• Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook
• Fresh: New Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes
• The Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition
• The China Study
• The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet
• Moosewood Restaurant Cooking For Health
• Make it Fast, Cook it Slow: The Big Book of Everyday Slow Cooking
• Think Like a Chef

You will enjoy these books even if you aren’t a vegetarian or vegan: The Joy of Cooking is an invaluable cooking reference that every kitchen should have; Think Like a Chef will have you dicing and slicing like a pro; and Make it Fast, Cook it Slow offers up many easy and healthful cold weather staples, just in time for the post-holiday season.

Do you have a favourite cooking book I should add to my 2012 reading list?

Rules of Civility is the quintessential snapshot of a magical Manhattan in the thirties, a love letter to a forgotten time and different place. This novel is totally fulfilling: the characters are dynamic, the descriptions are lush, and the dialogue is witty and on point. After I was finished the last page, I did something I rarely do – turn back to the first and start reading again.

Read Bronwyn’s full review over at the Words Worth book blog, How to Furnish a Room.

Patchett crafts a moving tale of obsession, relationships and primal urgings deep in the Amazon. Her delicate craftsmanship suspends disbelief drawing the reader into a wondrous metaphysical and spiritual journey with ever surprising elements.

Read more about the book on Ann’s website or visit the publisher’s website to find audio clips, author biography, reviews, interviews, and book guides to Ann’s other novels. This title is available in multiple formats.

Ron, OBOC committee member and Libary Bound staffer, has been reading Tapped Out: Rear Naked Chokes, The Octogon, and The Last Emperor by Matthew Polly.

The author of American Shaolin takes up Mixed Martial Arts in this Plimptonesque narrative of middle-aged folly. While the dumbed down writing style was initially off-putting, resistance is futile and in no time you’re laughing along and out loud as if to an airplane movie you’d have never thought could be funny.

For readers of A.J. Jacobs, George Plimpton and former jocks hitting their middle-aged spread. Here is a link to the complete MMA bout between author Matthew Polly and David Cexton, as chronicled in the book. Obviously, Spoiler Alert! for those reading the book.

This would make a great Christmas gift for reluctant readers or the MMA fan in your household.

See more at the publisher’s page, including a video on the making of the book cover and an ebook version of the book.

A product of the foster-care system, Victoria Jones’s past has taught her many lessons, most of them based on abuse, neglect, anger and mistrust. Growing up, she used the hidden meaning of flowers as a way to communicate. Emancipated out of the system, and forced either to support herself or live on the streets, she falls back on what she knows and trusts: the language of flowers. She starts to build a life through a job with a florist, but is then forced to confront her past and the one time she made a connection with another person.

Be sure to check out the publisher’s page for this book. It includes book excerpts, information for book clubs, video, ecards and a flower dictionary. You can also visit the author on Facebook.

The Mysterious Players will be performing “Dead & Buried”, a murder mystery/comedy based on Louise Penny’s award-winning novel Bury Your Dead, on Monday, Dec. 5 at 7 p.m. at the Kitchener Public Library, Main Library (in the main floor reading lounge).

The Mysterious Players have been entertaining audiences with clever plot twists and audience interaction since 1986. There will be a draw for one gift certificate for a murder mystery dinner at the Rum Runner Pub in downtown Kitchener ($40 value).

Louise Penny’s new book in the Inspector Gamache series, A Trick of the Light, has appeared on the Publisher’s Weekly Best Mystery Books of 2011 list.

See the entire list for ten great reads to pick up for the holidays.

The story of young Bob Zimmerman of rural Minnesota, who grows up and renames himself after his favorite poet–Dylan Thomas–and goes off to New York City where he meets folk music hero Woody Guthrie.

Beautifully illustrated in a unique style evocative of antique folk art, this children’s picture book in all its poetic simplicity just might be the best book on Dylan out there. Can be read to a child as a simple story about chasing your dreams, or as an early look at one of the greatest singer-songwriters of the last century.

Like the book’s Facebook page to learn more about the book and to explore interesting videos and links, such as the one below.

Written as a memoir by one of its founders and editors, Frank Davey chronicles his early life in Abbotsford, B.C., and the history of the UBC poetry magazine, Tish.

While an interest in Canadian literary history brought me to this book, Davey’s descriptions of his childhood and campus years at UBC, then his early career in Victoria, Montreal, and Toronto were a huge part of what makes the book an interesting read.

Amazing how arguments over poetic theory, publishing deals, and slights real or imagined can be so fiercely remembered 40+ years later, but these are poets, after all. A must read for those interested in Canadian letters of the last 50 years.

Watch a reading of the book by the author (below).

There are many excellent books describing the German-Russian WWII battlefields on the Eastern Front. Where this book excels is not in the re-telling of the overall battle structures and such, but rather the varied personal accounts that explore the devastation at the individual level. Beginning with the German attack on Russia in 1941, the Russian counterattack through the winter, and German re-attacks in the Spring of 1942, Jones has included many eyewitness accounts, memoirs, and diary entries from both sides to personalize the human tragedy. Jones plans to complete the rest of the story (1942-1945) in a subsequent book.