Iqaluit (Dec 13/04) - Books make great Christmas gifts -- they're easy to wrap, they have substantial heft and they keep people entertained over the Christmas holiday.

Marilyn Healey, the bookstore manager at Arctic Ventures in Iqaluit, has a number of books she'd recommend.

Angela Wilson of The Book Cellar in Yellowknife shows off a few of the new Northern books in stock, including the latest tome by Farley Mowatt. - Chris Puglia/NNSL photo

"We've got some fabulous titles this Christmas," she said.

Her personal favourite is Ultima Thule: Arctic Explorations, a weighty tome. She happened to pick it up while she was talking about it on the phone and drifted into silence, lost in its pages.

"It's a beautiful book," she said.

There are a number of books with the same name, but this Ultima Thule is a non-fiction work published by the John Nurminen Foundation in Helsinki. It retails for about $120.

In addition to the new edition of the Nunavut Handbook, another popular book at Arctic Ventures right now is Mountie in Mukluks by Patrick White.

"That's a surprise seller for us," she said. "It's selling really quickly."

Copies of the late Pierre Berton's last book, Prisoners of the North, have yet to arrive.

Prisoners of the North did make a brief appearance at The Book Cellar in Yellowknife.

"We had it in; we sold it out," said manager Judith Drinnan.

It's on order and more copies are due to arrive before Christmas.

It's the same with John Seagrave's tales of life as a Hudson's Bay Boy.

It has sold out, but more will be on the shelves in the next few weeks.

Drinnan doesn't have much time to read these days, as it's one of the busiest times of the year for the bookstore. But she's working her way through Farley Mowatt's latest, No Man's River.

"He might not be the best with facts, but he's a really good storyteller," she said.

In children's books, both Drinnan and Healey recommend The Gift of the Inuksuk by Michael Ulmer.

In the book, inuksuks built by the heroine Ukaliq guide her father and brother home safely through a dangerous snowstorm.