Books are my gift of choice, both to give and to receive. There's a handful I wish I could give every one of my readers, but as there are literally tens of you, doing so would set me back further than an ink-stained wretch can afford to go.

So I offer you these books as recommendations, and I do so a full week before Christmas, while there's still time for you to pick them up. (Hoo boy, I give and I give and I give some more.)

"Saturday," by Ian McEwan, is for you men out there, and for the women who love you, or are trying to. This is a great novel, a compelling story so rich in perception and detail, so beautifully constructed, that I would urge it upon anyone who simply likes to read. But it delivers a special delight in its portrayal of the richness and passion possible in a modern marriage of equals.

The book recounts a single day in the life of neurosurgeon Henry Perowne. It's a Saturday on which a huge antiwar rally in London precipitates an accident and confrontation that reverberate profoundly through Henry's privileged life.

As I inhabited this protagonist's mind, the overwhelming sensation I had was delight in his masculinity. Henry Perowne, brought to life by a self-revealing Mr. McEwan, is intelligent, grateful, flawed, thoughtful, sensual and conflicted. He's completely fascinated by life, which makes him a fascinating man.

The book unfolds in the present tense, with plenty of "back story" written in past tense to illuminate and deepen the day's bizarre drama. You'll especially appreciate the pleasure and bewilderment Henry experiences in his two young adult children and the respectful distance from which he ponders their lives.

This is not a sentimental book. There's no mush, but running underneath all its many layers is a quiet joy.

Joy suffuses a book mostly about science called "The Language of God." Its author, Francis S. Collins, is the longtime head of the Human Genome Project.

The book's subtitle, "A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief," is a bit misleading, because what Dr. Collins mostly does is explain to monotheists of all persuasions why the incontrovertible facts of evolution do not pose a threat to their religious faith or to their belief in a "Creator God."

To be sure, he explains at the book's opening and closing how he, already an accomplished scientist, moved from long-held atheism to Christian faith and why the facts of science need not -- in fact, cannot -- disprove religious belief.

He satisfyingly deflates the arrogance of militantly atheistic scientists with quotes from the great Darwinist Stephen Jay Gould and with his own irrefutable logic: "If God is outside of nature, then science can neither prove nor disprove his existence. Atheism itself must therefore be considered a form of blind faith."

Dr. Collins disagrees with the intelligent design theorists and has wise words of caution about the hole they may be digging for themselves.

He posits a supernatural designer who set the evolutionary process into motion, sat back to enjoy its unfolding and only interfered again when it came time to select a human ancestor and impart a "soul" -- the moral intelligence and self-awareness that make man a being in God's image.

Though I wish Dr. Collins would address the possibility that the evolutionary process and "special acts of creation" are not necessarily mutually exclusive, he's very careful to insist that both religious believers and Darwinian atheists honor the boundaries of what true science can address. His book will greatly enlarge the mind and spirit of any serious reader.

"Who Really Cares" is a readable analysis of giving and volunteerism in America. Public policy scholar and economist Arthur Brooks skewers the notion that support for government spending programs is evidence of a charitable spirit and demonstrates that the conservatives who oppose such government policies give away markedly more of their money and resources than liberals do, at every income level.

Dr. Brooks' research destroys the false stereotype of the heartless conservative. Small-government proponents have always maintained that private charity is more effective in every way than the government's redistribution of income, and this book proves we're walking the walk.

Sadly, this column of "virtual giving" does not count.

If you feel, oh, a wee bit satisfied when you read this book, try to keep it to yourself. Gloating would be uncharitable.