My knowledge of American history is lacking. To an extent, it's to be expected - after all, I am Canadian. Every year on the Fourth of July I'm reminded of this. I go and seek out books about American history and add that to that list of books to read to read some day in the future. (That list never seems to get shorter.) I thought that this year I'd share my findings on what to read on Independence Day.

With the current economic situation many people are turning back to the Depression for lessons. What did they eat? What did they garden? And for bibliophiles, what did they read? Where did they get their books? Well, thanks to the NPR and Publishers Weekly we know the answer to that. Depression-era reading looked much like today's mass market offerings and that many people got their books from libraries.

Words. They have the power to move us. They open up new worlds and ideas. I really love words. There are good ones and bad ones, long one and short ones, easy ones and hard ones. Some words are fun to say (personally I'm fond of "schnitzel"). Words can also utterly confound us. The New York Times recently released a list of words that are most often looked up on their site and the world added the one millionth word to the English language.

It's the day before Father's Day and you still haven't picked out the right gift yet. I sympathize. My father is not so easy to shop for, even when I go the book route. Any book that would ever interest him he's already read and I've exhausted the hockey history section. My father-in-law is just not big on the gift thing at all. So I put out a call to people who know best - twitters and book bloggers of course. Here are their suggestions for that perfect book for dad.

Earlier this week the 2009 inductees to the Canadian Walk of Fame were announced. This year's inductees are Blue Rodeo, Raymond Burr, Kim Cattrall, Tom Cochrane, Dsquared2 (Dean & Dan Caten), Howie Mandel, Robert Munsch and Chantal Petitclerc.

Is there a cook in the house? With Father's Day on Sunday, perhaps a "guy" cookbook is the perfect gift idea. I polled some of my favorite guy food bloggers for their recommendations for Father's Day cookbook gift ideas.

Trauma literature, or as it is sometimes known "trauma porn," is big with the teen set. It was the case when I was a teen, when my oldest sibling was a teen and will be the case when my friend's children are teens. Teens live in the real world and they want to see real teens reflected back at them from the pages of the books they read. Dark and serious is not new and it is not bad. Dark is exactly what some teens need.

Mention affirmations and visions of Stuart Smalley might start dancing in your head. Though it is easy to dismiss affirmations as the automagical thinking of woo-woo new age folks, they can serve as a very practical tool for even the most skeptical of cynics to use in achieving goals and even, dare I say it, making dreams come true.

I read chick lit and I'm not afraid to say it. Other readers say so grudgingly, shyly, apprehensively or even defensively. Some readers guard it like it's a deep, dark secret. Chick lit is viewed as a lesser form of fiction by many. They say it's fluffy, light, silly, girly, and stupid. It's full of shopping, sex and silly twenty- or thirty-something women looking for "the one." Sure, some chick lit may be some of those things. So what? It's time for people to stop being afraid to say they read, and enjoy, chick lit.

At the end of part one of this post, I asked "Am I the dupe of a snobbish literary education?" It's a snobbishness that encourages one to be picky about the definition of good writing, not just what is good writing but also what type of novel may be called literature, who deigned to publish your work, whether you have an agent or schlep along sending work to the slush pile. This is sad.

One of the greatest things about reading is that it can take you virtually anywhere without ever having to leave your house (or library or park bench or wherever you happen to find yourself.) An equally great thing is to be inspired to go and see the places described in books - to use them as inspiration for seeking out these places beyond their pages.  

We've all heard stories of the dreaded rejection letter, or rather, letters. I once read that by the time a writer publishes a book they should expect to have enough rejection offers to wallpaper a bathroom. Stephen King displayed his many rejection letters on a spike on his wall. Rejection is part of the publishing process. That doesn't mean it's warm and fluffy. Rejection sucks. Luckily there are many authors out there who can serve as role models on the rejection front.