Let us suppose that you are an young English woman who enjoys reading novels. You're bored by stupid novels that assume a stupid reader, but you really like good, novels, both classic and contemporary, which have strong interesting characters. You have a busy life with work, a husband, and a house to look after. You also have friends, but unfortunately only one of your close friends loves reading; you have other reading friends but they have moved to other towns. Because you read exciting absorbing novels you would renjoy talking about them in detail to other people, but apart from this one friend, you don't know any other people who share your enthusiasm for reading. So what do you do?
There are three basic answers: (1) do nothing - but spend your free time feeling vaguely dissatisfied; (2) go to your local library and find out if there are any reading groups in your district; (3) start your own reading group. The second plan does not help, so you decide on (3). You ask your reading friend to help. Each of you searches for other people with a similar wish by asking friends and friends of friends, mothers of children's friends, colleagues at work, and so on, until you have found about five or six people with similar interests. These six people agree to meet once a month at the home of one of the group. They agree to choose a book which they will all read during the month. At the meeting they will discuss the book - and decide which book they are going to read the following month.
Simply 'getting together' is not enough. You have to find enough people for a group (five is probably a minimum for a successful group) and jointly you have to make decisions. Will we always meet at the same house because it is convenient for everyone, or will we change the place of meeting each month so that all members have a chance to be host? Do we take it in turns to choose a novel for our next meeting, or do we jointly draw up a list and then vote on the book we want to read next? (The first scheme seems fairest, the second scheme avoids forcing everyone to read a book that only one person likes.) How do we get hold of books? When we arrive at the meeting, will there be a leader to start the discussion or will we somehow start spontaneously. What happens if one person talks too much? What happens if we wander too far from the subject - is any one of us going to be 'in charge' and pull us back? Should we concentrate on contemporary novels - or classics - or 'difficult' novels? Do we go to the local library and register that we are a 'Reading Group', so that anyone who wants to talk about books can contact us. In this case one of us must be the secretary-contact. Who will that be?
Not all these questions will arise at once. Once you have formed a group, you will have to sort out your problems as you go along, and after a few months you may change your minds about what works best. Most probably, if the group stays together for a few months you will be looking for more members - perhaps as many as fifteen, to ensure that each month 7 or 8 people turn up. So a simple scheme to meet a few other readers can easily develop into a group with an organisation, contacts and even registration. But we should be clear - registration does not mean Officialdom or Bureaucracy. It is simply a way of letting other readers know that there is a reading group in the district.
In Britain there are at least sixty thousand 'reading groups', all of them started by enthusiasts who think, 'Why not?' and begin to contact other people in order to read and then discuss books together. When hundreds of thousands of people are involved, businesses try to make money out of the activity. For example publishers will print little leaflets - 'suitable for your book club' - to put inside novels they are eager to sell quickly; TV programmes on 'Good Reading' appear with celebrities discussing their favourite novel; the local library staff may decide to start their own book club in the library. All of that is fine but none of it is essential to the activity. The essential act is of people freely getting together to share an interest; the group which is formed is neither totally informal (such as friends chatting) nor totally formal (organised, registered and paid for by some official administration). Before we find words to describe this 'freely getting together to do something which is neither private nor public' let us look at some more examples.
One way of dealing with personal problems is to share them with others in a similar situation. For example, people who are 'single parents', whether through divorce, the death of their husband or wife, or because they have never had a regular partner, can have difficult and often lonely lives. They are tied to their children, and cannot easily meet people who will sympathise with their problems. So what do they do? They get together and organise meetings for themselves. They may use a house, or rent a room in a community centre or some other place where it is possible to sit, talk, arrange for speakers to come, plan joint trips with their children, get comfort, advice, and lift their depression simply by meeting other people. For this they have to take responsibility, which is both time-consuming and uplifting.
In this case, the responsibility of the individual member is not 'I must read this month's book" but 'I must arrange to find and pay a baby-sitter for my children.' That requires effort and money. The responsibility of the group as a group is to choose two or three people to take on certain jobs: first, planning what happens at meetings, secondly, collecting money for the rent, the refreshments and other expenses, thirdly, taking notes of what is going on, listing members and informing members of events. Almost inevitably, once individuals have offered to do these jobs, a committee is formed. Sometimes members decide to have a membership fee or subscription. An organisation which has subscriptions and a treasurer will normally also hold one meeting a year when all members of the committee resign so that members can choose to vote for new (or the same old) officers to do this work for the following year. This called the Annual General Meeting or AGM.
Perhaps you are saying, 'Ah, this is getting official!' Yes and no. The law insists that if an organisation collects money, there must be some person responsible for the money and some way of safeguarding that he (or she) does not run off with the money box! (Reading Groups are often free to members; they pay no rent and perhaps they take it in turns to provide refreshments. In such cases no treasurer is required.)
Here is another case. You are a parent with a child who has been born with a heart defect. Your baby will require many visits to the hospital, and as he grows up he may find that he cannot lead a life like other boys of his age. You and your partner (husband or wife) are very anxious about you baby's future. So what do you do? You enquire at the hospital about Associations for the Parents of Children with Heart Problems. Yes, there are national organisations which can give you advice and information. But you are thinking of your baby - and yourselves - in this particular situation in this particular town or village. You need to talk to other people. Perhaps there is such a group in your neighbourhood. The local children's clinic or the library should be able to tell you. If not, you start a group yourself. You put up notices in the clinic; you try to get a journalist to write a brief article - asking readers to contact you -in the local paper; you ask local doctors and friends of friends. In three or four weeks you will have found a small group of people and you arrange to meet each other. As other parents face similar problems, they will be put in touch with you.