Gilead is poetically introspective, an elderly man’s meditation on how fatherhood came to him late in life, and how he regrets that he won’t likely see his young son to adulthood.

This book was the 48th of a series of titles selected by writer Yann Martel to provide to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to encourage an appreciation of the arts and literature in particular in the PM, and to also help him with his stillness and thoughtfulness. Martel has regularly sent books from a wide range of literary traditions to Harper, and has devoted a Web site to the book list and his kind and considered covering letters with each volume. For more on Martel’s noble venture, go to http://www.whatisstephenharperreading.com.

This sweet, low-key tale offers some of the loveliest illustrations for a children’s book that I’ve ever seen. The pictures capture the rumpled intimacy of a young child at absorbed play with her faithful dog. Illustrator Penny Dale has particularly captured the patient expressions of little Rosie’s loving Airedale Mr. B very well.

This common sense book walks the walk and talks the talk. As it promotes clear, instructional, active voice writing on the Web, coupled with clean, logical page layout and navigation, the book itself admirably follows its own advice. Author Ginny Redish provides plenty of good examples and before and after case studies to illustrate and drive home her points.

Ironically, Redish offers instances where “letting go of the words” actually means employing a few more words to make particular subject matter abundantly clear. She illustrates repeatedly how complementary choices in page layout, colour, typefaces and more also contribute to the overall effect, and allow people to locate and absorb key information. “Letting go of the words” often means simply letting go of your own perspective and knowledge of a subject when you put it online, and trying to adopt the perspectives of your potential Web audience, which is often very different.

This short story is an intriguing puzzle, letting the reader sort out what is fact and what is the feverish fiction of the narrator’s ailing mind. This beautiful edition is complemented perfectly by Tony Urquhart’s colourful but slightly macabre mixed media illustrations.

Dickens is always a rich literary feast. That richness is not always to every reader’s taste, of course. However, for those readers willing to devote the time and attention, Dickens returns the investment on many levels. Great Expectations is just such a challenging but rewarding reading experience.

The story is sprawling and circuitous, with many seeming detours in plot and character that eventually all converge and resolve, as Dickens always satisfyingly does for the most part. The cast of characters is broad and lively, almost to a fault, but Dickens has an unerring way of taking figures that initially appear to be caricatures or cartoonish and evolving them into intriguing, fully dimensional human beings. The ending is ambiguous, tinged with remorse but possibly some hope, and haunting in all the best senses. (The Penguin edition includes in its endnotes and appendices the original ending devised by Dickens, with a much clearer resolution of Pip’s and Estella’s relationship – but the more ambiguous one with which the book was published actually makes the book that much more powerful and memorable.)

David Lynch’s quirky, laconic yet somehow articulate style is well suited to a practical, accessible approach to meditation and spirituality and how they feed creativity. The insights into his creative process are intriguing and elucidating, and they also provide inspiration for one’s own.

For his first novel, David Chariandy handles a surprisingly complex story in an assured and compelling fashion. In the story of a young man returning to his home in Scarborough (Toronto) to care for his Trinidadian mother as she struggles with early onset dementia, Chariandy skilfully blends past and present, choreographs multiple plotlines and assembles a believable cast of vivid, diverse, intriguing and sympathetic characters.

Chariandy intertwines the themes of remembering and forgetting in a way that is haunting and fascinating. The flashbacks to Trinidad prompt me to seek out more about this country. This book is an immensely satisfying read on many levels. I look forward to what David Chariandy will do next.

A review I read somewhere characterized “The Importance of Music to Girls” as a feminine “High Fidelity.” I think it’s much more emotionally unsettled, ambiguous and thorny than that, although it does share the same fundamental passion for music as an informing thread in one’s formative years. And yes, the mix tape as love letter and personal statement makes appearances here, too.

Uneven at first (perhaps attributable to some of the pieces being published or read elsewhere), the collection picks up momentum and cohesiveness and gains focus as Greenlaw gets to punk music and, ironically, struggles with what she wants to do with her future. “Unquiet,” which links Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” and Shakespeare’s Hamlet with Joy Division’s enigmatic and tragic Ian Curtis, is particularly moving.

Patricia McConnell is an applied animal behaviorist and dog trainer with over 20 years’ experience who is also besotted with her own dogs, who include border collies and a Great Pyrenees. She posits an approach to dog training and human-dog relations that is both refreshing and remarkably common sense. She contends that many of the miscommunications between humans (primates) and dogs (canids) stem from the fact that primates vocalize and employ physical cues that often convey to canids the opposite message of what is intended. For example, primates use ventral-ventral (face-to-face, chest-to-chest and eye-to-eye) physical approaches such as hugging and kissing to show affection … and canids typical find such approaches rude and aggressive.

When primates can understand how to use body language that is more appealing to a canid, such as side and perpendicular approaches and avoiding eye contact, they will achieve the obedience and cooperation, not to mention affection, that they are seeking with their canine friends.

McConnell’s style is down-to-earth and appealing, with memorable stories and examples.

From the book’s introduction:

“Every year several students come to see me at the university and ask how they can become an Applied Animal Behaviorist. Some of them tell me they are interested primarily because they love animals so much and work themselves up to confessing that they don’t really like people much at all. But we humans are an integral part of the lives of domestic dogs, and we can’t fully relate to a domestic dog without taking our own species into account. The more you love your dog, the more you need to understand human behavior. The good news, speaking as a biologist, is that our species is as fascinating as any other. I find myself just as enamored of Homo sapiens as I am of Canis lupus familiaris, because even when we humans are idiots, we’re interesting ones. So I invite all of you to show our own species the same patience and compassion that we show dogs. After all, dogs seem to like us a lot, and I have the utmost respect for their opinion.”

… and from the book’s conclusion:

“… just as I can’t discuss world peace with [my dog] Tulip, there’s something that I get from my connection to her that I can’t get from my other, human friends. I’m no even sure what it is, but it’s deep and primal and good. It has something to do with staying connected to the earth and to sharing the planet with other living things. We humans are in such a strange position – we are still animals whose behavior reflects that of our ancestors, yet we are unique – unlike any other animal on earth. Our distinctiveness separates us and makes it easy to forget where we came from. Perhaps dogs help us remember the depth of our roots, reminding us – the animals at the other end of the leash – that we may be special, but we are not alone. No wonder we call them our best friends.”