Here are 100 books that Adventures in the Bone Trade fans have personally recommended if you like
Adventures in the Bone Trade.
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As an autistic person, I was a deeply unhappy and anxious child, so naturally I grew up to be a goth, with scary stories becoming a way for me to manage my constant fear. The Gothic became one of my special interests, and something I’ve always enjoyed studying. Additionally, I’ve always loved imaginative, fantastical tales that helped me feel like I was escaping from the real world I hated (and honestly, still hate) so much. As a result, there’s a special place in my heart for books that combine the weird Gothic trappings I hold so dear with the action and magic of a fantastical adventure novel.
For me, Hyperion epitomizes the Gothic space opera.
It may not sound like it on the surface, with the book often being described as a sci-fi spin on the Canterbury Tales, but the devil’s in the details, and Hyperion has many details indeed, with each character’s story bringing us deeper into both their personal darkness and the darkness of the larger world: the labyrinthine Time Tombs; the Cruciform parasite that turns immortality into a curse; and of course, the eldritch godlike entity known as The Shrike.
As an easily-bored reader, I was floored by how easily Hyperion held my attention, as each of the characters’ stories not only made me care about them more, but also contributed to the adventure they shared...especially when it all came to a head in the sequel, Fall of Hyperion.
Spanning multiple worlds, time periods, and philosophical ideas, Hyperion has everything I want…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I have researched human origins professionally for almost decades by studying the trail of fossils that have survived millions of years. But, before then, and since I can remember, I’ve been a lover of adventure and science fiction stories in all formats: action movies (Indiana Jones, Back to the Future), TV shows (The X Files), novels (Jack London!), or anime and manga (Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Alita). So, I guess my mind constantly travels from the past to the future. I think this list will also work as a time machine for others.
Harari is better known by this book’s predecessor, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. However, I enjoyed this book much more. Why? I study human evolution, so even though I enjoyed how the author summarized human history in Sapiens, starting from prehistoric African times, I realized that some ideas are based on wrong or dated information.
However, this book builds on the last portion of Sapiens, the future of humankind. I love speculative hard science fiction, especially those that combine human evolution with dystopian futures. So, of course, I enjoyed this “non-fiction” book.
Sapiens showed us where we came from. In our increasingly uncertain times, Homo Deus shows us where we're going.
'Spellbinding' Guardian
The world-renowned historian and intellectual Yuval Noah Harari envisions a near future in which we face a new set of challenges. Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century and beyond - from overcoming death to creating artificial life.
It asks the fundamental questions: how can we protect this fragile world from our own destructive power? And what does our future hold?
I have researched human origins professionally for almost decades by studying the trail of fossils that have survived millions of years. But, before then, and since I can remember, I’ve been a lover of adventure and science fiction stories in all formats: action movies (Indiana Jones, Back to the Future), TV shows (The X Files), novels (Jack London!), or anime and manga (Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Alita). So, I guess my mind constantly travels from the past to the future. I think this list will also work as a time machine for others.
The editor (Max Brookman), who is also a prestigious book agent, compiles a collection of essays addressing sensitive questions about the future: climate change, human technological enhancement, or human extinction. The authors of the essays are all “rock stars” in different scientific fields, from theoretical physicist and philosopher Sean Carroll to paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati.
Continuing with my love for hard science fiction and the future of human evolution, I found the ideas presented in this book entertaining and thought-provoking while being educating.
Will climate change force a massive human migration to the Northern Rim?
How does our sense of morality arise from the structure of the brain?
What does the latest research in language acquisition tells us about the role of culture in the way we think?
What does current neurological research tell us about the nature of time?
This wide-ranging collection of never-before-published essays offers the very latest insights into the daunting scientific questions of our time. Its contributors—some of the most brilliant young scientists working today—provide not only an introduction to their cutting-edge research, but discuss the social, ethical, and…
Delve into this internationally best-selling series, now complete! A fast paced laugh-out-loud mix of Urban Fantasy and Mystery.
I can tell when you’re lying. Every. Single. Time. I’m Jinx, a PI hired to find a missing university student, I hope to find her propped up at a bar–yet my gut…
I have researched human origins professionally for almost decades by studying the trail of fossils that have survived millions of years. But, before then, and since I can remember, I’ve been a lover of adventure and science fiction stories in all formats: action movies (Indiana Jones, Back to the Future), TV shows (The X Files), novels (Jack London!), or anime and manga (Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Alita). So, I guess my mind constantly travels from the past to the future. I think this list will also work as a time machine for others.
I loved this book because it contains real-life, usable bits of wisdom from a curated list of 100+ writers (Neil Gaiman), athletes (Tony Hawk), entrepreneurs (Gary Vaynerchuck), and artists of all kinds (Mike D).
All these top performers provide their thoughtful answers to the author's seemingly superficial questions. Paraphrasing from the original list: “Which little purchase made a positive change in your life?” “Which book have you gifted the most?” “What little habit do you love?”. Does this format sound familiar?
We All Need Mentors. Here Are More than 100 of the World's Best. When facing life's questions, who do you turn to for advice? We all need mentors, particularly when the odds seem stacked against us. For this book, best-selling author Tim Ferriss tracked down more than 100 eclectic mentors to help him, and you, navigate life. Through short, action-packed profiles, he shares their secrets for success, happiness, meaning, and more. No matter the challenge or opportunity, something in these pages can help. You will learn: The three books legendary investor Ray Dalio recommends most often Lessons and tips from…
Like my narrator Maggie, I was a child, then a teen wandering the woods and dreaming of a life. I’ve always hated those books/TV shows/films where women, especially young women, are helpless and reliant on a man to get them out of trouble. I gravitate toward stories where females figure out their own paths, not always to a happy ending. I’m still a wanderer today, mostly solo, from New York City to the vast Highlands of Scotland, and while the world can seem scary, I’m confident and free on my own.
This is an incredibly intricate book, braiding many strands together to tell the story of people who “might be going to have lived a long, long time from now in Northern California.” One thread tying it all together is Stone Telling, a young girl caught between her mother’s rich tribal life and the militaristic city life of the man who is her father. She tells him, “I am a woman, and make my own choices,” but learns that is not the case in the land of the Condors. Her story illuminates two of the many ways to be human. (I’m re-reading this now.)
An "ethnographic" novel that portrays life in California's Napa Valley as it might be a very long time from now, imagined not as a high tech future but as a time of people once again living close to the land.
William Ophuls served as a Foreign Service Officer in Washington, Abidjan, and Tokyo before receiving a PhD in political science from Yale University in 1973. His Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity published in 1977 laid bare the ecological, social, and political challenges confronting modern industrial civilization. It was honored by the Kammerer and Sprout awards. After teaching briefly at Northwestern University, he became an independent scholar and author. He has since published a number of works extending and deepening his original argument, most prominently Requiem for Modern Politics in 1997, Plato’s Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology in 2011, and Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail in 2013.
Tainter makes a powerful and almost irrefutable case for complexity as the key to understanding both the rise and the fall of civilizations. In essence, complexity builds and builds until it is no longer manageable, so collapse ensues. That Tainter does not sufficiently appreciate the role that ecological limits, physical constraints, moral decline, and practical bungling can also play in the process does not detract from the power and utility of his argument. For these latter factors, see my own Immoderate Greatness.
Any explanation of political collapse carries lessons not just for the study of ancient societies, but for the members of all complex societies in both the present and future. Dr Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory that accounts for collapse among diverse kinds of societies, evaluating his model and clarifying the processes of disintegration by detailed studies of the Roman, Mayan and Chacoan collapses.
On the morning of December 26, 2004, an undersea earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean. The resulting tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people across fourteen countries, from Indonesia to Sri Lanka to Thailand to the Maldives to India and all the way to East Africa.…
I grew up in Yorkshire and spent many happy hours as a teenager wandering about the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, looking at giant Henry Moores in the rolling landscape. I subsequently trained as an art historian and have spent the last thirty years writing about art, from the YBAs to our prehistoric roots. A Little History of Art was borne out of this journey. Increasingly I have been drawn to researching what art can tell us about British history. My bookshelves groan with monographs but these five volumes have helped me think more deeply about Britain’s landscapes and its past. I hope they will do the same for you.
I first read this book when I was trying to pull together all the disparate locations, time periods, and art movements for my book.
This task was a little overwhelming and Digging Up Britaintaught me how to make choices about what to include and what to leave out, how to weave it all into a narrative that makes sense, and how to bring prehistory to life.
Unusually, this book travels back in time as we travel through it. It is like an archaeological dig – we start with the Vikings and then the Staffordshire Hoard but end up with the Star Carr deer hunters and a million years of history.
It is a book you can dip into or read cover to cover (as I did) and it has some good illustrations and maps throughout.
Britain has long been fascinated with its own history and identity, as an island nation besieged by invaders from beyond the seas: the Romans, Vikings and Normans. The long saga of prehistory is often forgotten - but our understanding of our past is changing.
Mike Pitts presents ten astounding archaeological discoveries that shed new light on those who came before us, and radically altered the way we think about our history. His compelling, sometimes teasing, archaeological odyssey illustrates the diversity, complexity and sheer strangeness of the lives that represent Britain's past.
I was lucky enough to have been taught Latin at school, and I remember my first teacher telling the class that a tandem bicycle was so called because Latin tandem means ‘at length’. That was the beginning with my fascination for words, etymologies, and languages. At University I was able to specialise in Greek, Latin, and Indo-European languages and then for my PhD I learnt Armenian (which has an alphabet to die for: 36 letters each of which has four different varieties, not counting ligatures!). I am now Professor of Comparative Philology at the University of Cambridge.
I remember reading this when it first came out and being unable to put it down. The Mayan decipherment is still ongoing, and Michael Coe wrote with the knowledge and expertise of someone on the front line of researchers. The decipherments of Hieroglyphic Egyptian and Linear B are usually told as ‘hero-narratives’, in which one individual’s genius was able to make the breakthrough. This book reminds us that all decipherments are made incrementally, and gives due space to the many different contributions made to a decipherment.
The Third Edition of this classic account of the inside story of one of the major intellectual breakthroughs of our time - the last great decipherment of an ancient script - revised and brought right up to date with the latest developments. 113 illustrations bring to life the people and texts that have enabled us to read the Maya script. The original edition, which sold over 40,000 copies in English, was hailed as 'a masterpiece that transcends the boundaries between academic and popular writing'. 'Coe's thrilling account of the cracking of Mayan is like a detective story ... great stuff'…
I love stories, and as a child I found that some of the best and most powerful stories I ever heard were those that people told about the past. When I grew up, I pursued a career as an academic archaeologist and historian, and I am now Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Vienna. But while I am of course interested in the past, in recent years I have been increasingly thinking about the politics of the past as well. Why do we choose to celebrate some stories about the past and not others? I have found these books all useful in helping me to think through this.
This more recent book focuses specifically on archaeology, which is my own area of expertise, and so I rushed to buy it when it first came out.
I don’t agree with absolutely everything in it, but it’s the mark of a good book if you come away with a head full of questions and exciting thoughts, which I definitely did with this one!
Archaeology, Nation, and Race is a must-read book for students of archaeology and adjacent fields. It demonstrates how archaeology and concepts of antiquity have shaped, and have been shaped by colonialism, race, and nationalism. Structured as a lucid and lively dialogue between two leading scholars, the volume compares modern Greece and modern Israel - two prototypical and influential cases - where archaeology sits at the very heart of the modern national imagination. Exchanging views on the foundational myths, moral economies, and racial prejudices in the field of archaeology and beyond, Hamilakis and Greenberg explore topics such as the colonial origins…
Nelson West, a former Chicago homicide detective, is hired by wealthy heir Lionel Bing to discreetly help “fix” scandals and legal problems for his father’s wealthy friends.
Bing, a brilliant but troubled investigator, suffers from PTSD symptoms as a result of being kidnapped and witnessing the murder of his mother…
When we were young and naughty, our parents only had to give my sister The Look, and she’d burst into tears. Me, I would stare right back at them and demand, “What?” Fiercely. In fact I often got in trouble for “arguing,” (when all I was really trying to do was make my case because I felt misunderstood). These days people describe me as someone who doesn’t care what other people think. I forge my own path, staunchly, proudly, and so I am drawn to heroines who do the same, who fly in the face of societal expectations to fight for truth and science and what is right.
I was taken by this book from the moment I read the description. An intrepid archaeologist and fossil hunter trespassing on the lands of a hermit who literally wants her to get off his lawn? What could possibly go wrong! In Effie we have another heroine who is interested in science, knows her own biology, and is quite willing to explore it with the right sort of man. She’s a virgin, but she’s not a wilting young flower. She’s more of a curious pragmatist. In Max we have another damaged hero, and oh my goodness I am a sucker for a hero with terrible events in his past which have left him with physical scars as well as mental ones. I also love a good grumpy sunshine trope.
After losing all he holds dear in a horrific fire, Max Aldersley, Earl of Rivenhall, shuns the world - until he catches Effie Nithercott digging holes on his estate! He banishes the intrepid archaeologist and the disturbing feelings she rouses within him. But she returns even more determined and infuriatingly desirable than before! He's determined she'll never reach the man beneath the scars...no matter how deep she digs!
