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Jacques Barzun's "From Dawn to Decadence," a cultural history of the last 500 years of Western civilization is definitely worth reading. Barzun has put his own 90+ years of life, reading and thinking into a fine study of our cultural heritage that is useful and interesting however much one knows about history or culture.

I'm not really a big fan of today's fiction, but for those who are, I can recommend "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry, a story of Parsees and untouchables in Bombay that's a worthy successor to the great novels of the 19th century. Also, just about anything by Robertson Davies, a great Canadian novelist of recent years. Davies had a real talent for creating characters and drawing readers into a world not so different from our own, but more interesting. His work is uneven, but once I picked up one of his books I always wanted to finish, and when I had, I couldn't wait to read the next one.