100 Books Like The Bathysphere Book

I found this book to be a fascinating journey into realms of the world below the surface I had never thought about or even known existed. Cave diving is my worst nightmare, so one particular section stands out about the wild, terrifying, and utterly unrelatable passion of cave divers and the perils one faces when stuck very, very underground.

The mixture of purely natural environments and human-created ones, such as underground tunnels and cities, all held my attention as pieces of information I had read very little about in the past, all collected into one unifying theme. Having such a broad but specific topic all in one read was a fun, dynamic journey. 

I find great pleasure in learning a little bit about a lot of things, and this book scratches that itch in a great way. Touring through big scientific concepts, Bryson delivers the potentially overwhelming (and boring) information in a fun way that made me understand space-time way more than any middle school physics class did.

It’s not a book that needs to be read in order or even be read in its entirety to enjoy, so it’s fun to have around to pick up a chapter here and there or read it straight through. The other day I went back and referred to it while having a conversation about space time and found an explanation that we both understood—and enjoyed. 

I have a lot of respect for an animal that is so mysterious and remains so despite years of research and curiosity, and I really appreciate this in-depth commitment to showcasing an animal most people get the heeby jeebies about.

The interweaving of personal narrative and deep dives into the realm of eels was a nice combination, catching a glimpse into how one’s early relationship to specific parts of their surrounding natural world can influence so much beyond that.

I’m a big fan of cheerleading for the underdogs of the animal kingdom, the ones we think are scary or ugly or gross—they’re usually fascinating and not well understood, and when it comes to eels, I recommend pushing aside any ick factor and delving into the mysteries they’ve been keeping for millennia. 

This book revolves around the term “umwelt,” which refers (in biology) to a creature’s sense of the world around it based on the information that it can perceive; while reading this book, I found my own personal understanding of the way we, as humans, see and categorize our surroundings grow and deepen.

I loved learning and thinking about eons of humans being independently and collectively stumped about the origins of some species and yet often all coming to a similar way of organizing the world around us. The natural world has unfolded in beautiful and bizarre ways, and I enjoy knowing how we came to a (mostly) shared understanding of the winding path to get here.    

I always had a love of all things maritime growing up, so it’s no wonder that, upon discovering an audiobook version read by none other than literary maverick Harlan Ellison, I fell madly for this icon of nautical adventure. It has everything you could want: the archetypal mad genius Captain Nemo, the ornate submarine Nautilus, exotic creatures and locales, and a unique cast of “guests.”

From the touching dedication of servant Conseil to our narrator, Professor Aronnax, to the forthright harpooner Ned Land, this exploration of uncharted waters and unwilling captives paints as vivid a picture of a life and world unseen as it does the costs of leading such a life. Few tales earn classic status quite like this one.

Full disclosure: I still haven’t seen the National Geographic special, but I’ll go down arguing the book is better (much as I do love David Attenborough films). This book is something of a tome, but it’s so engagingly written that it had me up well past my bedtime night after night. 

I’ve always been intrigued by our oceans – one of my first great childhood heroes was Jacques Cousteau – but the true charm of this book is its boundless hope. It would be easy to fall into despair and catastrophization writing a book that deals so intimately with climate change, but instead, there is example after example of people who live as full participants in the cycle of life, not observers of it, whose footsteps beat a path to a world where we all flourish together.

I loved this book because it inspired me to keep an adventurous and exploratory attitude. It really made me want to be Edith Widder.

I am completely fascinated by bioluminescence, a large topic in this book, and while I learned a ton, it only drove me to want to learn more and pursue my interests in this field further.

Learning about wondrous creatures and what we are trying to understand about them in the context of conservation allows us the lens to prioritize our work and resources and keep moving forward. I found myself underlining every other line of this book; there is so much to be amazed by.

I will never dive miles below the ocean’s surface, but this book about the deep-sea submersible Alvin, which is operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, takes me from the sunlit surface to the dark world without the sun thousands of feet below.

I enjoyed learning how the submersible’s pilot maneuvers this small craft, large enough for only the pilot and two scientists, to the bottom of the sea. The author did a lot of research, including interviewing one of the Alvin’s pilots, so her book is filled with the kind of authentic details that make for good science writing. 

I could totally see myself and my science in this book. It was so much fun to read about so many people that I have been to sea and worked with in other ways but to hear about this amazing work and why it is so important in a fresh new way. As a result, I didn’t want to say goodbye to this book, especially because so many of us are still out there adding more chapters to this continuing story!

This book is claustrophobic, unflinching, and horrifying, so I can’t watch videos from seafloor subs, drones, or observatories. I’m used to sci-fi that takes place in the cold black isolation of a spaceship, but here we have the cold black isolation of the seabed, which triggers all the thalassophobia. Add the meticulous routines of a crew surviving in a place where humans shouldn’t be and, above all, the awful psychological pull of the void, and you get deliciously potent nightmare fuel.

But maybe more than that, I love that Watts is one of those authors, like Richard Morgan, who creates spec-fic characters with questionable morality, who can and do alarm the reader. Everyone I know who’s ever read this book has never forgotten it, shudders when I mention it and knows who Lenie Clark is.