Near the beginning of his book, Ricou states that his intention in writing about this ubiquitous plant was to answer the question: “Could a regional culture be found by focusing on a single, native, uncharismatic species?” More simply, he wanted to find out “where salal might lead.” Salal leads him from forestry experts in Washington State to harvesters on Vancouver Island who pick salal for a living and know the plant so well they can weigh it by feel.

I first read Stan Persky’s essay/story “Topic Sentence” in ­1977, in his book Wrestling the Angel. After finishing it I lay awake in bed for a long time, thinking and feeling breathless. At the time, Persky was beginning his long career as an organizer of breath into prose sentences and I think it was the new breathing patterns that kept me awake.

Sixty-three years after the Holocaust, the phrase “boy in striped pajamas” evokes such a strong image of concentration camps that it is difficult to imagine anyone being innocent of its hidden meaning, but nine-year-old Bruno, the main character in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne (David Fickling Books), does not have the advantage of hindsight. All he knows is that his family is leaving Berlin to live at “Out-With,” Bruno’s pronunciation of the name of the camp where his father is now commandant.

Everything I know about the Spanish Inquisition I learned from a young adult novel by Melanie Little that is written in free verse.

A lot of people don’t like to admit they rely on self-help or prosperity-oriented writing. My feeling is, squeeze all the good you can out of it. Try Money, Success and You for its sheer practical value. Discover what to do when someone double-crosses you, in a chapter called “What to do when someone double-crosses you.”

Twenty Miles by Cara Hedley (Coach House) hurtles headlong through the chaos of a season of tough young women playing university hockey. Isabel Norris (Iz) is the unlikely heroine of this novel, a pretty girl whose talent for hockey is more of a complication than a gift. She arrives at the University of Winnipeg and survives the competition to earn a spot on the Scarlets, but she isn’t even sure that she wants a future as an athlete.

Ivan E. Coyote loves her mom and dad, her extended family, her godson and her dogs—hell, she even loves her neighbours, some of whom are deeply “normal” and others of whom are lesbian, homosexual, trans-gendered and undecided—and she writes stories about all of them. These tales would remind me of Stuart McLean if it weren’t for Coyote’s gender-bending take on life, which is bound to leave both rednecks and liberals shaking their heads and asking themselves, “What just happened here?”

The Vancouver Public Library’s One Book, One Vancouver touts itself as “Vancouver’s only city-wide book club, promoting reading and encouraging a culture of discussion in Vancouver by bringing people together around one great book.” This description conjures up an image of everyone on the bus, in line at the passport office or sitting on the toilet, reading the same book at the same time, and every conversation being about that book.

In Soucouyant by David Chariandy (Arsenal Pulp Press), a young man whose mother suffers from early-onset dementia pieces together what really happened back home in the Caribbean when she encountered a soucouyant, or evil spirit.

Geoffrey Household’s 1939 novel Rogue Male—an old favourite of mine—follows a British sportsman as he returns from an unnamed central European country (read Germany), having failed in his attempt to assassinate the dictator who is that country’s head of state (read Hitler).