The reading suggestions have been kindly provided by staff members of the downtown bookstore McNally Jackson.

Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
New rule: you haven’t read science fiction until you’ve read Stapledon. His prose is a little dated feeling, but his imagination, his passion for inventing strange worlds and strange peoples page after page, is unrivaled even now. Stapledon nearly exhausted the genre before it got started, and he deserves to be read long after it fades away.

Light on Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar
Books on yoga come, and books on yoga go. Light on Yoga, though, was published in 1966 and is here to stay. B.K.S. Iyengar’s seminal and comprehensive guide, with its focus on precise postural alignment, is in a class of its own. If you were to own just one book on yoga, this should be it.

La Maison Du Chocolat By Gilles Marchal
There is chocolate, and then there is CHOCOLATE. The famous Parisian chocolate shop, La Maison du Chocolat, produces the most divine dark CHOCOLATE as well as the most extraordinary sorbet. Now Gilles Marchal, who has recently taken over the helm of this institution, has produced the CHOCOLATE cookbook. Not only will you learn how to make black and white cookies and divine chocolate mousse, you will learn how to make chocolate fettucine and chocolate handbags. And, of course, the layout and the photographs are divine.

Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French
My husband, the Kiwi, taught me that kangaroos are dangerous because they can only hop in a straight line. So if you meet them on the road in the outback, they can do great damage to themselves and to your vehicle, which is why jeeps are protected by ‘roo’ bars. Koalas get drunk on eucalyptus leaves, so, if you’re driving along the Gold Coast and you look upwards, you might see one in the wild, swaying in the trees. But no Australian animal is as hilariously lazy as a wombat. This diary of contented procrastination is a charm. And I had to go all the way to Sydney to discover it in a gift shop.

McNally Jackson independent bookstore is well worth a visit, they have a fantastic selection of books on their shelves. The store is located in NoLIta at 52 Prince Street between Lafayette and Mulberry. Visit them on the Web at http://mcnallyjackson.com.