Recommendation lists are strange. In order to take a recommendation list seriously you need to know the person that is recommending the work and they have to have close to the same taste as you do if you plan on following those recommendations.
I suppose there are certain books that are just terrific, with no qualifying words as to why they are terrific, that everyone should read. Then there are those lists that have caveats like, “If you love horror you should read . . .”
Most of my lists fall into the latter. If you like horror, SF, science, history, and real life adventure and exploration then you may gain from my lists.
A small portion of my recommendations fall into the former. They are universal books that everyone should enjoy. I’ll try to point out which list is which when I post a new recommendation list in the future.
This list has two books that fall into the former and one in the latter.
Now onto this short but interesting list.
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science
Natalie Angier can annoy me at times in this book. Her writing tends to go off on tangents within sentences. At times it ends up being too much. But she has a knack for explaining the intricate and oft complicated ideas in science. She is a science writer from the NY Times and her goal in this book was to bring science to the masses through several main precepts in capital “S” Science. Ideas like probability, atomic structure, physics, chemistry, and biology.
The book is easy to read and you don’t have to be deeply interested in science to enjoy her look and interviews with some of the greatest minds in their respective fields. It is definitely a book that every non science person will garner something from this book.
Conn Iggulden has written the four part series Emperor, which includes The Death of Kings (Emperor, Book 2)
It is sort of a reference book for young boys but I find myself wanted to try to make a battery, build a tree house (which would more than likely end in me hurting myself), and many other neat little things like building the best paper airplane to learning about history and other things.
A Separate War and Other Stories
I have never read Joe Haldeman’s work before. I picked this collection of stories up from Clarkesworld Books the last time I bought from Neil. So far I am enjoying the half dozen stories I have finished. I can’t say if these are his best work since I haven’t read his other works but so far it is a solid collection. Much like Robert Sawyer and Peter Watts I believe I will be picking up Haldeman’s other works and reading them in the near future.
As usual the links to buy the books help out Horror Literature Quarterly.
