Here are 100 books that 2021 Night Sky Almanac fans have personally recommended if you like
2021 Night Sky Almanac.
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My journey into astronomy began with a small and rickety telescope purchased at a local pharmacy. I found it fascinating to observe the Moon and Saturn with their rings using such meager equipment. I decided to share these views with others by writing my first book, 50 Things to See with a Small Telescope, an easy-to-understand beginner’s guide which I self-published and sold through Amazon starting in 2013. I have since published a number of other books on space for children. Besides writing, I work as the telescope operator at Burke-Gaffney Observatory. In 2020 I was awarded the Simon Newcomb Award for excellence in science communication.
This classic book is a veritable encyclopedia of stargazing knowledge, including telescope operation, celestial mechanics, and astrophotography. Terence brings his decades of stargazing experience to bear, offering tips and tricks that will push your backyard observations to the next level. Even if you only have binoculars, this book contains more than enough stargazing activities to keep you busy for years.
The first three editions of NightWatch sold more than 600,000 copies, making it the top-selling stargazing guide in the world for the last 20 years. The key feature of this classic title is the section of star charts that are cherished by backyard astronomers everywhere. Each new edition has outsold the previous one because of thorough revisions and additional new material.
NightWatch has been acclaimed as the best general interest introduction to astronomy. The fourth edition has improvements over the 3rd edition in every chapter, including: The famous charts, ideal for stargazers using a small telescope or binoculars; A complete…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
My journey into astronomy began with a small and rickety telescope purchased at a local pharmacy. I found it fascinating to observe the Moon and Saturn with their rings using such meager equipment. I decided to share these views with others by writing my first book, 50 Things to See with a Small Telescope, an easy-to-understand beginner’s guide which I self-published and sold through Amazon starting in 2013. I have since published a number of other books on space for children. Besides writing, I work as the telescope operator at Burke-Gaffney Observatory. In 2020 I was awarded the Simon Newcomb Award for excellence in science communication.
Turn Left at Orion is arguably the most famous stargazing book of all time. This book dives deep into the nuances of amateur astronomy, from choosing the right stargazing location, to combatting dew on your lenses, and cleaning your optics. In addition to detailed star maps customized for various types of telescopes, it is filled with tables, listing literally thousands of potential stargazing targets for those blessed with dark skies, far from city lights.
With over 150,000 copies sold since its first publication, this is one of the most popular astronomy books of all time. This unique guidebook to the night sky shows you how to observe a host of celestial wonders. Its distinct format of object-by-object spreads illustrates how deep-sky objects and planets actually look through a small telescope, while its large pages and spiral binding allow for use outside. Along with updated star names and astronomical information, this new edition provides links to a dedicated webpage with up-to-date tables and images, and an improved planets chapter. The many Dobsonian-friendly images and small…
My journey into astronomy began with a small and rickety telescope purchased at a local pharmacy. I found it fascinating to observe the Moon and Saturn with their rings using such meager equipment. I decided to share these views with others by writing my first book, 50 Things to See with a Small Telescope, an easy-to-understand beginner’s guide which I self-published and sold through Amazon starting in 2013. I have since published a number of other books on space for children. Besides writing, I work as the telescope operator at Burke-Gaffney Observatory. In 2020 I was awarded the Simon Newcomb Award for excellence in science communication.
When you stargaze almost every night, you’re always looking for new targets. There comes a point in your astronomy career when it’s time to move up at a star atlas, which has well, pretty much everything there is to see in a backyard telescope! This book includes season star maps for both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, as well as basic lunar maps.
Unlike my beginner stargazing books, which typically feature a single target per page, each chart in this book features several hundred targets. Note that most of the included galaxies are only visible from the darkest skies, far from city lights. So, be sure to have that red flashlight on hand and get ready for a busy night!
This classic star atlas is ideal for both beginning astronomers and more experienced observers worldwide. The clear, full-color maps show stars, clusters and galaxies visible with binoculars or a small telescope. The atlas also features constellation boundaries and the Milky Way, and lists objects that are interesting to observe. This new edition features a clearer map of the Moon's surface, showing craters and features; a second Moon map, mirror reversed for users of telescopes with star diagonals; enhanced index charts showing the constellations more clearly; and a new data table listing stars hosting planetary systems. It is now spiral bound,…
Jake Sledge, a rugged ex-cop turned private eye, teams up with his colossal partner Bobo to navigate the gritty streets of River City.
A murdered lawyer drags them into a web of political intrigue, neo-Nazi thugs, and bloody showdowns. With sharp wit and hard-hitting action, Jake tackles scumbags the only…
My journey into astronomy began with a small and rickety telescope purchased at a local pharmacy. I found it fascinating to observe the Moon and Saturn with their rings using such meager equipment. I decided to share these views with others by writing my first book, 50 Things to See with a Small Telescope, an easy-to-understand beginner’s guide which I self-published and sold through Amazon starting in 2013. I have since published a number of other books on space for children. Besides writing, I work as the telescope operator at Burke-Gaffney Observatory. In 2020 I was awarded the Simon Newcomb Award for excellence in science communication.
Stargazers find out pretty quickly that the Moon can be a nuisance. After first quarter, the Moon illuminates the entire sky, and washing out all but the brightest stars and deep-sky objects like galaxies and nebulae. Seasoned astronomers soon learn that if the Moon is up, it’s what you should be observing! The challenge is to appreciate what you’re seeing.
When I was doing research for my book, 50 things to see on the Moon, I observed the Moon every chance I got, making notes about what I saw. But early on, I had no idea what I was looking at! This lunar atlas helped me appreciate the Moon’s topography, geography, geology, and so much more.
On most nights and days, the Moon is visible somewhere in the sky. For many, simply noticing it is a pleasure, yet it is also a fascinating world of craters, mountains, and volcanoes worthy of a closer look. The 21st Century Atlas of the Moon is uniquely designed for the backyard, amateur astronomer. As an indispensable guide to telescopic moon observation, it can be used at the telescope or as a desk reference. It is both accessible to the novice and valuable to the expert. With over two hundred Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images, the highest quality images of the moon…
I wholeheartedly believe that embracing your geeky side is an important part of life and self-discovery. When romance novels incorporate nerdiness, it gives characters (and therefore readers) the ability to understand themselves and what they want on another level, and to gain the courage to pursue what they want. I know that my own forays into TTRPGs, LARPing, Ren Faires, and other such interests have helped shape me as a person. I’m more confident and embodied because I embrace my inner geek, and I want that for my characters and my readers, too. That’s why I want to read and write as many of these stories as possible!
This rom-com is as lighthearted and fun as it gets, but it maintains the nerdy bent we’re all here for. I love LARPing, and this book paints it in the most exciting light! I loved how Daisy used her alter ego, Lade Alenthaea, on her journey to growth, and how this story kept the agency around her personal growth firmly in Daisy’s own hands.
She's no damsel in distress, and he's certainly not wearing shining armour. But one knight can change everything...
Daisy Hastings has always thought she was born in the wrong era. So when she bags a summer job at the Tower of London helping to run their Knight school, it feels like a step in the right direction.
Theodore 'Teddy' Fairfax is a loose cannon. A disgraced distant relative of the royal family, he's tall, dark and now (begrudgingly) helping with the Tower of London's summer programme - and there's nowhere he'd like to be less.
I’m a journalist in Edmonton, Canada, who covered former premier Jason Kenney’s rise through Alberta politics, in which he tapped into the populist zeitgeist of Donald Trump and Brexit, and his eventual implosion. I have a newsletter on Substack, "The Orchard," where I cover the intersection of politics, the media, and corporate power. Through my journalism, I’ve developed a keen interest in this age of mass discontent we find ourselves in, with right-wing political and economic elites promising to blow up the entire system they embody while feckless liberal politicians seek to tinker around the edges to make the established order more palatable.
I regard Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the embodiment of an empty progressive politics that is far more concerned with style over substance.
Martin Lukacs does a great job in The Trudeau Formula of outlining how Trudeau’s combination of soaring rhetoric and tepid reform on issues like economic inequality, Indigenous reconciliation, and the climate crisis works to stave off the more systemic changes needed to address these concerns in a substantive way.
Lukacs aptly demonstrates how Trudeau serves to uphold the status quo while presenting himself as an agent of transformative change.
"The book is not a biography of Justin Trudeau, nor is it a treatment of the minutiae and manoeuvres of party politics. It is an investigation into how the Liberal government governs in the shadow of a silent, multi-decade corporate coup in Ottawa that dares not speak its name. It tells the hidden history of how the Liberal party has served as the most effective vehicle for implementing deeply unpopular neoliberal policies--and how Justin Trudeau continues this agenda today."--
Caroline Herschel has always lived in the shadows. Beholden to her wildly popular older brother, William, who rescued her from servitude, she's worked hard to build a life for herself – one where she can go unnoticed and repay the debt she believes she owes him. But when her brother…
I am a compulsive reader and writer of speculative fiction, in love with the genre’s capacity to extrapolate our present social, economic and technological into horrifying/astonishing futures. That being said, I need strong writing and compelling characters to pull me into a world and make it feel lived in and real. It’s this kind of emotional realism that I seek out as a reader and try to create as an author.
A generational ship fallen to ruin and tribalism? Sign me up! Roy spares no effort in bringing to life his vivid, action-packed book. The fun here is less the characters than the world-building and how artfully the past is revealed plot-point by plot-point like a delicious sci-fi strip-tease. Plus, Roy drew the shit out of this book.
1
author picked
Habitat
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
16, and
17.
What is this book about?
All his life, Hank Cho wanted to join the ranks of the Habsec - the rulers
of the orbital habitat his people call home. But when he finds a powerful,
forbidden weapon from the deep past, a single moment of violence sets his life -
and the brutal society of the habitat - into upheaval. Hunted by the
cannibalistic Habsec and sheltered by former enemies, Cho finds himself caught
within a civil war that threatens to destroy his world.
A new barbarian
sci-fi adventure from SIMON ROY (Prophet, Jan's Atomic Heart, Tiger Lung).
Collecting installments originally serialized in ISLAND MAGAZINE…
I was born in Mumbai, lived in Kolkata for most of my life, and am an educator and poet who lives in the US. I am a Bene Israel Jew from India. As a child, I was fascinated by all kinds of literature, mythology, folktales, and stories. I have been influenced by everything around me. My passion for literature probably inspired me to become a teacher and later a writer who is constantly exploring, creating, re-imagining, and evolving. My books are about the immigrant experience, displacement, racism, women’s issues, nature, the animal kingdom, to name a few. But within these themes, I also explore identity and belonging, death, loss and recovery.
Ayelet Tsabari’s stunning memoir is all about departure, wandering, displacement, identity, and belonging. As a Mizrahi, or non-European Jew, and a minority in Israeli society and culture, she establishes herself as a powerful voice for emigrants and minorities and speaks truth to power.
In the West, Ashkenazi Jewish culture dominates, and most people are ignorant of, and/or quite indifferent to, the myriad Jewish communities of the world and their complex and rich cultures. Her experiences in the Israeli army, her travels, her difficult relationships, her escape from trauma and pain as she enters into different worlds, and how she makes peace with herself. She focuses on those like herself on the margins of Israeli society and exposes the misogyny and discrimination she and other immigrants like herself experience on a daily basis.
Many of the aspects she writes about resonate deeply with me as an Indian immigrant in the US,…
An intimate memoir in essays by an award-winning Israeli writer who travels the world, from New York to India, searching for love, belonging, and an escape from grief following the death of her father when she was a young girl
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS
This searching collection opens with the death of Ayelet Tsabari’s father when she was just nine years old. His passing left her feeling rootless, devastated, and driven to question her complex identity as an Israeli of Yemeni descent in a country that suppressed and devalued her ancestors’ traditions.…
I was born and raised as both an anglophone Canadian and a diaspora Jew. After living in Montreal, Jerusalem, and New York for a total of about 15 years, I returned to my hometown of Toronto and took up the position of the J. Richard Shiff Chair for the Study of Canadian Jewry at York University, where I work as a professor of history. I teach undergraduate students, graduate students, fellow academics, community leaders, and the wide public about all sorts of dimensions of this very religiously diverse, culturally diverse, socio-economically diverse, and politically diverse community of 400,000+ souls, with its 260+-year-old history.
This collection of Canadian Jewish fiction gave me 33 different short fiction, personal essays, and poetry windows into the hearts and minds, longings, fears, and dreams of Canadian Jews.
I can’t think of another volume that captures so much life at the intersection of Jewish literary vitality and Canadian content–understood liberally. I think I was most moved by David Bezmozgis’ and Isa Milman’s contributions.
The New Spice Box includes short fiction, personal essays, and poetry by Jewish writers from a broad range of cultural backgrounds. Fresh and relevant, profound and lasting, this anthology features works by acclaimed short story writers David Bezmozgis, Mireille Silcoff, and Ayelet Tsabari; groundbreaking memoirists Bernice Eisenstein and Alison Pick; and award-winning poets Isa Milman, Jacob Scheier, and Adam Sol.
The driving force behind The New Spice Box is the desire to uncover the twin touchstones of original expression and writerly craft, and to balance the representation of genres, styles, and authorial perspectives. Here, authors summon the past as they…
Rodney Bradford comes into Lindsay's restaurant, offers to buy her small house for double its value, eats her brownies, and drops dead on the sidewalk in front. Next, her almost-ex-husband offers to sign the divorce papers, but only if she'll give him her small,…
My passion for whimsy is assuredly the result of my mama’s efforts to cultivate an environment where imaginative play and creativity were nurtured. I was raised on a steady diet of whimsical children’s literature—green eggs and ham in a box with a fox, pots of hunny with a silly old bear, and forbidden radishes with a naughty rabbit. As I grew up, I drank raspberry cordial with bosom friends and sipped tea with a fawn I met by a lamppost. Now, I’m still drawn to whimsy of all sorts because along with imaginative scope, I find it also broadens one’s joy. May these books bring you much joy, dear reader!
When curating a list of whimsical book recommendations, one must surely start with the epitome of whimsy herself, Miss Anne Shirley!
With her big words, vast scope for imagination, and appreciation for nature's marvels, Anne with an E is one of my favorite fictional bosom friends. A true kindred spirit, I could visit daily without tiring of her poetical musings.
I love how Anne matures as a character while still maintaining her sense of wonder, and I love how her wonder—her whimsical ability to see a simple lake as an enchanting Lake of Shining Waters—inspires me to romance my own life and search for the wondrous cloaked in the familiar.
Anne of Green Gables is the classic children's book by L M Montgomery, the inspiration for the Netflix Original series Anne with an E. Watch it now!
Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert are in for a big surprise. They are waiting for an orphan boy to help with the work at Green Gables - but a skinny, red-haired girl turns up instead. Feisty and full of spirit, Anne Shirley charms her way into the Cuthberts' affection with her vivid imagination and constant chatter. It's not long before Anne finds herself in trouble, but soon it becomes impossible for the Cuthberts to…
