Here are 58 books that And the Birds Rained Down fans have personally recommended if you like
And the Birds Rained Down.
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As an engineer, scientist, and historian, Iâve always been fascinated by how science has always served the political goals of nations and empires. Today, we look at the Space Race to land a person on the Moon as a part of the Cold War effort to establish the intellectual and cultural dominance of the United States and the Soviet Union, even as it created new technologies and completely changed our understanding of the world. When I came across the Geodesic Mission to the Equator 1735-1744, I realized that even in the 18th century, voyages of discovery could do more than simply find new lands to conquer and exploitâthey could, and did extend our knowledge of nature and mankind.
Alexander von Humboldtâs name is synonymous with scientific discovery todayâthe Humboldt Current, the Humboldt Redwoods State Park, and countless species named for him. Humboldt revolutionized our modern understanding of the natural sciencesâgeology, biology, meteorology, and much elseâwith his epic five-year voyage that set off in 1799 and brought him through the Amazon, the Caribbean, and North and South America.Â
Like Malaspina before him, Humboldt studied not only the flora and fauna of these regions but also their peoples and the political turmoil that was building towards revolution. He met with the leaders of the timeâThomas Jefferson and SimĂłn BolĂvar among themâand opened their eyes to the richness of their lands. Unlike Malaspina, Humboldtâs works were published to wide acclaim and established the idea that all nature, including human nature, is interconnected.Â
WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2016
'A thrilling adventure story' Bill Bryson
'Dazzling' Literary Review
'Brilliant' Sunday Express
'Extraordinary and gripping' New Scientist
'A superb biography' The Economist
'An exhilarating armchair voyage' GILES MILTON, Mail on Sunday
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon.
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn theâŚ
I'm just a curious person. I have always been fascinated by literally everything. Everything is jaw-dropping: whether it's lying under a dark sky and marveling at the fact that what you see is the past (the time it takes for light from distant stars to reach your retina) or that your feelings for loved ones boil down to biochemistry, or thinking that intelligence is everywhereâfrom bacteria to plants and fungi, to Homo sapiens. As a university professor, I only understood later in life that I needed to leave that âivory tower,â listen to non-academics, and read popular books that, in their apparent simplicity, can reach further and deeper.
This book gave me the dose of reality I needed: a big slap in the face! Our way of feeling, suffering, and worrying about death is just one among many ways of facing it.
Put bluntly, we donât have an exclusivity agreement with life or death; we are simply another form of life on planet Earthâa much-needed blow.
How animals conceive of death and dying-and what it can teach us about our own relationships with mortality
When the opossum feels threatened, she becomes paralyzed. Her body temperature plummets, her breathing and heart rates drop to a minimum, and her glands simulate the smell of a putrefying corpse. Playing Possum explores what the opossum and other creatures can teach us about how we and other species understand mortality, and demonstrates that the concept of death, far from being a uniquely human attribute, is widespread in the animal kingdom.
With humor and empathy, Susana Monso tells the stories of antsâŚ
I'm just a curious person. I have always been fascinated by literally everything. Everything is jaw-dropping: whether it's lying under a dark sky and marveling at the fact that what you see is the past (the time it takes for light from distant stars to reach your retina) or that your feelings for loved ones boil down to biochemistry, or thinking that intelligence is everywhereâfrom bacteria to plants and fungi, to Homo sapiens. As a university professor, I only understood later in life that I needed to leave that âivory tower,â listen to non-academics, and read popular books that, in their apparent simplicity, can reach further and deeper.
I savored this book sip by sip, wishing that each chapter would have lasted a little longer, a little longer. I felt a âhealthy envyâ for anyone lucky enough to have had a teacher like Klein in high school.
Itâs impossible not to fall in love with the cosmos while reading his work. His ability to explain complex scientific concepts in an accessible and poetic manner is admirable.
Each chapter has given me an unforgettable early morning coffee, revealing at a pace the magic that science holds in every corner.
An eye-opening celebration of the marvels of space, time, the cosmos, and more
How to Love the Universe is a new kind of science writing by an author truly enamored of the world around him. In ten short chapters of lyrical proseâeach one an ode to a breathtaking realm of discoveryâStefan Klein uses everyday objects and events as a springboard to meditate on the beauty of the underlying science.
Klein sees in a single rose the sublime interdependence of all life; a day of stormy weather points to the worldâs unpredictability; a marble conjures the birth of the cosmos. AsâŚ
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa storiesâall reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argueâŚ
I'm just a curious person. I have always been fascinated by literally everything. Everything is jaw-dropping: whether it's lying under a dark sky and marveling at the fact that what you see is the past (the time it takes for light from distant stars to reach your retina) or that your feelings for loved ones boil down to biochemistry, or thinking that intelligence is everywhereâfrom bacteria to plants and fungi, to Homo sapiens. As a university professor, I only understood later in life that I needed to leave that âivory tower,â listen to non-academics, and read popular books that, in their apparent simplicity, can reach further and deeper.
Wow, what can I say about this little gem? It still makes me dizzy to think of myself as a sort of âintracellular organelleâ belonging to the great organism Gaia. Can more be said in fewer pages and with such humility from the master?
I recall the words of physicist Richard Feynman (which, incidentally, Klein quotes in my previous recommendation) when he says something like If you think you understand quantum mechanics, that can only mean that you donât truly understand quantum mechanics.
Well, how can you not love Lovelock, who, after more than 50 years since he first proposed the Gaia hypothesis, admits that after the first decade or so, he still didnât really understand it himself? There canât be a more pedagogical pocketbook that you can read at a bus stop. Lovelock had to have come very far to explain it all so well and in so fewâŚ
In twenty short books, Penguin brings you the classics of the environmental movement.
James Lovelock's We Belong to Gaia draws on decades of wisdom to lay out the history of our remarkable planet, to show that it is not ours to be exploited - and warns us that it is fighting back.
Over the past 75 years, a new canon has emerged. As life on Earth has become irrevocably altered by humans, visionary thinkers around the world have raised their voices to defend the planet, and affirm our place at the heart of its restoration. Their words have endured throughâŚ
Between the two of us, we have written over a dozen books and won numerous prizes. Wilson, when not writing critically-acclaimed music or explaining how to catch a haggis, has received the Ontario Historical Associationâs Joseph Brant Award for King Alphaâs Song in a Strange Land.Reid, who wisely passed up the chance of a law career in order to play an extra year of soccer, received the C. P. Stacey Award for African Canadians in Union Blue. Both writers believe that sports offer a valuable lens by which to examine a societyâs core values.
Canadians have long worried about their national identity. Indeed, some have considered whether or not there even is one.
Poulter, in her innovative and stimulating book, examines an early attempt in the mid-nineteenth century to create an imagined Canadian identity. Wishing to distance themselves from a quintessential âBritishâ identity, second-generation Montreal Anglophones were searching for a new way to identify. They saw themselves as ânative Canadiansâ.
To solidify this identity, they pursued, as Poulter explained, ânational attributes, or visual icons, that came to be recognized at home and abroad as distinctly âCanadian.ââ It meant, in practice, taking up propriate costumes and sports such as snowshoeing, tobogganing, winter hunting, and lacrosse. All of these activities â undertaken in sartorially correct attire â had previously been the preserve of the Indigenous and French Canadians. Here, was an Englishness reimagined on a frozen landscape.
By imposing perceived British attributes of order, discipline, andâŚ
How did British colonists in Victorian Montreal come to think of themselves as "native Canadian"? This richly illustrated work reveals that colonists adopted, then appropriated, Aboriginal and French Canadian activities such as hunting, lacrosse, snowshoeing, and tobogganing. In the process, they constructed visual icons that were recognized at home and abroad as distinctly "Canadian." This new Canadian nationality mimicked indigenous characteristics but ultimately rejected indigenous players, and championed the interests of white, middle-class, Protestant males who used their newly acquired identity to dominate the political realm. English Canadian identity was not formed solely by emulating what was British; this bookâŚ
I was fascinated by American True Crime magazines from an early age. I used to buy them with my pocket money from a second-hand bookstore near my home. I graduated to reading novels by the age of ten, sneaking my fatherâs book collection into my bedroom one at a time to read after lights out. His books covered everything from The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins to The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley. By seventeen, I promised myself Iâd write a novel one day. Most of my books are crime themed with a supernatural flavour. My debut, The Sister was published in 2013 and since then Iâve completed three more novels and several short stories.
I must have read this book at least half a dozen times over the years. Trevanian was the author of The Eiger Sanction, which became a film starring Clint Eastwood and served as my introduction to Trevanian.
Set in Montreal, this character-driven novel centres around a world-weary detective named LaPointe and the characters on his beat. Close to retirement, Lapointe finds himself on the trail of a killer. Will he catch him before his own past catches up with him? Itâs a great story.
Masterpiece' WASHINGTON POST--'The Main held me from the opening page' CHICAGO TRIBUNE--'The only writer of airport paperbacks to be compared to Zola, Ian Fleming, Poe and Chaucer' NEW YORK TIMES--'A literary jester, a magnificent tale-teller, whose range of interests was vast and whose scope for bafflement was formidable.' INDEPENDENT--'Trevanian's sharply tuned sense of character and milieu gives the book a vivid life granted to only the finest of serious fiction.' WASHINGTON POST The Main is Montreal's teeming underworld, where the dark streets echo with cries in a dozen languages, with the quick footsteps of thieves and the whispers of prostitutes.âŚ
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother hadâŚ
I chose these books because a theme in my writing is standing up, and being a champion for things that get forgotten â books, music, events, people. Also, for anyone who has done investigative reporting, the sense is always like youâre going down a rabbit hole and penetrating a dark, undiscovered country. Also â and I donât think many people know this â I was an English Lit major in college at the University of Toronto. In my early days I did a lot of reading, on a disparate field of interests.Â
Thatâs right, a cookbook. Julian Armstrong was the long-time food editor for The Montreal Gazette, Quebecâs largest English-language newspaper. I lean heavily on this book to re-connect with my French heritage. What I love about A Taste of Quebec is its economy â one page, a short description, a list of ingredients with measurements, and a small insert telling you where the recipe originated and a little about that region. Thatâs it, on to the next page. Unlike online recipes â which can be convenient â there are no ads or long narratives about the authorâs personal and complicated relationship with fennel.Â
Iâm an American-born cartoonist whoâs been living and working in Montreal since 2015. My mother is from Quebec, and when I immigrated here I was looking to reconnect with my cultural roots. Reading graphic novels from here was a huge part of how I got to know my adopted community. I might be a bit biased, but I have to say Quebec has one of the worldâs most vibrant comic arts scenes; a blend of American comic books mixed with Franco-Belgian bande dessinĂŠe. With more and more graphic novels from Quebec getting translated into English youâre sure to find something youâll dig, whether youâre looking for slice-of-life or science fiction.
Whatâs worse than a Montreal winter? How about four straight years of Montreal winter! While a nuclear power plant melting down and blanketing the metropolis with irradiated snow might seem like a horrible situation, Cab plays this apocalypse for laughs. Gertrude, a superhumanly-strong, snowmobile-piloting delivery driver, has to face off against irradiated beasts, gargantuan snowflakes, and even the withering scorn of fashionable Mile End hipsters. Maniacally creative and drawn with a light touch.
Nothing's rougher than a Canadian winter . . . except maybe one that never ends!
It's been nine years since an accident at a nuclear power plant plunged Montreal into an eternal winter; the city is now blanketed 365 days a year in radioactive snow. But life goes on for folks like Flavie Beaumont, a mail courier on snowmobile who's carved out a pretty normal life for herself, despite mutant crushes, eclectic urban fauna, and unrelenting meteorological events of unprecedented force. It turns out surviving nuclear winter is hard . . . but it's possible surviving your twenties is evenâŚ
I hold a Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults. In addition to the usual two-year program, I studied an extra semester, where I read all the best childrenâs books about friendship. I wanted to learn how the great authors such as A. A. Milne, James Marshall, and Arnold Lobel wrote stories full of so much heart and humor. My love of friendship stories burgeoned from there. And now, itâs with great delight that I offer you my Best Childrenâs Books About Friendshipâand, of course, my very own friendship story, Big Bear and Little Fish.
The Lion and the Bird is the perfect friendship book for quiet times, for easing into the day after just waking up or for calming down when itâs time to say goodnight. Adults and children alike, will be drawn into this sweet story, where the lion discovers an injured bird, nurses it back to health, then waits for it to return the next year. The combination of the gentle text with the charming illustrations makes my heart swell every time.
One autumn day, a lion finds a wounded bird in his garden. With the departure of the bird's flock, the lion decides that it's up to him to care for the bird. He does and the two become fast friends. Nevertheless, the bird departs with his flock the following autumn. What will become of Lion and what will become of their friendship? Note: some pages in this book are intentionally blank to represent snow. Marianne Dubuc received her degree in graphic design from the University of Quebec, Montreal. She has created many different kinds of books for readers of allâŚ
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to runâŚ
Iâm an American-born cartoonist whoâs been living and working in Montreal since 2015. My mother is from Quebec, and when I immigrated here I was looking to reconnect with my cultural roots. Reading graphic novels from here was a huge part of how I got to know my adopted community. I might be a bit biased, but I have to say Quebec has one of the worldâs most vibrant comic arts scenes; a blend of American comic books mixed with Franco-Belgian bande dessinĂŠe. With more and more graphic novels from Quebec getting translated into English youâre sure to find something youâll dig, whether youâre looking for slice-of-life or science fiction.
No list of Quebecois graphic novels would be complete without an entry from Michel Rabagliatiâs excellent Paul series, which is a beloved publishing phenomenon in the province. In all honesty, you canât go wrong with any of his books, each volume in Rabagliatiâs semi-autobiographical series offers a discrete tale of a different moment in his alter-ego Paulâs life, from light childhood adventures through very intense stories of middle age, so you can easily pick up any of them and go from there. This emotionally rich stand-alone volume (the basis of the 2015 film Paul Ă QuĂŠbec) explores the life and death of the protagonistâs gruff father-in-law and is a deep exploration of family, history, and legacy that is truly moving.
The Song of Roland focuses on the life and death of the father-in-law of Rabagliatiâs alter-ego Paul, who has been called âThe Tintin of Quebecâ By Le Devoir. The French edition, Paul Ă QuĂŠbec, was critically hailed, winning the FNAC Audience Award at Franceâs Angouleme festival, a Shuster Award for Outstanding Cartoonist, and was nominated for the City of Montrealâs Grand Prize, and the Audience Award at Montrealâs Salon du Livre. The book is currently in production by Caramel Films. In his classic European cartooning style Rabagliati effortlessly tackles big subjects. As the family stands vigil over Roland in hisâŚ
