In the wake of J.D. Salinger's passing and instant re-assessments of his literary career, you may be making plans with the club as we speak to re-read The Catcher in the Rye or Nine Stories.  Good luck getting copies of Nine Stories on Amazon or The Catcher in the Rye at the library.  This is the moment to parade around your dog-eared copies from high school and college, not only for their authenticity and memorial quality, but to insure your discussion about the eclipse of real and literary time gets off to a rousing start.

In the meantime, do not fail to check in with The New Yorker which is offering most of the nine stories including Salinger's first, "Slight Rebellion Off Madison."  Published in the Dec. 21, 1946 issue, the story introduces Holden Caulfield in a kind of literary sketch for what was to become The Catcher in the Rye.  The story features Holden's known world: New York City in the 1940s, movies, literature, teen love and preoccupations, phonies, drinking and seering dialogue for its day. Does it hold up? Please discuss. (In strolling obsessively through The New Yorker archives you will also note that this issue contains the famous full-page Charles Addams cartoon of the family dumping a cauldron on those eternally clueless carollers who just happened into the neighborhood.  Will they never learn?)

As we all know by now, J.D. Salinger got his wish for a secluded, hermit-like life in Cornish, New Hampshire.  By the time he appeared on the cover of the Sept. 15, 1961 issue of Time magazine, his publishing life would be over in a few years.  Time wrote at the time, "His face, after six years of struggle, shows the pain of an artistic battle whose outcome still cannot be seen."  We know the rest.  What we don't know is whether there will be a huge library of Glass Family volumes unearthed and published.  We can only dream. 

To prepare for this possible and possibly mythical event, suggest to your club his last published story, "Hapworth 16, 1924."  It takes up much of the June 19, 1965 issue of The New Yorker and it is at least a novella.  Written as a letter from camp by the impossibly precocious 7-year-old past and future suicide Seymour Glass, it is like nothing else you have ever read.  Filled with Glass family preoccupations, what surprises today is how much literature matters to Seymour.  Don't miss his memorial to the Benet sisters.  Yes, they are here, too.

J.D. Salinger, Literary Recluse, Dies at 91: The New York Times

Postscript: J.D. Salinger: The New Yorker

Sonny: Time Magaine

As you head to the finish line of another successful book club year, have you taken the time to congratulate one another on your excellent reading lists, your improved spirit of friendship and cooperation and the fabulous new members of the club that you may have argued against but now consider your idea?

In your end of the year meeting, holiday party or all-hands-on finale dinner, a few additional thoughts:

Anticipate Will your club wait for the paperback of Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's Man Booker-prize winning novel about the Tudors or take the plunge this minute? This time around, Thomas Cromwell is the main character but Anne Boleyn has yet to meet her executioner in this volume. (Mantel is busy working on the next volume as we speak.)  Or will you use your coupons and share all formats, from your cool new ebook reader to lending that fat tome. 

Discuss  Did Oprah make the right decision?  Has she taught us all the ways of book clubs and can now run another empire without us?  Discuss with your group what worked and didn't work from the vast Oprah library.  And don't be afraid to choose a few that you've missed in honor of all that was.

Decorate  We've talked about this many times before.  Less is more, but attention to detail is always appreciated. If you're entertaining your book club at home this holiday season, choose one natural arrangement, one plate of cupcakes and one house drink and make it all add it up.  And can we lose the retro napkins featuring June Cleaver-alikes?  Unless they are really funny, of course.

Most times you know it when you see it: an instant classic.  Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize winning, interlinked short story collection is that rare, real thing.

No-nonsense retired teacher Olive Kitteridge is often center stage.  At other times, she is a most-welcomed minor character in these stories set mostly in the small town of Crosby, Maine.  Olive always has an opinion, acidly commenting on the action, which is often surprising.  Oh, and she has been known to save lives.  It is the randomness of life that catches Olive and like most of us, she is often in danger of being submerged.  But there are also instances of triumph --the people of Crosby are lucky to have her in their midst.

The stories are suspenseful as they unfold.  A trip to a hospital simply to use the bathroom becomes -- a hostage situation.  As the author observes about her superb creation, "She'd been through some things, but never mind.  She straightened her back.  Other people had been through things, too."

Don't neglect to discuss the enigmatic meaning of many of the story titles from "Tulips" to "A Different Road."   You will not be sorry.

Book clubs have poked their heads out the front door and have assured themselves that the weather just might be presentable enough to meet outdoors.  Just don't forget your reading lists as you head to your picnics:

Out this summer in paperback:

• Pride and Prejudice and Zombiesby Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. Don't neglect The Annotated Pride and Prejudice, a title we never stop reminding you about. Consider it a companion piece to the more Zombie mayhem
•  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, a book we love and believe it fully deserves its No. 1 best-selling status though we still hate the title.
•  The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery; and Unaccustomed Earthby Jhumpa Lahiri for some serious literary beach reading. 

For those who can't wait, we are reading in hardcover and downloading The Help by Kathryn Stockett, Shanghai Girls by Lisa See and Sag Harborby Colson Whitehead.  

If you have a Kindle or other e-book reader, you must bring it to your next club.  Not only can you analyze future choices based on the first chapter that you read aloud before anyone remembers to try to stop you, you may also complain that you have last year's model or i-phone app. The important thing is to name-check your reader at every opportunity.  Never forget to remind fellow book club members that you are in the forefront of all things happening. 

It is a simple tale, really, one of rags to riches.  A desperately poor man from The Darkness in India rises from nothing to becoming a dazzling rich entrepreneur.  How does Balram Halwai do it?  Murder and theft are among his crimes, but wit, charm and daring pluck should not be dismissed in this story of globalization and cunning from the son of a rickshaw-puller.

In true Nabokovian style, Aravind Adiga pleads his case in a letter to the Chinese premier who wants to visit Indian entrepreneurs. Balram has became a "person of national importance owing to an act of entrepreneurship."  These acts are summarized on a wanted poster, which Balram interprets. "You'd almost think, looking at the posters, that I was a terrorist too.  How annoying."

In between piloting the Honda City of his rich, kind but corrupt and weak master around Delhi, Balram muses: "You should have seen me that day -- what a performance of wails and kisses and tears!  You'd think I'd been born into a caste of performing actors." Direct, witty and with narrative charm Balram makes the case for himself and his deed.  Does he deserve your sympathy?  Does his self-justification and vivid descriptions of one world in the process of being built, and another destroyed, move you?  Ladies and gentleman of the jury, please discuss.