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This is Radio West. I'm Doug Fabrizio. Today in the program, it's our annual holiday book show.

We've done this for a while now, and most of you know the drill. But if you don't, we have this group of book sellers, book experts who join us in studio this time of year to tell us the books they recommend for the gift giving season.

Among our experts is Betsy Burton.

She's co-founder of the King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City.

My favorite novel this year, by far, is Playground by Richard Powers.

You fall blindly in love with the characters, of which really there are only three who are major.

Two of them are boys who become fast friends. They're from very different backgrounds,

but they bond over games. These two are wonderful, but my favorite character, Evie. She's from Montreal.

Her dad teaches her to dive,

and she becomes as obsessive about diving as Ahab.

She just loves diving.

She loves the ocean.

And she becomes a world-famous diver.

Later in her life, she wants to describe one of the most brilliant and exciting experiences she's ever had in the ocean.

It had happened years before on her second research trip to the waters of the continental shelf

off the east coast of Australia. She had dived every day for three weeks,

when one afternoon she stopped a short distance

from her field site to watch an excited giant cuttlefish

moving about near the entrance to its den.

The creature was pulsing in the most extraordinary colors.

Evie drew close by centimeters, trying not to startle the animal and cut short its crazed display.

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