I'm still sneezing and wheezing. I cancelled all my weekend performances (I can't believe I was too sick to go hear Chanticleer's annual Christmas concert at the Metropolitan Museum!), and I haven't set foot out of the apartment since Friday night other than to buy food and drugs. All I've done is sleep, watch TV, and read."

The last of these has proved to be an unexpected delight, though, for my six-month stint as a judge for the National Book Awards left me next to no time to read purely for my pleasure, and it's been fun to chew through a stack of books simply because they looked good to me.

No pleasure should remain unshared, so here are three books I read this weekend that I strongly recommend:

Notes on Directing, by Frank Hauser and Russell Reich (RCR Creative Press). Exactly what does the director of a play do? This book wasn't written to answer that question, but it does so anyway. Notes on Directing is a 126-page Strunk-and-White-type list of 130 annotated dos and don'ts for theatrical directors, some as bluntly practical as a slap in the face ("1. Read the play"), others subtle and suggestive ("67. Never express actions in terms of feelings"). I've never read anything that taught me more about the theater in so short a space.

BOOK: Frank Hauser and Russell Reich, Notes on Directing. How to stage a play, boiled down to 130 pithy dos and don'ts a la Strunk and White. Blunt, funny, utterly relevant, amazingly illuminating. If you've always wondered exactly what a director does, read this book.

Mr. Teachout, The Wall Street Journal's drama critic, also blogs about the arts at
www.terryteachout.com.