Call me old-fashioned if you want to, but I like books. I would rather read a book than look at a light-emitting screen. I hope it is a long time before there is a New York Times list of the best-selling computer screens, even though the Times itself is already available electronically.

I have been reading some wonderful books lately and I think you may want to put them on your holiday shopping list.

The first one is the small "Timber Press Pocket Guide to Water Garden Plants" by Greg and Sue Speichert. I have known the Speicherts for about 20 years. They are a hardworking duo that love aquatic plants. There are plenty of friendly people in the green industry, but Greg's name is short for gregarious.

They originally wrote the $50 coffee-table-sized "Encyclopedia of Water Garden Plants." It has over 700 color photos and covers hundreds of common and little-known plants. If you are a water gardener, I highly recommend it.

The new book takes the best 450 plants from the encyclopedia and covers them with 300 color photos. It provides the practical information on how to grow the plants in ponds, containers or rain gardens. At only $19, it is a bargain that every gardener with a container, pond or even just a wet spot in the yard ought to own.

"The New Encyclopedia of Daylilies" by Ted Petit and John Peat is fascinating. It is also available at bookstores and is published by Timber Press.

I like lilies in general for the shape and colors of the flower, the ease of care and very often a pleasing fragrance. I have a lot of daylilies, too. They are easy to grow and have almost no insect or disease problems. Many newer daylilies bloom longer than the old kinds and there are some that grow in very warm climates and others that grow in Canada. Every garden should have a few.

This book has pictures of more than 1,700 daylily flowers and, yes, almost all of them do look different. I figured this had to be a picture of almost every daylily known to mankind, but the authors mention that the American Hemerocallis Society has registered at least 60,000 different kinds of daylilies, so I guess I will have to wait for the revised version to see them all.

The book isn't just a bunch of pretty pictures. It also includes the history of daylilies and of daylily hybridizing, which turns out to be something anyone can do. The instructions on how to make your own daylily hybrid are in the book and sound so easy that I am planning on trying it next summer. There are well-illustrated chapters on the various kinds of daylily flowers, cultivation and propagation

Getting new seeds for a daylily only takes a few months. Growing it to get flowers takes a year to three years. If it is pretty, it still needs to be evaluated for hardiness, disease resistance and other characteristics. Once it is decided that it is a good flower and plant, it can be propagated for production and sale. It can take many more years before it will be available for retail sales. The last chapter of the book includes pictures of over 550 new daylily varieties that are in the evaluation stage that were supplied by hybridizers. This gives a sneak preview of some new characteristics that daylily lovers will be able to have in their gardens. Want a blue daylily? A completely blue daylily isn't in the book, but a variety of blue shades and tints are available on several new daylilies.

The last book I am going to recommend is "Planthropology" by Ken Druse. As the name suggests it is a history of plant discovery. Plants in our gardens have history. The location where they originally grew in the wild and who discovered it or brought it to the attention of gardeners is often filled with intrigue, and in some cases, even murder. Much of the discovery of the world by Europeans was led by explorers trying to discover new plants. Druse takes us through the history of plant gathering into the influences that plants have had on fine art, architecture and the way we garden today.

I was especially interested in the chapter titled "Amazing Grace." It explains how the arrangement of leaves and flowers in spiral patterns can be explained mathematically. An Italian mathematician from the 1200s whose name has been shortened to Fibonacci discovered what is now called "Fibonacci Numbers." The Golden Rectangle and Spiral created with this sequence of numbers is not only found in plants and nautilus shells, but in the architecture of the ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Mayans. Leonardo Da Vinci used the formula in his paintings and I can see it in sunflower heads, sedums and roses. I will look at flowers differently from now on.

This is a coffee-table book with color photos on nearly every page and at $50 is not inexpensive, but I had a hard time putting it down each evening until I had read the whole thing. "Planthropology" is available from Clarkson Potter Publishers and should be available at your local bookstore.

E-mail questions to Jeff Rugg, Kendall County unit educator, University of Illinois Extension at jrugg@uiuc.edu. To find out more about Jeff Rugg and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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