Have you read?

I am old enough, just about, to remember the days when, if you began a sentence with 'Have you read' (Or indeed 'Have you heard' or 'Have you seen') the answer would be positive more often than not. There was a smaller pool of popular culture in which we all fished.

By the 1990s it seemed that you could go round the dinner table and no two people had over-lapping taste to discuss.

There are exceptions. One of my sons sees one or two new films a week so if I have seen something I know I can talk about it with him. Others know that I will have an opinion on an alarming selection of contemporary music apart from squeaky warbly bing bong, or opera as I think it is known colloquially.

So what a joy it was today to find a clergy colleague with whom I am reading, listing his authors read for pleasure and finding some overlap. Philip Roth, Jonathan Raban, Douglas Coupland; we both love them. Today we got to grips with Tom Wright's Virtue Reborn - excellent hour. More often than not, I love my job.