Howard Seltman's Reading Suggestions Page
Current Reading
Recommendations
Future Reading
Current Reading
- The View From Castle Rock by Alice Munro
- Vinyl Cafe Notebooks by Stuart McLean
Recommendations
- Really great: The autobiographies of Malcolm X and Mohandas K Ghandi
- Read anything by
Diane Ackerman, e.g. Whales by Moonlight, Five Senses
-
David Quammen: Song of the Dodo, Flight of the Iguana.
- Anything by
Stephen J. Gould, e.g. Wonderful Life.
- Anything by
John McPhee, especially Survival of the Bark Canoe.
- Niels Bohr: The Man and His Times, by
Abraham Pais
- Comet, The Demon-Haunted World : Science As a Candle in the Dark
and Billions & Billions : Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium by
Carl Sagan
- The Nature and Growth of Modern Mathematics by
Edna Kramer
-
How to Solve It, by George Polya
- Diversity of Life and The Naturalist by
Edward O. Wilson
-
The Mathematical Experience by P. Davis &
R. Hersh
- Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
by Robert Fulghum
-
The Souls of Black Folk by
W.E.B DuBois
- The Quark and the Jaguar by
Murray Gell-Mann
- Failure is Not at Option by Gene Kranz
- Finding Order in Nature: The Naturalist Tradition from Linnaeus to E. O. Wilson by Paul Lawrence Farber
- Sounds good, but not recommended: A Tribble's Guide to Space by
Alan Tribble
- Sounds good, but not recommended: Labyrinth: A Search for the Hidden Meaning
of Science by Peter Pesic
- Some good parts; some axe to grind: Deep Time by
Gregory Benford
- Only fair; binding theme is weak:
The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
- Too much carnage, not enough culture for my tastes:
Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power by Victor Davis Hanson
- Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian
- Life stories centered around particular elements:
The Periodic Table
by Primo Levi
- Survival in Auschwitz (If
This Be a Man)
by Primo Levi (Also, The Reawakening and it's movie, The Truce.)
- Fascinating:
Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts by Andrew Robinson
- Some gems: The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002 by Natalie Angier (Editor)
- Amazing mixture of history, philosophy and biography:
The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand
- Lost Children of Wilder by Nina Bernstein
- Orphans of the Living: Stories of Americans in Foster Care by Jennifer Toth
- Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis
- Nicely written (but the "automata" idea doesn't really work)
Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins
- Spotty: How the Other Half Thinks: Adventures in Mathematical Reasoning by Sherman K. Stein
- In a Free State by V.S. Naipaul
- Full house : the spread of excellence from Plato to Darwin By Stephen Jay Gould
- Star-Crossed Orbits: Inside the U.S.-Russian Space Alliance by James E. Oberg
- The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World By Jenny Uglow
- The Annotated Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott / Ian Stuart
- The Fever Trail by Mark Honigsbaum
- Terrific novel: The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman
- Fascinating: Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
- Working Cures by S. M. Fett
- From Slavery to Freedom by J. H. Franklin
- To 'Joy My Freedom by Tera Hunter
- Additional info compliments original book: James D. Watson's The Double Helix (Norton Critical Edition) edited by Gunther Stent
- Gory and biased, but fascinating: Uhuru by Robert Ruark (1962)
- Not as biased as I expected: Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
- Peculiar mix of technology and humanities: Appropriate Technology by Barrett Hazeltine & Christopher Bull
- Life at the Bottom edited by Gregory Armstrong
- Tran-sister Radio by Chris Bohjalian
- Molly Ivens Can't Say That, Can She? by Molly Ivens
- Naked in Baghdad by Anne Garrels
- Fun, quick read: Someone is Killing the Great Chef's of Europe by Nan Lyons
- Excellent: Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic's Edge by Jill Fredston
- Excellent novel: An Equal Music by Vikram Seth
- Leap of faith - Memoirs of an Unexpected Life by Queen Noor
- Powerful, well written:
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
- One of the few book of which I skipped 100 pages: Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
- Great: What Good Are Bugs by Gilbert Waldbauer
- Hard to put down novel: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
- Enough for a good essay: Home: a short history of an idea by Witold Rybczynski
- Fun old story: Rocketship Galileo by Robert Heinlein
- The Worlds of Robert Heinlein by Robert Heinlein
- Excellent bio:
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox
- Engrossing novel: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
- Couldn't finish it: The Honors Class: Hilbert's Problems and Their Solvers. by Benjamin H. Yandell
- Have Space Suit, Will Travel by Robert Heinlein
- The Last Lone Inventor by Evan I. Schwartz
- Needn't have been book length: What Does a Martian Looks Like by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart
- Very Interesting:
Desert Queen, The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia By Janet Wallach
- All Fun: # 1 Ladies Detective Agency Series
- Mars: Uncovering the Secrets of the Red Planet by Paul Raeburn
- South Sea Tales by Jack London (¤)
- Catch Me If You Can by Frank W. Abagnale, Jr. (¤)
- Breaking the Mayan Code by Michael Coe
- Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott
- Best American Science Writing 2000 edited By James Gleick
- Magical Thinking: True Stories by Augusten Burroughs (¤)
- The Secret of Life by Paul J. McAuley
-
Opening Skinner's Box by Lauren Slater
- Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (¤)
- The Pooh Perplex: A Student Casebook By Frederick Crews
- The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich (¤)
- Michaelmas by Algis Budrys
- King Lear by William Shakespeare (¤)
- The African Reader: Independent Africa by Wilfred Cartey and Martin Kilson (1970)
- When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro (¤)
- Disapponting: Cogito, Ergo Sum: The Life of Rene Descartes by Richard Watson
- Just OK: Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes
- The Clocks by Agatha Christie ¤
- Reading Lolita in Tehran:
A Memoir in Books By Azar Nafisi ¤
- Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flag ¤
- Another sea, another shore : Persian stories of migration translated and edited by Shouleh Vatanabadi and Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami
- Some weak areas, but a "must read":What Evolution Is by Ernst Mayr
- Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
- Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom ¤
- Must read: Complications by Atul Gawande
- Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie ¤
- The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs by Alexander McCall Smith
-
A Continent for the Taking: The Trajedy and Hope of Africa by Howard French
- Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather by Xingjian Gao
- The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of our Nation by Dan Rather ¤
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens ¤
- Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi ¤
- Terrific: One True Thing by Anna Quinlan
- The Big Four (Hercule Poirot) by Agatha Christie ¤
- Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama
- Saving Cascadia by John J. Nance ¤
- The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill by Mark Bittner
- 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith
- Best I've read recently: Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett
- The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice by Sandra Day O'Connor ¤
- The mysterious affair at Styles by Agatha Christie ¤
- Not very good and shockingly sexist: Cosmic Company: the Search for Life in the Universe by Seth Shostak and Alex Barnett
- Reading
Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books By Azar Nafisi ¤
- Some wonderful writing; some spotty science: An Alchemy of Mind by Diane Ackerman
- Highly recommended: Brick Lane by Monica Ali
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro ¤
- Great: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini ¤
- Cool overall idea; I learned a lot: The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgramage to the Dawn of Time by Richard Dawkins
- The Control of Nature by John McPhee
- Excellent: Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama
- Well written mix of science, engineering and some politics: Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet by Steve Squyres
- Mixed; too many soldiers: Character is Destiny by John McCain ¤
- Innsbrucker Skiabenteuer by Heinrich Wolff
- nice: The Revolution of Peter the Great by James Cracraft
- Great sequel: The Language of Threads by Gail Tsukiyama
- Excellent: The Mermaid's Chair by Sue Monk Kidd ¤
- Das Geheimnis Im Elbtunnel by Heinrich Wolff
- fun 1938 murder mystery: Four of Hearts by Ellery Queen
- Good story; only fair writing: Challenger Park by Stephen Harrigan
- no good: At First There Was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson
- Hoch in den Alpen by Heinrich Wolff
- Good: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Marc Haddon
- Interesting, some out-of-date science: On Food and Cooking: The Science & Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee
- Somewhat mixed: Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee
- Not so interesting: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (¤)
- Excellent: Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett
- Peculiar/good: Benito Cereno and Bartleby the Scrivber by Herman Melville
- Spotty: Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light by Mort Rosenblum
- Fun mystery: Captiva by Randy Wayne White
- Also: Dark Light by Randy Wayne White
- Flawed, but fasinating
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times
to the Present by Harriet A. Washington
more
- First in the series: Sanibel Flats by Randy Wayne White
- Very well written and interesting:
The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery
by Wendy Moore
- Doc Ford again, but different: The Man Who Invented Florida by Randy Wayne White
- Doc Ford with a bit more violence: The Thousand Islands by Randy Wayne White
- Awkward writing: The mathematician's mind : the psychology of invention in the mathematical field by Jacques Hadamard
- Best American Essays, 2005 edited by Atwan and Orlean Note: read more by Cathleen Schine
- No! I only made it through two chapters: God Game or others by Andrew Greeley
- Medicus: A Novel of the Roman Empire by Ruth Downie
- Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin
- Xala by Ousmane Sembène
- Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
- Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin
- SETI 2020: A Roadmap for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
by Ekers, Cullers, Billingham & Scheffer
- 500 pages of fascinating info and pictures, well worth the $50: Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape by Brian Hayes
- Little Chapel on the River by Gwendolyn Bounds
- Interesting, but self-contradictory: How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman
- Nice blend of science and people: Faust in Copenhagen; A Struggle for the Soul of Physics by Gino Segrè
Pretty good:
- Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
- Really good: Animal, vegetable, miracle : a year of food life by Barbara Kingsolver
- Excellent: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
- Strange but worthwile: Three Apples Fell From Heaven by Micheline Aharonian Marcom
- Must read: The Center Cannot Not Hold by Elyn Saks
- Fun: Highland Laddie Gone by Sharyn McCrumb
- Really interesting: Lise Meitner: A life in Science by Ruth L. Sime
- Great stories: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
- Placed my family history:
Cash for Your Trash: Scrap Recycling in America by Carl Zimring
- Very engaging: Next by Michael Crichton
- Great: The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
- Did not engage me: Other Colors by Orhan Pamuk
- Weird: Zigzag through the bitter-orange trees by Ersi Sotiropoulos
- Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
- Unusual and engaging: Cloud atlas : a novel by David Mitchell
- Very interesting (with some crazy ideas mixed in): Treading Lightly: The Hidden Wisdom of the World's Oldest People by Karl-Erik Sveiby and Tex Skuthorpe
- Good: Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
- Very good: Free food for millionaires by Min Jin Lee
- Fun medical mystery: Lifelines by CJ Lyons
- Excellent: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
- Didn't like: Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner
- Great: The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri
- Well written, interesting and moving: Loving Rachel by Jane Bernstein
- Rachel in the World by Jane Bernstein
- Good Saudi detective novel: Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris
- Not very good: Biting the Wax Tadpole by Elizabeth Little
- Great: Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
- A few boring parts, but very good: The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson
- The sorrows of an American by Siri Hustvedt
- A little uneven, but hilarious in parts: Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
- Very funny: Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander
- Blindness by Jose Saramago
- Seeing by Jose Saramage
- Doesn't work as a coherent whole: Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks
- Very good: Four Souls by Lousie Erdrich
- Good: Towelhead by Alicia Erian
- Exciting spy novel: Robert Ludlum's Arctic Event by James Cobb
- The Age of Shiva by Manil Suri
- An immigrant's tale (first chapters are weak): The Promised Land by Mary Antin
- What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain
- Fun: The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith
- Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith
- The Right Attitude to Rain by Alexander McCall Smith
- By ex-head of MI5: At Risk by Stella Rimington
- The Pluto Files by Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Good: Secret Asset by Stella Rimington
- Best in series: The Careful Use of Compliments by Alexander McCall Smith
- Unfocussed: The Classics by Mary Beard
- Illegal Action by Stella Rimington
- The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday by Alexander McCall Smith
- Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire by Ruth Downie
- Good SF: The Postman by David Brin
- Very good and very diverse: The Boat by Nam Le
- Anywhen by James Blish
- Great plot: Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
- Excellent Nigerian short stories: The thing around your neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- No ghostwriter, and quite well written: Carrying the Fire; An Astronaut's Journey by Michael Collins
- Good, except for too many with the devil: The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol Translated by R Pevear and L Volokhonsky
- Good: Exit Music by Ian Rankin
- Pretty strange: Hindoo (sic) Holiday by J.R. Ackerley
- Interesting, but not well translated: Fordlandia: A Novel by Eduardo Sguiglia
- Some of the argument seem based on blind faith to capitalism, but there's a lot of interesting stuff here: Dead aid : why aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo
- Crime story with not-so-great writing: The Odds by Kathleen George
- Pretty good: The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley
- Unseen Diversity: The World of Bacteria by Betsey Dexter Dyer (¤)
- Excellent popular history: The Poison King by Adrienne Mayor
- Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (¤)
- Good, but incredibly melanchologenic: Olive Kittridge by Elizabeth Strout
- Very good: Silas Marner by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (¤)
- A slog, but interesting: Josephus, the essential writings : a condensation of Jewish antiquities and The Jewish wars by Paul L Maier
- Very entertaining: Lost City of Z by David Grann
- Stiff: The
Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
- A must read (but not for the writing): The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
- A very good inside look at "space tourism": My Dream of Stars by Anousheh Ansari and Homer Hickem
- Too dry: Into the Black: JPL and the American Space Program, 1976-2004 by Peter J. Westwick
- Walkin' the Dog by Walter Mosley
- Great view of post-WW2 Ethiopia: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
- Sphere by Michael Crichton
- Good: The Silk Road: Two thousand years in the heart of Asia by Frances Wood
- Great view of religion in India: Nine Lives by William Dalrymple
- Fun with interesting insights into the CIA: Intelligence by Susan Hassler
- Good: McKays Bees by Thomas MacMahon
- Hillarious: Strawberry Fields (Two Caravans) by Marina Lewycka
- Great historical novel: Pompeii by Robert Harris
- Pretty interesting (but old): The Medical Detectives by Berton Roueche
- Good: A history of tractors in Ukranian by Marina Lewycka
- Essays, many excellent: Best Science and Nature Writing 2011 (ed. Mary Roach)
- Some very interesting parts (plus many too-loosely connected digressions
and a poor attempt at a relating chapters to spacesuit layers):
Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo by Nicholas de de Monchaux
- Meh: The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A. J. Jacobs
- Excellent non=fiction: The lemon tree : an Arab, a Jew, and the heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan
- Fascinating and disturbing area of history I knew nothing about:
Ties that bind : the story of an Afro-Cherokee family in slavery and freedom by Tyla Miles
- Interesting non-linear account of the Trail of Tears: Pushing the bear : a novel of the Trail of Tears by Diane Glancy
- Not worth reading: In Pursuit of the Unknown (17 equations that changed the world) by Ian Stuart
- Very readable and interesting: Revelations : visions, prophecy, and politics in the book of Revelation by Elaine Pagels
- Good read of dysfunctional higher education: Straight Man by Richard Russo
- Excellent: The space between us : a novel by Thrity Umrigar.
- Fascinating historical fictions: As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg
- Typical, fun Robin Cook: Marker
- Unusual in a good way: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
- Some of these short stories are good: For the relief of unbearable urges by Nathan Englander
- Slow: Steel City Jews by Barbara Burstin
- Fun: Caveat Emptor by Ruth Downie
- Very good non-fiction: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
- Several intersting stories among typical Shattner vanity: Star Trek Memories by William Shatner
- Very funny: Lunatics by Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel
- Powerful and excellent: The Cellist of Sarjevo by Steven Galloway
- An OK novel about fundamentalism: We sinners by Hanna Pylväinen.
- Unlikely thriller is just OK: Viral : a novel by James Lilliefors.
- Erudite, but ulitmately unsatisfying: Phi, A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul by Giulio Tononi
- Bad: The Half-life of Facts by Samuel Arbesman
- Exciting: The Black Swan by Rafael Sabatini
- Very interesting: Island by Aldous Huxley
- Jungle Thriller: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
- Only a few are funny: 50 Funniest American Writers chosen by Andy Borowitz
My To-Read List
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