SOUL FOOD:

If you were to recommend six books for someone to read in 2009, what would they be?

That’s what one reader asked me.

Several asked for the title of my favorite book. One wanted the title of a book on the Middle East — a “who’s who” and “what’s what” primer on the region.

Were he looking for “The Middle East for Dummies” or “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Middle East,” they’re probably available. But he wants more than that.

For Christmas gifts or for yourselves, some of you have asked for a book that’s touching, a book that is inspiring. But you want a book that’s not on a bestseller list.

As for my favorite book, that’s easy. Hands down, it’s Walker Percy’s collection of essays, “Signposts in a Strange Land.” Every time I read the book, it seems brand new.

Percy, who died in May 1990, was a medical doctor, an award-winning novelist, a Southerner and an atheist who became a Roman Catholic.

His essays are lyrical, critical and often wryly humorous meditations on life in the 20th century.

Yet they’ve lost none of their power or profundity in this 21st century.

For those seeking to make sense of this sometimes senseless-seeming world, Percy’s essays offer signposts of hope.

While spending a year in Israel two decades ago, understanding the social, political and religious intricacies of the Middle East became a lasting obsession.

No one book provides a SparkNotes summary of those complexities.

In the United States, Arabs seem to perplex us. We’re confused about who they are. We don’t understand what they want.

We resent their resentment toward our foreign policy. Many of us are convinced they resent everything about us: our religion, our affluence, our culture and our very freedom.

“What is their problem?” people often ask me. Often it’s a rhetorical question.

But it’s not. I’d recommend Fouad Ajami’s “The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967” for some answers. When Ajami first wrote the book, he sought to convey how Arab politics and institutions took shape after the 1967 War.

The current updated edition has been expanded to contend with the affects of the assassination of Anwar el Sadat, the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War. Given the subject, Ajami has made it an easy read.

His prose is clear and readable. He begins with a “Note to the Nonspecialist Reader,” a glossary of sorts of terms.

He provides a list of important dates, beginning with June 5 to 11, 1967, the defeat of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the Six Day War and ending with October 1991 when a U.S.-sponsored conference convened in Madrid to settle Arab-Israeli claims.

The book has 15 pages of endnotes. There’s a very useful index.

Quite a few of the e-mail messages I get from friends and relatives are forwarded tales clearly intended to pull on my heart-strings or give me a lift. More often than not, they make me wince or moan instead.

So I fear I venture where angels fear to tread by suggesting books that might move or encourage you. I’m taking the chance nevertheless.

“Banker to the Poor,” by Muhammad Yunus made the New York Times bestseller list. As far as I know, his “Creating a World Without Poverty” did not.

Yunus and the Grameen Bank won a Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering his idea of microcredit, which was chronicled in “Banker to the Poor.” “Creating a World Without Poverty” lays out another Yunus vision, “social business,” a more humane form of capitalism.

To read this book is to believe we are capable of creating a better world, worldwide. I wonder if the current economic crisis could drive us to do it.

For those with short attention spans and an affection for tender stories, there is an anthology of stories by pediatric chaplain Norris Burkes titled “No Small Miracles.”

These are one-minute stories of faith, hope and courage in life’s hardest moments.

Of course, those with longer attention spans can appreciate these essays, too.

“Love Dare” is a book I expected not to like, I have to confess, simply because it is a tie-in to the movie “Fireproof.” I’m just not keen on merchandising kitsch based on movies.

The movie tells the story of a fireman whose marriage is at risk because of attitude problems and his penchant for Internet porn. The film was made by Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga., the makers of the earlier “Facing the Giants.”

I saw “Fireproof” at the Religion Newswriters Conference in September and liked it much better than “Facing the Giants.” For one thing, the quality of the acting has moved up a notch.

And the story is at least a little brave. Internet pornography is a big problem among Christian men but publicly not much is said about it.

Spoiler alert: “Love Dare” is the book that saves protagonist Caleb Holt’s marriage. It’s given to him by his father who once used it to save his own.

I got the book when I saw the movie and set it aside. Then as the movie had a longer and longer run (its still playing nearby at the Westminster 10 Cinemas) and the book garnered considerable praise, I pulled it out to take a look.

It’s not just a book to read. It comprises 40 chapters that end with “love dares,” each a way to demonstrate love to one’s spouse.

For example, the dare for Day 2 is: “In addition to saying nothing negative to your spouse again today, do at least one unexpected gesture as an act of kindness.”

Each chapter begins with a biblical scripture followed by an exposition related to the dare. Each chapter concludes with a dare and a space for notes.

As I read through the book I realized how effective it might be, movie-tie in or not. One’s marriage need not be in trouble to benefit from this book. And almost any relationship could.

This could be a book to buy for yourself. Using it could be a gift for someone you love.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at michele@soulfoodfiles.com.