Here are 100 books that Galápagos fans have personally recommended if you like
Galápagos.
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Sci-fi has been part of my life since Sunday afternoons in front of the radio listening to Journey to the Moon and the original Quatermass serial. Then it was Doctor Who and Star Trek. Despite this, I have never written a serious sci-fi book until now, but I can boast of knowing all the characters in both the radio and TV sci-fi shows. I guess I can admit to being a Trekkie.
This book tells a strong story about censorship and has perhaps a "light" dystopian feel.
I liked this book because Bradbury’s characters are well drawn and, like Orwell, he creates a strong story. It reminded me of past events in the 30’s. A fireman, following orders to confiscate and destroy books because the authority does not want people to develop constructive thinking. Gradually turning against his boss, the fireman kills his boss and joins a group of people who memorise books and store content for the future.
I found this a thought-provoking story and hope that, considering the censorship laws we have today at home and in countries like Russia and Iran, this is one story that does not come true.
The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen.
Over 1 million copies sold in the UK.
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.
“Creditable 1st novel” – Margaret Atwood (on Twitter/X )
“The product of an amazing new talent” – Quill & Quire
Italy, September, 1944.
As Allied armies close in on the retreating armies of the Third Reich, Captain Jim McFarlane, a Canadian infantry officer, is coming apart at the seams. He…
My first true religion was being a boy alone in the woods and feeling a deep connection to nature in all its aspects. I felt a connection with all life and knew myself to be an animal—and gloried in it. Since then, I've learned how vigorously humans fight our animal nature, estranging us from ourselves and the planet. Each of these books invites us to get over ourselves and connect with all life on Earth.
I knew the film Blade Runner before I read this, the novel upon which it's based, but I was not prepared for the richer complexities of the novel.
My favorite parts of the novel, a bizarre new religion and the extinction of all but human and animal life, barely make it into the film. Even the androids, built to be slaves, are much more nuanced and complex than in the film. I loved the conclusion of the book, which affirms the beauty of life, both natural and mechanical.
As the eagerly-anticipated new film Blade Runner 2049 finally comes to the screen, rediscover the world of Blade Runner . . .
World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser weapon, he dreamed of owning a live animal - the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life.
Then Rick got his chance: the assignment to kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But in Deckard's world things were…
Journeys of discovery are my favorite kind of story and my favorite vehicle for (mental) travel. From Gilgamesh to last week’s bestseller, they embody how we live and learn: we go somewhere, and something happens. We come home changed and tell the tale. The tales I love most take me where the learning is richest, perhaps to distant, exotic places—like Darwin’s Galapagos—perhaps deep into the interior of a completely original mind—like Henry Thoreau’s. I cannot live without such books. Amid the heartbreak of war, greed, disease, and all the rest, they remind me in a most essential way of humanity’s redemptive capacity for understanding and wonder.
This is a hero’s journey, right out of Joseph Campbell: a young man goes to sea, circumnavigates the globe, and experiences marvel after marvel of nature. What he learns on his journey matures into a kind of wisdom that transforms the world.
Darwin’s adventures keep me on the edge of my seat; his descriptions seduce me; his ideas inspire me. I want to be there with him as he recoils from the horrors of slavery in Brazil or observes the aftermath of a Chilean earthquake. And I feel I truly am with him, collecting birds and lizards on the islands of the Galapagos, as he begins to divine the answer to one of the greatest mysteries of the world.
Charles Darwin's travels around the world as an independent naturalist on HMS Beagle between 1831 and 1836 impressed upon him a sense of the natural world's beauty and sublimity which language could barely capture. Words, he said, were inadequate to convey to those who have not visited the inter-tropical regions, the sensation of delight which the mind experiences'.
Yet in a travel journal which takes the reader from the coasts and interiors of South America to South Sea Islands, Darwin's descriptive powers are constantly challenged, but never once overcome. In addition, The…
When Walter Shore is murdered by Armenian mobsters, he returns as a Chihuahua seeking good karma while his shady producer brother Barry entangles a screenwriter in dangerous schemes.
My greatest passion? Human nature and the endless cycles we repeat, different on the surface yet identical at their core. We build systems, cultures, and rules, destroy them, then rebuild everything in remarkably similar forms, as though we possessed no memory of the past. I have studied human nature throughout my life, but this passion took shape at university through cultural anthropology and comparative theology. Over thirty years, it has guided my work in developing human potential and talent, and has been refined further through working with thousands of people from more than 200 countries and territories. It is now the lens through which I write speculative fiction.
Not everything that seems harmful does us harm, and not everything that seems good does us good.
I love books that make me reconsider the world I live in, and although Brave New World was published in 1932, its use of empty entertainment, sex, drugs, and medicated happiness as instruments of social control feels startlingly contemporary.
In dystopias built around punishment, power forces people to obey; here, pleasure makes them willing. The Romans already understood this through panem et circenses, and I see the same mechanism around us today. We fail to notice the cage because we are too busy seeking it out and locking ourselves inside.
This book broadened my perspective and taught me to look at apparent comforts with more suspicious eyes.
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**
EVERYONE BELONGS TO EVERYONE ELSE. Read the dystopian classic that inspired the hit Sky TV series.
'A masterpiece of speculation... As vibrant, fresh, and somehow shocking as it was when I first read it' Margaret Atwood, bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale.
Welcome to New London. Everybody is happy here. Our perfect society achieved peace and stability through the prohibition of monogamy, privacy, money, family and history itself. Now everyone belongs.
You can be happy too. All you need to do is take your Soma pills.
I grew up when the space race was starting, and I became fascinated by all things regarding the planets, rockets, and the cosmos. For several years, I lived in the Houston area and spent hours and hours at the Johnson Space Center, where the history and future of space exploration are on display. The books on my list represent a major theme in my writing, which is futuristic in concept and asks the question: what we would do if our planet became uninhabitable. The answer provides the canvas to explore the advantages of technology, but most importantly, the determination of the human spirit.
I love this book because it blends real science with an incredibly human story about survival and connection.
Andy Weir makes complex physics feel accessible, while still keeping the stakes intense and the pacing fast. What really stands out for me is the unexpected friendship at the heart of the story—it turns what could have been a solitary mission into something deeply emotional.
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through…
I grew up near Darwin’s house in Kent. Although only vaguely aware of his influence. My interest grew as I studied biology at school and geology at university. The evolutionary significance of Darwin’s finches stayed with me. I longed to sail in tropical waters like him and was fortunate enough to do so in the iconic Galápagos Islands. I was employed as a resident naturalist guide on yachts when tourism was just starting to take off. Instead of settling down to a regular job I became a tour leader. I wrote an educational book about the islands and then with a colleague Pete Oxford, the wildlife guide for Bradt.
Many people don't realise that the Galápagos Islands are inhabited. Settlers began to arrive in the middle of the 20th century. Before that, there were pirates, convicts, and oddballs, then pioneers from Europe.
In the 1930s five brothers, the Angermeyers, arrived, fleeing Hitler's Germany. I met Johanna Angermeyer, whose father was one of those brothers. Little did I know the amazing story behind how she got there. Johanna grew up in California, her mother once married to an Ecuadorian pilot. He died in a plane crash, then she had a romance with one of the brothers in Quito, but he died too.
She decided to visit the Galápagos Islands with her mother. They stayed, living a Robinson Crusoe life. Her story tells how hard it was. Later, Johanna met a British sailor and decided to settle. He was crew on the first sailing boats that took tourists around the enchanted…
This is the story of Johanna Angermeyer-Fox's search for her family, part adventure story, part detective story which culminates in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. It is a fascinating account of the pleasures and hardships of living in one of the world's most remote places.
Stories, essays & dialogues about art, imagination & the erotic life. A young man named Charles writes a series of erotic tales, and his bookish friend Lisa offers light-hearted critiques of them.
Some stories feel like erotic meditations or random erotic moments in a young man's life. Others start with…
I’m an animal behaviorist who's passionate about understanding the evolution of life on this blue marble we call home. Behavior in nonhumans comes in all shapes and sizes, from cooperation to dominance, from play to fighting, from feeding to avoiding being fed upon, from finding a home to defending that home, from choosing your mate to raising your offspring, and much more. Over the last four decades, I have been fortunate enough to study many of these behaviors in both the lab and the field. I savor the opportunity to share, with anyone and everyone, what I have learned from that work and from the work of so many of my devoted and brilliant colleagues.
I savored Weiner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book chronicling the work of Peter and Rosemary Grant on the mating behavior, and so much more, of finches in the Galápagos Islands.
You’ll feel as if you are there with these modern-day Darwins as they uncover the private lives of birds that have played such a seminal role in evolutionary biology.
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A dramatic story of groundbreaking scientific research of Darwin's discovery of evolution that "spark[s] not just the intellect, but the imagination" (Washington Post Book World).
“Admirable and much-needed.... Weiner’s triumph is to reveal how evolution and science work, and to let them speak clearly for themselves.”—The New York Times Book Review
On a desert island in the heart of the Galapagos archipelago, where Darwin received his first inklings of the theory of evolution, two scientists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, have spent twenty years proving that Darwin did not know the strength of his own theory.…
I grew up near Darwin’s house in Kent. Although only vaguely aware of his influence. My interest grew as I studied biology at school and geology at university. The evolutionary significance of Darwin’s finches stayed with me. I longed to sail in tropical waters like him and was fortunate enough to do so in the iconic Galápagos Islands. I was employed as a resident naturalist guide on yachts when tourism was just starting to take off. Instead of settling down to a regular job I became a tour leader. I wrote an educational book about the islands and then with a colleague Pete Oxford, the wildlife guide for Bradt.
When I first arrived in the Galápagos, I thought the plants consisted of a few drab cacti and thorn bushes. As I explored, I discovered that the unique flora was as fascinating as the reptiles and birds.
There are giant prickly pears, tree-like sunflowers, and rare orchids in the humid highlands. What I could have used was a good field guide to the plants. Conley McMullen has produced just that (albeit after I left). Now, when I go back, I can take this invaluable guide with me. He covers the endemic plants as well as some of the many exotic introduced flowers. Some have become invasive pests, such as the mora blackberry, and guava fruit.
As the conservation organisations turn their attention to restoring the islands to what they once were, this book is still of great value.
The Galapagos are home to a wide-ranging assortment of unusual plants and animals. The islands became famous as the site of Charles Darwin's research leading to his theory of evolution by natural selection, and their magnificent flora and fauna continue to draw visitors from around the world. Based on the author's 16 years of fieldwork and featuring his exceptional photography, Flowering Plants of the Galapagos is the first accessible, in-depth yet compact guide to the plant life of the area.
An invaluable resource for tourists, natural history enthusiasts, and professionals, the book:
* Introduces the botanical history of the islands…
I was born in Brussels, Belgium, but my parents followed their dream to live a pioneering life close to nature, settling in the Galapagos Islands when I was just two years old. The raw yet gentle nature of these islands, combined with my parents’ artistic eyes and naturalist interests, plus contact with visiting scientists, taught me everything I needed to know to become the islands’ only resident nature photographer and writer at an early age. Although my travels have taken me to the remotest corners of all seven continents, with publications about many of them, Galapagos draws me back like an irresistible magnet. These islands made me who I am; they are my spiritual home.
I had known the authors for decades, as friends and neighbors, so when their book came out it took me by surprise, even more so when I discovered just how outstanding it is. This is a remarkable blend of meticulously researched historical facts about the life of the great 19th-century naturalist Charles Darwin, combined with sensitive commentary by retracing his Galapagos experiences step-by-step, as well as his life before and after. Every page is engaging, delving deep into his thoughts through his notes and correspondence, and his personal observations and how they led to his revolutionary theory of evolution.
In 1835, during his voyage on HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin spent several weeks in Galapagos exploring the islands and making extensive notes on their natural history. Darwin in Galapagos is the first book to recreate Darwin's historic visit to the islands, following in his footsteps day by day and island by island as he records all that he observes around him. Thalia Grant and Gregory Estes meticulously retrace Darwin's island expeditions, taking you on an unforgettable guided tour. Drawing from Darwin's original notebooks and logs from the Beagle, the latest findings by Darwin scholars and modern science, and their own…
Maximilian Tundra is about to have an existential crisis of cosmic proportions.
When a physical duplicate of him appears in his living room, wearing a tight-fitting silver lamé unitard and speaking with an English accent, Max knows something bad is about to happen. Bad doesn’t cover it. Max discovers he’s…
I was born in Brussels, Belgium, but my parents followed their dream to live a pioneering life close to nature, settling in the Galapagos Islands when I was just two years old. The raw yet gentle nature of these islands, combined with my parents’ artistic eyes and naturalist interests, plus contact with visiting scientists, taught me everything I needed to know to become the islands’ only resident nature photographer and writer at an early age. Although my travels have taken me to the remotest corners of all seven continents, with publications about many of them, Galapagos draws me back like an irresistible magnet. These islands made me who I am; they are my spiritual home.
I can barely remember when, as a child in the mid-1960s, I met a young couple of biologists who had just spent a year living in a tiny camp among the seabirds of Galapagos, devoid of contact with the outside world. Part diary, part behavioral field notes, Bryan’s enduring book, Galapagos, Islands of Birdshas just been rewritten and expanded into a brand-new edition by his widow, over 50 years later — a charming and timeless volume.
A new, updated version of the celebrated 1968 title, Galapagos: Islands of Birds, by the renowned late ornithologist Bryan Nelson, with additional, previously unpublished reminiscences and lively and irreverent memories from his wife June. This timely reissue breathes new life into a classic work of natural history that will appeal to bird-lovers and Galapagos-lovers alike. It is as memorable for its groundbreaking descriptions of Galapagos wildlife as for June's naked appearance in the News of the World accompanied by a quote from the Duke of Edinburgh. In 1964 the late Bryan Nelson, a zoologist, and his wife June spent a…
