The Calvino Bay Book Club has been meeting for a few months now. It's been OK. The books you've been looking at have hopped around the literary spectrum from the 'classics' like Austen and Dickens, whatever new wunderkind book has got the critics excited, and that time someone wanted to talk about Harry Potter. Something for everyone, you reckon, and you get to meet people you wouldn't otherwise know.

But now, oh now, you're going to talk about The Book. That Book, the one you read when you were 18 that suddenly made the universe make sense to you. The Book that helped you work out who you were as a person. You want, no, you have a visceral need to make everyone else understand what The Book means to you.