The latest GoodReads newsletter is staring balefully out at me from my inbox, bolded and unread. Below it is an invite from a semi-friend to join them on LibraryThing. My Google Reader is stuffed with feeds from litblogs, and I've just finished synching my iPod with the latest Podularity podcast. But at the end of the day I'll log off, pick up the dog-eared novel that was lent to me by an old, Facebook-phobic friend, put my phone on silent, shut my door, and read. Just as I always have.

Online book clubs such as GoodReads promise to "connect people through reading" and of course that's what social networks do: connect us, be it through a shared passion for reading, ponies, or the pre-1989 oeuvre of ELO. But unlike other activities where people collaborate online in real time – gaming, writing, filmmaking, designing, throwing virtual sheep – it's pretty difficult (and unsatisfactory) for a community to "share" the act of reading, unless you're Tweeting every time you turn a page, or lifestreaming a video of yourself curled in your chair.

Even if the novel in your hand comes in the smooth shell of a Kindle 2, the actual act of reading whole books tends towards the private and offline. During one tedious temping job I did consume Project Gutenberg's Daniel Deronda at my desktop in a day, but the result was anaesthesia rather than enjoyment. Last week, David Barnett wrote about the Guinness World Records Gamers Edition, which cyber-pimps the printed text to reassure youngsters weaned on the web that reading is as interactive and sociable as their favourite pursuit. The design looks, of course, ridiculous. Books create their own communities, and readers are invited to participate purely through their singular minds.

Social media have undeniably changed the way many of us talk about books, and encouraged us to do it more. Whereas in the physical world there may be only certain contexts in which you'd dive into a deconstruction of Dostoevsky's metaphors, the virtual world provides round-the-clock opportunity to indulge your literary mores. Personally, I have found this makes me form opinions about what I read more quickly and strongly, in the knowledge that I will be able to share them instantly, and have to defend them rigorously, online. This is both good – in the sharpening of my critical faculties and confidence in my beliefs – and bad, as I can find myself jumping to premature, self-consciously entertaining or harsh conclusions for the sake of a scrap or a soundbite.

Social media have also changed the way many of us choose books; blogs, forums and networks can be excellent places to discover old and long-forgotten, or new and little-publicised works; Mark Sarvas's The Elegant Variation and Dan Wickett's Emerging Writers Network are two of the best. But even acknowledging these shifts, I tend to cling on to more traditional behaviours with books than I do with other media such as music or film. Online, I still rely heavily on reviews from paid professionals I respect - essentially old-fashioned, top-down outlets wrapped in pixels and podcasts. And I still seek the majority of my literary recommendations and debates offline. Maybe it is because literary taste is such an unpredictable and idiosyncratic beast that the "you liked that so you'll like this" principle rarely works. Maybe it is because my feelings about books are better articulated through the amorphous, halting mutations of physical conversation than the bald clarity of written words.

And when it comes to reading itself, I remain quietly relieved that it provides a fragile refuge where I can do something I don't have to "share". I don't have to mash up the themes to create something new or re-tweet a great passage. There is real pleasure in consuming a finished product – self-contained and offered by an author unafraid to present themselves as a single authority, sans invitation to comment on the back pages or play with the novel's open API. Don't get me wrong. I love social media, I work in social media, and I think that its chaotic, democratic, irreverent connectivity and creativity is the great evolution of our times. But books are wonderful because, in some way, they will always belong to each one of us, alone.