Join a book club but watch your words

"Party time is over!" a girlfriend wailed down the telephone. "Even if people can afford to throw them, they don't." Yet we still need to see friends who gladden our hearts; we want to spend an evening not obsessing about Armageddon.

At first glance, joining a book club would seem to be the perfect such recession activity. When I for one am thinking about the nutritional qualities of earthworms, for the price of a paperback I can spend an evening in good company, eating home-cooked food, discussing something of mutual interest. Yet book clubs are not as simple as they might first appear.

The reports of one friend in an all-female club make it sound like Prime Minister's Question Time with a dash of the Inquisition for added spice. Each month, they take it in turn to choose a book - dense, troubling Ulysses-is-for-pussies reads. Then one of them hosts supper, where very quickly they start flexing their intellectual muscles.

Into this battle zone they invite one hapless guest. These are meant to be mere bystanders to the fray, but last month something happened that brought all their rivalries to a screeching halt, uniting them in a sorority that would scare a Spartan: the guest voiced her thoughts on the book.

Not only that, but this woman, this parvenue, this reader, had such a good time she emailed them all the next day offering her house as the next venue for club supper. The air became an Alaskan blizzard of emails, texts and telephone calls. Who was going to tell her that not only were they not going to her accept her hospitality, not going to eat her food, but she wasn't even a member? Sticks and stones can break our bones but words can be hurled across the room between hardback covers.

The club I have joined is a mixed group. In order to avoid evenings where we leave shattered after trying to outclass each other in the game of more-insight-than-thou, we stick to things like Tintin in Tibet. When one of the men tried to quit I put him right, telling him that our club was not unlike a roach motel: you can check in, but you can never check out. He was needed as man ballast.

Book clubs are really just a good excuse to spend time in happy argument. Tread carefully when you join one, though: never forget there are two meanings to the word club.