Do you choose your “to read” list from the New York Times best-sellers or the Pacific Northwest Independent Bookstore list?

No complaints with those choices,of course, but for some noteworthy books that may be new to you, here are a couple of ideas.

I just received, from CBC News, the winners of the CBC Literary Awards. Among them: “In a Garden,” by Shelagh Plunkett of Montreal; “Vidh,” by Phyllis Nakonechny of Swift Current, Sask.; and “Preservation” by Alex Leslie of Richmond, B.C. For the short list (a list of candidates for final consideration), click here

For more books worth checking out, go to Great Britain’s Man Booker Prize Web site, for a list of the best novels by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. Among those titles, you’ll find Michael Ondaatje’s “The English Patient,” Graham Swift’s “Last Orders” and Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children.”

For a more comprehensive list, click here.

Want to know how award-winning authors and illustrators of books for children and young adults find their inspiration? Western Washington University once again plays host to the fifth annual Bond Children’s Literature Conference on March 1.

Named for reading educators Guy L. and Fredericka Bond, WWU’s English department sponsors presentations, book sales and autograph sessions with authors Chris Crutcher ("Deadline,” “Whale Talk,” “The Sledding Hill"); Christopher Paul Curtis ("The Watsons Go to Birmingham: 1963,” “Bud, Not Buddy"); Eric Rohmann ("My Friend Rabbit,” “Time Flies"); and John Rocco ("Wolf! Wolf!") from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 1 at the Performing Arts Center Concert Hall.

A reception for the authors, co-sponsored by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, is from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Feb. 29 at Wilson Library; reservations are required by Feb. 22, by emailing Connie.Mallison@wwu.edu.

The cost to attend the conference is $90 general, $45 students and retired teachers, if received by Feb. 16; registration received after Feb. 16 is $15 more. Pregistration is required for the event.

For more information, call Nancy Johnson at 650-3227, or click here for details on the event.

Search your memory for song lyrics, essays, poems and other writings that had a profound influence on your life. What comes to mind?

I recently read the sequel to the best-selling anthology “The American Reader,” edited by mother-and-son team Dianae Ravitch and Michael Ravitch.

Their new book, “The English Reader: What Every Literate Person Needs to Know,” includes not only well-known writings by such authors and thinkers as William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton and Virginia Woolf, but selections by 17th-century poet Richard Lovelace ("I could not love thee Deare, so much, Lov’d I not Honour More"); 19th-century journalist and social scientist Walter Bagehot, who wrote about the necessity of tolerance in a democracy; and Queen Elizabeth I’s “Speech on the Eve of Facing the Spanish Armada.

What’s especially inviting is the Ravitchs’ introduction, in which they say that at one time, these writings were “words that by and large, every educated person used to know, and should know now.”

The words of the writers included in this book have shaped our lives, whether we recognize it or not, from the way we think of Adam and Eve, as described by Milton, to the film version of Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.”

Most of all, they say, they chose their selections “guided by the most fundamental reason for reading: sheer pleasure.”

It’s a delightful and inspiring book; one that can remain on your nightstand or on your nearest bookshelf for a good long while.