This week I read a book over the phone with a stranger, and it was shockingly not awkward. Now, I have some experience reading aloud, as my wife and I read to each other every night. But you’ll pick it up quickly, if you try Audrey, a service that matches pairs of readers and gives them chapters of a book, specially formatted to read over the phone 10 minutes at a time.

During my first year at uni, my friend started a book club. We picked Ulysses. We met up once and I've still never read Ulysses. Book clubs are hard! They're so hard that blogs list things to talk about when no one in the book club read the book. ("Read reviews of the book out loud and talk about those.") If your book club is really just an excuse to hang out, that's fine! But if you actually want to read and discuss some literature, try a short story club.