My friend Elizabeth asks me about the book recommendations:

I recently read Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces. It's not for the faint of heart: it deals with the Holocaust, and is concept-rich rather than plot heavy. But there are some truly lovely pieces of writing, well worth looking for depth. I also read The Freedom Writers' Diary, which has apparently been made into a movie with Hilary Swank. I liked it, although some of it was very familiar (I work in education, after all). I also liked some of the non-fiction I read over the holidays; I had previously read Blink and Tipping Point, and enjoyed them; then read Freakonomics (easy reading, interesting conceptually). I am currently reading Francine Prose's Reading Like A Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want To Write Them. I'm enjoying it; I also enjoyed, in this genre, Alberto Manguel's works on writing and painting, and back in the day, May Sarton's journal. I also tend to read, slowly, the Massey lectures; last year was Margaret Somerville, an ethicist from Montreal, and I dip into her every so often to make my way through the transcript of the lectures. Better Living by Mark Kingwell is a good read; a better one, in my opinion, is John Fitzgerald Medina's Faith, Physics, and Psychology.

In fiction from the past, I like Jane Hamilton, and I like Gail Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees. I just taught David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars, and liked it a lot, and I've long been a Kingsolver fan, both for her essays and her novels, particularly The Poisonwood Bible. I am with the legions of people who count One Hundred Years of Solitude as incandescent. Like the rest of North America, I have read The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, and yes, they deserve every good review. I think people should read Les Miserables, but unabridged, for redemption. A favourite is the white bone by Barbara Gowdy, and another one that is fun is Our Lady of the Lost and Found, by Diane Schomperlein. I'm not sure I'm spelling her name right. I have just ordered Atonement and A Complicated Kindness, one because I saw the movie and liked it, and the book is meant to be better, and the other because I have already read it and liked it, but don't have a personal copy. Anything by Margaret Laurence. I loved Sandra Birdsell's Agassiz Stories. If you like short stories, Alice Munro.

Poems: oh, oh, oh. You must read Tim Lilburn, especially Kill-Site. Also, anything by Lorna Crozier. Miklos Radnoti. Anna Akhmatova. I join the legions of people who liked Gary Snyder, but he doesn't send me the way Crozier does. Margaret Avison. I like Pamela Porter's work. I like Don McKay's work.

You see, some of the authors I am recommending are Canadian, and thus not necessarily read beyond our borders. Elizabeth, you are an American so you may not get to hear of some of these books otherwise, and I know that you are a deep and intelligent reader. So I am writing you this open letter, with my thanks for the question. Right now, with everything else I am reading including This is Your Brain on Music and Light at the Edge of the World and The Omnivore's Dilemma...I am reading D. H. Lawrence's poems.

Ask me tomorrow and I'll have a whole other list. Plus I have a wish list four pages long at Amazon.ca. So many books, so little time! I'm actually very glad that I read fast, but some things you have to read slowly...like chocolate, savoring, tasting, remembering.

And then, of course, Baha'u'llah gives us The Seven Valleys to dream on.