar break, the evening had no major deviations from what I would expect from its Boston equivalent.