Though it recently aired on Masterpiece -- not Masterpiece Theatre anymore, did you not get the memo? -- you may have missed one of the most engaging literary adaptations in the DVR era. Luckily someone close to you has captured Cranford and a viewing party will be organized via email or the comments section of your next book club. Based on Elizabeth Gaskell's 1851 novel, Cranford is the rural town ruled by good spinsters and the people who love them.  Their ruling method of choice? Finely tuned custom,  manners and tsk-tsking that actually move the plot along briskly.  But it is a Victorian novel at heart -- Dickens himself mentored Gaskell and the novel was first serialized in his magazine, Household Words.  Highish spirits, tragedy, class conflict and a touch of melodrama ensue.

Starring all of our favorite dames (Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins) and dames in waiting (Imelda Staunton), Cranford depicts a nostalgic place not immune to shocking developments (the railroad approaches, women mourn publicly for the first time). It is a splendid recreation and as mythical as Pemberley, especially on HDTV.

For extra credit, the club may read the three Gaskell novels on which the show is based: Cranford, My Lady Ludlow and Mr. Harrison's Confessions.  I defy you not to roar. 

Sometimes we all agree.  Jhumpa Lahiri's latest short story collection, Unaccustomed Earth, is being read avidly by clubs everywhere.  Even by clubs who will never, under any circumstances, read a short story collection.  Exceptions have been made.

The stories center on the great Lahiri themes of the Indian diaspora, thwarted love, arranged marriages and the Bengali-American immigrant experience.  Everyone will have his or her own favorite.  Mine was the last trilogy "Hema and Kaushik."  The two characters have known each other since childhood and before death, graduate schools, thwarted love and other disasters have intervened.  What Lahiri accomplishes, which other mere mortal writers do not, is the all-important satisfying ending that is not by any standards a happy one.

Readers delight in Lahiri's use of the telling detail.   Her description of an evening outfit sent by a grandparent in Calcutta -- white pajamas with tapered legs, a turquoise kurta and a black velvet vest embroidered with plastic pearls -- concerns time and space as well as the fashion of the day.  The characters often find themselves between two countries while their children become increasingly American.  No nuance goes uncaptured.

Lahiri's earlier books were Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake.  We can now say that we have read the entire canon -- and this is not something we proclaim lightly.

You've talked about it endlessly and now it's time to plan your summer club trip. Gas prices may be climbing to unknown levels but you will be prepared with carpool or train schedules in hand.

A few approaches: 

Any club can travel thematically -- a famous author's house, a destination you've read about and simply have to explore, a lovely inn.  But have you ever channelled an author's true passions?  Have you gone deep sea fishing in the style of Ernest Hemingway?  Visited his cats in Key West?  You don't have to read any of his numerous fish tales unless you really want to.  Summer is the perfect time to revisit or try for the first time A Farewell to Arms or the author's classic story of Paris, The Sun Also Rises.

Plan a day trip, a minor hike or an outdoor club meeting of any sort.  Bring along some poetry and don't despair that you missed National Poetry Month (it's in April).  What has worked best in clubs?  Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitmanand Wallace Stevens -- or all of the above, in tandem.

After all of that poetry you will need a trip to the movies. We'll have to wait until December for Marley & Me, so consider a few big, summer movie options.  Sex and the City will be watched closely and parsed for plot, character development and why exactly did they have to make this movie.  But if you are spending precious planning time, why not channel your blockbuster side and organize a club outing to see The Dark Knight (opening July 18th), The X-Files: I Want to Believe (opening July 25th) or revisit Agent Scully via DVD or in her surprisingly effective turn as Lady Dedlock in Bleak House.  Summer reading of Dickens optional.

My Book Club Doctrine states: A book's ending may be sad, it may be happy.  It may be tragic or it may be hilarious.  It might even be ambiguous, and perhaps it should be for discussion purposes.  But a book's ending must always be satisfying.

In Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee's Booker Prize-winning novel set in post-Apartheid South Africa, 51-year-old professor David Lurie is in the middle of a crack-up. He descends from an obsessive relationship with a prostitute to an affair with a student, censure, firing and an isolated farm on the remote Eastern Cape with his daughter, Lucy. Two parallel literary universes involving Lord Byron, one in the classroom ("As we saw last week, notoriety and scandal affected not only Byron's life...") and a second, a grandiose "opera" involving the poet and his mistress, Contess Guiccioli becomes an improbable piece played on a child's banjo with, possibly, a role for dogs.

Through the fraught yet utterly realistic relationship with his grown daughter, David's destruction and eventual love for animals, (and a superb academic inquisition so beloved by book clubs everywhere), the Nobel laureate ends on a note of glimmery precision.

John Malkovich will be playing David Lurie in a film to be released later this year.

It is addictive, it is compact, it is your world.  But do you really want to be checking your BlackBerry, Treo, cell phone or laptop at book club?  Eye contact becomes a thing of the past, half-interested asides become your calling card and you are right on the verge of becoming a burden with your constant commentary along the lines of: "What was the topic?"

Emergencies are one thing -- even work work emergencies -- but addiction is quite another. 

And yet, you and your devices could prove to be very useful.  No one has to leave the room to look up information about the next book -- if you are the only one with a PDA, you become, in effect club secretary.  Is the new Sophie Kinsella (Remember Me?) as fabulous and wonderful as her past efforts, especially the perfect in every way The Undomesticated Goddess?

What is fact and what is fiction in books steeped in historical events such as Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (newly published in paperback), What is the What by Dave Eggers or Red Azalea by Anchee Min?  If you are sitting there checking your email you may as well provide instant service.  In fact, you may be called upon so often you might just leave the PDA in your bag or your pocket and keep your eyes on the club.