Best books … chosen by Mimi Weddell

Collected Poems by Edith Sitwell (Overlook, $25). My No. 1 choice, because rhythm is part of my soul as are poems of all kinds, ancient to contemporary. Sitwell’s spirited humor and love of language make her so alive! Her “Sylph’s Song” can set me off with a jaunty air: “Daisy and Lily, lazy and silly / walk by the shore of the wan grassy sea ...”

Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Scribner, $15). I am often drawn to a book title. Certainly I was by Tender Is the Night. To one of my generation, born in 1915, Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel was our romantic setting as was the French Riviera and the tragic delusion of the glamour of the ’20s. Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, are part of my landscape.

Ultima Thule by Henry Handel Richardson (out of print). Another title one rolls off the tongue. It signifies the last extremity or end of the world, the uttermost point, and to me the saddest story I have ever read. Its protagonist, Dr. Richard Mahony, has returned to Australia after losing everything to a scoundrel’s trickery. Mahony has no sense of money or of the follies he has been driven to, but I love him just the same.

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A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh (Back Bay, $15). A tragedy? Well, yes, but one steeped in satire. Waugh’s speedy, biting humor has a way of taking over a part of my brain.

Kristen Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (Penguin, $25). I never tire of reading about the Middle Ages, and Undset’s Nobel Prize winner is a book I shall continue to read until I die. I still say to Kristen, “Oh please don’t go up the church steps on your knees again without at least trying to understand this very special man you’re married to, please, before it is too late.” Alas, it always is.

Nureyev by Julie Kavanagh (Vintage, $20). I have many books on dance, but this wonderfully researched recent work is one of the best. There is so much of Nureyev’s energy in its pages that I worry Kavanaugh’s pen might run dry before she gets to the end of his brilliant career.