One of the most compelling pieces of evidence to refute his conclusions has been the boom in Reading Circles, which not only encourage both new and existing readers to come together in a social context to discuss literature, they help to develop two important facets of the reading experience that are often curtailed when we read alone (which is, of course, most of the time);

Þ       the development of opinions about what we’re reading (beyond simple like and dislike);

Þ      and the development of a language to help us express those opinions.

The best Readers’ Groups don’t just encourage a judgemental approach to a book’s meaning, they foster an analytical one too. And then you’ve got to articulate those thoughts out loud. In front of other people. Which sharpens the mind wonderfully. After all, you don’t want to be considered ignorant.

I know I’m often clearer about what a book means to me if I’m discussing it with my wife Chris - I realize I know much more about it than I’ve consciously registered. So a personal recommendation (which informs many of our reading choices) needn’t simply be based on an overall assessment of whether you engaged with the book or not - you can say how it drew you in. Or, indeed, didn’t.

This is wonderfully healthy, and the most positive development that’s taken place in the world of reading for a long time. I’m particularly fond of reading circles because people will (hopefully) be less inclined to take notice of TV Arts Reviewers pompously parading their metropolitan prejudices; starved of the oxygen of an audience, maybe they’ll eventually just bugger off and leave us in peace. And my blood pressure will go down.

But TV is an immensely useful tool in the right hands, and the very antithesis of this culture smugness was Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club, which made a welcome return in Autumn 2003 by popular demand, and which, in its initial six-year run, managed to introduce more people to a love of literature than even Germaine Greer, Tony Parsons and Tom Paulin (OK, I’ll go easy on the sarcasm from now on). First transmitted in 1996, the US critics had a field day speculating what the diva of daytime TV would recommend to her ‘white trash’ audience. Mills & Boon? Or maybe something less taxing like the verses inside Hallmark greetings cards? You can just hear the scriptwriters on ‘Frasier’ picking this one up and running with it.

But then Oprah wrong-footed them, selecting books like Rohinton Mistry's "A Fine Balance" and Ann-Marie McDonald's ‘Fall on Your Knees,’ demanding titles that, to the surprise of many, began selling by the truckload. Jacquelyn Mitchard's ‘The Deep End of the Ocean’ was her first pick. The book was released with an initial print run of 100,000, but within a week of the book’s selection, 640,000 copies were on the shelves, propelling the title to No. 1 on the fiction bestseller lists of both the ‘Wall Street Journal’ and the ‘New York Times’. Another featured title, Anita Shreve’s ‘The Pilot’s Wife’ went on to sell a staggering 4 million copies.

As you might expect in certain snitty corners of the literary world, not everyone thought the Book Club was such a great idea. Some felt Winfrey held too much sway and were critical of the choices, which they characterised as routinely inclining towards the sentimental, and too heavily influenced by issues of race and women who overcome adversity. Some authors also preferred not to have their work discussed on a vehicle more commonly associated with gossip, dieting, sexual problems and soap operas. The most prominent of these was Jonathan Franzen, who made what were interpreted as disparaging remarks about the club's lack of sophistication when his novel ‘The Corrections’ was picked for inclusion. What he actually said concerned the phenomenon we’ve just been looking at; that the moment you’re popular, in certain quarters your meaning is perceived not to have greater resonance because it’s touched a wider audience, but, strangely, has been diluted by all the attention it’s getting.  Which as I hope I’ve already made clear is total bullshit.

Anyway, 46 selections later, the run came to and end in April 2002 with Toni Morrison's ‘Sula’. Other TV shows tried to plug the gap, including the ‘Today’ programme and ‘Good Morning America’. But none approached the impact of the original, which is yet another example of how  this artificial distinction between ‘literary’ and ‘popular’ fiction can be broken down when you don’t underestimate the willingness of your audience to embrace new and unfamiliar reading material. And, of course, celebrity endorsement can’t hurt either.

One of the secrets of the programme’s success was an intelligent collaboration involving the books’ publishers; selections were publicized some weeks in advance not only to allow viewers time to read them, but for the publishers to get their side of the act together. Those that did printed special editions, on whose endpage was included a set of ten questions about the meaning and the central themes of the story to kick start further thought and/or prompt discussion. By and large, the issues raised were skilfully pitched at a general audience and anchored in everyday reality, usually inviting readers to draw parallels between their own experiences and those of the book’s characters. The principle behind this simple idea was to ’socialize’ meaning, moving beyond conversational pleasantries and getting people into the habit of talking about literature without feeling selfconscious. And for once, here was a book venture not exclusively targetting a middle class audience; the edition of the programme that announced the Club’s return also featured “Bathing Suit Makeovers!’ and ‘What to Wear this Summer!”, so Oprah can’t be accused of straying too far from her roots.

One day, it would be nice to think that we’ll see groups of blokes down the pub analysing their favourite book with the same passion and knowledge that’s evident when they’re discussing football matches - but I’m not holding my breath. However, anything that improves the quality of the bush telegraph we mentioned earlier has got to be a good thing; it makes the process of selecting a book less haphazard. Without necessarily removing the joy of an accidental discovery, it can give a focus and direction to reading, making exploration easier, targetting favourite authors and genres as well as giving useful context and background which can make the act of reading less random and more satisfying. Even a ploy as simple as printing a list of other works by  the same author on any spare endpages may serve to keep curiosity levels up.

It also prevents a lot of dithering in bookshops as you get to know your way around the world of literature, and grow more comfortable and familiar with what you feel you need to take from it. Then you can share that new-found knowledge, whether with total strangers through a website like BookSleuth or within the familiar members of a Reading Group, or even with your other half when you’re reading in bed, and you’ll keep replenishing that literary gene pool both of meaning and of literature itself, a process which, as we’ve seen, is essential to its survival. Meaning has to be kept moving, by whatever means, or it will slowly wither on the vine. And this will be the subject of the next section in our little meditation.

But first, a quick hippy soapbox moment: in the UK, whenever a Government agency or a large corporation wants to close something down, they issue a shot across the public’s bows which says something crass like “Use It Or Lose It” (I remember this particular imperative was used when our local Post Office was threatened with closure. And guess what . . . it was shut down 3 months later, even though there were queues out the door most days).

It’s the same with literature. Fortunately, books have proved marvellously resilient to the onslaught from recent seismic developments in the leisure industry, and there’s every reason to be optimistic that this position of strength will continue into the foreseeable future. But that’s no reason to get complacent.

So love those books, for love gives animation and meaning  to meaning, and we all need to do our bit.  And don’t let your love be that which dares not speak its name. Be open and frank about it, particularly to children, and we’ll prove Samuel Johnson right about the influence we can exert as Common Readers. After all, one of the most usual opening gambits in a conversation is “Did you see such-and-such on TV last night?”. It can so easily be substituted occasionally for “Have you read . . . “ That way, you’ll promote the third factor in our examination of the life and times of meaning:

Longevity (end of hippy soapbox moment, by the way).

So what happens to a book now you and a load of other readers have clutched it to your collective bosom?

If sales are still steady, the publisher will place it on the backlist, where it’ll receive little by way of promotion, but will at least be available to the small but numerically and economically significant stream of readers who haven’t managed to catch up with it yet. The title will be dusted off and wheeled out from time to time as part of an ongoing reissue programme, or maybe to coincide with new material from the same author, or a significant anniversary. It may be chosen as a set-text for school exams. There may even be a film tie-in edition - whatever. But essentially, the publisher’s work has been done for the time being, and other new projects will be making demands on his attention. So it now has to stand on its own two feet, and if it don’t pay the bills, it’ll be quietly removed from the shelves.

This is a fascinating period in the life of a book’s circumstantial meaning which can make or break its reputation. What it has to achieve is not simply to be carried from reader to reader by the bush telegraph or the publisher’s sales strategies, or any of the vehicles we’ve been looking at; it’s now up for adoption into the Pantheon of Great Literature, and its journey there is dependent both on luck and merit. Once it acquires this Classic status, its meaning will be officially recognized as timeless, and its ongoing survival all but guaranteed.

I say officially, but there’s no ceremony that confers these laurels on a work of literature - it’s not like being inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame or getting an Oscar. Granted, awards such as the Man Booker Prize and, of course, the Nobel Prize for Literature aren’t going to harm its chances, but, as we’ve already noted, in the glorious tradition of the literary world, the giving of prizes (or making any kind of fuss) is so contentious it alienates as many people as it attracts (it’s that jealous lover thing again). Which brings us back to the opening pages of this book, where I noted that we have no objective criteria with which to evaluate literature. If there were, there would presumably be a satisfactory explanation for why the Nobel was given to Pearl S. Buck in 1938 on the strength of just five (now largely forgotten) novels. It’s the example everyone critical of awards seems to wheel out when discussing the iniquities within the system. Then they note that Graham Greene and Proust were famously overlooked, and, unlike in Hollywood, the poohbahs in Oslo don’t have a catch-all safety net Award for Lifetime Achievement to fall back on.