Hungry for literature? The full flavor of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society comes through over bangers and mash. Water for Elephants calls for hot dogs, popcorn and candied apples. For Getting Mother's Body, you need ribs and pineapple pudding. And no book group should attempt Scaramouche without an array of mixed fowl pies and a hostess in 18th century costume.

Book groups all over South Florida feed their love of literature and themselves by pairing the menu to the book.

``It's fun,'' says Elizabeth du Fresne from beneath her towering Marie Antoinette wig. ``And here's the truth -- we sit around and talk at the dinner table more than we do with the book discussion.''

Ann McMaster's book group doesn't involve dress-up, but the eight members do it up just as big when it comes to cooking a meal to match the read.

``The food adds another dimension to the discussion. In fact, we often discuss the food more than the book.'' says McMaster, a part-time writer and full-time mom in Pinecrest. ``We take turns picking the book, and when it's your pick you host the event at your house.''

This month it's The Help, Kathryn Stockett's novel about black maids in 1960s Mississippi.

``We've never done Southern food. Already on the menu is pulled pork, coleslaw, greens'' and the Alabama native's own contribution -- Jell-O salad.

Miami talent agent Peggi McKinley belongs to not one but two foodie book groups. With the Ivory Coast memoir The House on Sugar Beach, ``We dined on sweet potato pone and callaloo, and sipped homemade ginger lemonade. The Elegance of the Hedgehog brought us a divine culinary combination of Japanese and French,'' McKinley reports.

Annette Breedlove-Little, a Miami letter carrier, ``was looking for a group to share the books I read,'' so in 1997 she gathered friends to talk about African-American authors over potluck.

``I threw out the suggestion we make the food in the book -- we took it from there,'' says Breedlove-Little, whose Sistah Girl Reading Club now has chapters in Jacksonville, Atlanta and Plano, Texas, and is featured in The Book Club Cookbook (Tarcher, $15.95).

Not all books readily lend themselves to menus. What do you serve for The Psychopath Next Door, for example, arsenic? And sometimes, as with du Fresne's group, there's been a spate of Middle Eastern reads ``and too much hummus.''

McMaster's group nixed Irish food for Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture in favor of barbecue, complete with vodka-spiked watermelon.

When it comes to the books, groups sometimes bite off more than they care to chew.

``We tend to pick some big downers,'' says du Fresne, including A Thousand Splendid Suns (Afghan women endure misery), Out Stealing Horses (a Norwegian widower mourns) and The Theory of Clouds (um, cloud theory).

``Heavy, heavy,'' echoes Amy de la Cruz-Munoz of Coral Gables, whose South Florida Preschool PTA Reading Club sank its teeth into Middlesex (transgenderism) and Skeletons at the Feast (Nazis).

Ruth Reichl's delicious memoir Garlic and Sapphires made for a welcome change of pace last month, complete with ``the hit of the evening,'' Reichl's savory pumpkin fondue. ``It had a golden sheen -- burnished almost,'' says de la Cruz-Munoz, who hosted and cooked.

The get-togethers provide emotional nourishment, too, she adds.

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