All of which prompts a question: Is my dream of a collaborative reading experience merely that, a dream? On the many occasions when I tried to set up a shared Subtext or Readmill reading with a friend, we always ran into endless snags, from an inability to settle on a book we both found appetizing to scheduling and pacing incompatibilities like the ones I had with Liz. Apparently, and despite the ongoing popularity of book groups, we weren’t alone in being flummoxed by the logistics of reading the same book together. After all, if there were a robust demand for a complexly shared reading app, wouldn’t Subtext and Readmill have found more users?

Is reading antisocial?