Book recommendations?

[rowyn]

I'm looking for book recommendations! In particular, I'd like to read some nonfiction, preferably popular science. 20-30 years ago, I used to read Stephen Jay Gould and Oliver Sacks, and I quite enjoyed the non-academic but still informative style. The weather should be sufficiently not-bad this weekend that I can make it to the library by bike, but I need to request books now if I want them to be waiting for me when I get there.

Specific genres of interest, in order of preference:

* Popular science
* Other nonfiction of the "more readable than dense" sort
* Fantasy & sf (preferably small stories in pleasant settings; ie, not dystopian or grim)
* Romance (gay, straight, poly, I don't much care. I have read tons of this lately and probably won't read any new recs right away, but I'm always looking.)

Thanks!

Comments

[alltoseek.livejournal.com]

I recommend The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence Krauss. He examines the potential reality of sci-fi tropes like those in ST from our current understanding of physics. What's especially fun is he doesn't really dismiss much of it, he just talks about the implications, and the required energy needed. It's been a while since I read it, but for an example, he says warp travel isn't impossible, but you'd prolly have to use all of the energy of a star to accomplish one warp-speed journey. Like, poof, that star's energy is gone, used up, no more star. Something like that. Anyway, makes quantum physics understandable through sci-fi ideas.

Also Hawking's A Brief History of Time: short and readable and informative. Fun things to think about! (at least if you are a philosopher type :-)

I also recommend John Reader's Africa. Gives a much better appreciation and understanding of the people of the continent than we usually get in the western developed world.

Fiction:
Good Omens by Gaiman and Pratchett.

Discworld series by Pratchett.

Anything by Anne Tyler (Breathing Lessons)

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Anything by Amy Tan (The Hundred Secret Senses)

Will have to think on other recs

[rowyn]

*puts the nonfiction on her library list*

*reads your fics while she waits for weather to be good enough for trip to library* n_n

[alltoseek.livejournal.com]

And thanks for reading them! <3

*hoping weather stays lousy in ur town*

:D