It's almost impossible to read A Moveable Feastwithout quoting and considering its famous epigraph: "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." It's as if Paris is in all of our lives and it doesn't matter when or if you ever made a real trip to the Select or Miss Stein's apartment.  We've seen it all.

Further evidence of Hemingway and Paris nostalgia most certainly includes the movie almost completely based on its charms (Woody Allen's delicious Midnight in Paris) and the current best seller that tells the story of Hadley Richardson, the first Mrs. Hemingway (The Paris Wifeby Paula McClain).  Each must be discussed in the orbit of the other, with the club assigning heirarchies of excellence.  The highest circles might include best adaptation to the medium or best cover of A Moveable Feastin its many library editions. Did Hadley have much of a choice? Reread the original feast with its eliptical portrait of a marriage and a far more definitive look at an author's spare writing style and intense focus on making it for further evidence.

Have you noticed that your friends are obsessed with their Kindle's My Clippings programs and are spending a lot of quality time reading aloud from their iPad's Kindle app Popular Highlights, My Notes and Marks?  Appreciate!

Reading aloud from the book, whether it's on a digital reader or a hardcover library book focuses the club and keeps the the spotlight on the most diligent.  And there is something more here, something very basic about the act of reading and sharing: highlighting in any format makes us much more suave and consistent communicators, it helps the group reach the essence of the author's intents and most of all, highlights, popular passages, my notes, marks and clippings helps us become better readers.

"There was a generous spirit about nature, he thought.  The sun gave its heat and light for free," according to the title character in Major Pettigrew's Last Stand.  (We really couldn't live without page numbers on the Kindle iPad app.) A far better passage: "It surprised him that his grief was sharper than in the past few days," reads a Popular Passage.  "He had not forgotten that grief does not decline in a straight line or along a slow curve like a graph in a child's math book.  Instead, it was almost as if his body contained a big pile of garden rubbish full both of heavy lumps of dirt and of sharp thorny brush that would stab him when he least expected it."

The first passage is whimsical and something you would mark just in passing. The second is deeper, character-driven, literary and about life itself.  It's a passage worthy of the group.

And here's another note: With the Kipling-centric book club of two consisting of the Major and Mrs. Ali and the prominence of The Jungle Book in the new sensation, The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht, a Rudyard Kipling revival might be upon us. 

By now you have chosen from among the vast array of digital bon bons this season.  Or you soon will cross over to the modern side of reading ebooks.  iPads are starting to make inroads at book clubs as Kindles and other ereaders have done before them. A few things to keep in mind:

• Learning to read an ebook is not nothing.  After all, we have be reading a certain way -- on the printed page -- for our whole lives.  Although it might be frustrating at first, devote part of each day to learn what digital books have to offer.
• You don't have to know everything at first.  And some features will not interest you.  Find a few and really learn them. 
• Highlighting passages is a key skill.  Color-coding optional.
• Share your hard-won knowledge with your book club and make sure your friends are updating their apps. 
• Everything changes, almost daily.  Manage the chaos.

If you are sticking with printed books, as all of us are in some form or other, enjoy the restful oasis that a printed page can offer.

Happy reading and happy new year. 

Cathleen Schine's funny, breezy but emotionally resonant riff on Sense and Sensibility brings the sisters and their mother to Westport, Connecticut where romance, failed and the possible, ensues.  The Three Weissmanns of Westport works on many levels: it's a social satire of the age of divorce as well as a witty, gently searing look at growing older with all of its diminished possibilities. Accompanying the large dollop of denial, there is hope and wisdom.

Annie, the sober library director sister, and Miranda, the former literary agent agent whose company is facing bankruptcy after she believed one too many memoirists, join their mother Betty who is facing the end of her 48-year marriage in a small beach-side cottage.  All have seen better days and the three alternately enjoy and are mortified by their exile.  There is much to analyze here and of course the witty novel offers the opportunity to reread Sense and Sensibility.  As a plot device, witness the stunning work of two other sisters, Amber and Crystal ("They had taught her a delightful game involving Ping-Pong balls and plastic cups of beer," reported one wealthy patron) within the family drama. Savor the wit of Schine and Austen, and don't omit discussion of the hilarious side-trip to Palm Springs.

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