Here are 100 books that The Science of Storytelling fans have personally recommended if you like
The Science of Storytelling.
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I am a science journalist and magazine editor. I feel really lucky to be a bioscience specialist – it really is at the forefront of solving some of the great challenges of our time, from making sustainable fuels and materials, to climate change mitigation, age-related disease, pandemics, food security, habitat restoration…plus there’s an incredible diversity of life on our planet still to be discovered. I always try to relate scientific progress to our everyday lives: it’s not just about creating new knowledge, it is about how that knowledge might improve our health, change our outlook, transform society, or protect the planet.
Thanks to this beautiful book, I try to take a moment each day to look up at the sky.
The Cloudspotter’s Guide is so much more than just a guide to the science of how clouds form, or the different types – it’s a reminder to appreciate the unbelievably beautiful and epic natural forms that float above us every day.
Clouds, writes Pretor-Pinney, are ‘the most egalitarian of nature’s displays – we all have a good view of them’. And his guide is as much about how to take pleasure in this daily display as it is about the science of atmospherics, precipitation, and altitude.
I bought this book so long ago its pages are yellowing and falling out. But when I’m busy and stressed, I still daydream of being able to sit in my garden and do nothing but watch the clouds roll by. When I am aboard a…
Now in paperback: the runaway British bestseller that has cloudspotters everywhere looking up.
Where do clouds come from? Why do they look the way they do? And why have they captured the imagination of timeless artists, Romantic poets, and every kid who's ever held a crayon? Veteran journalist and lifelong sky watcher Gavin Pretor-Pinney reveals everything there is to know about clouds, from history and science to art and pop culture. Cumulus, nimbostratus, and the dramatic and surfable Morning Glory cloud are just a few of the varieties explored in this smart, witty, and eclectic tour through the skies.
Master the Art and Craft of Writing
by
Leon Conrad,
A comprehensive collection of engaging and effective exercises tailored for writers at all levels. Whether you're a beginner eager to find your voice, a seasoned writer exploring new genres, or a professional honing your craft, in this book, you'll discover invaluable techniques that will transform your writing journey.
It has always seemed to me that humans underestimate the abilities—and particularly the conscious lives—of non-human animals. We, humans, are not apart from (and above) but live in a continuum of consciousness with the rest of life. All these books share stories of relationships between human and non-human animals. They make clear that we are connected to and part of all life on Earth. We are all in this together, and we better take good care of our shared natural living world.
Godfrey-Smith is a philosopher, but also an avid diver.
This is an engaging and readable philosophical examination of the mind of a very different kind of creature, an octopus. He grounds his thoughts both in his many diving interactions with octopuses and in what we know of the evolution of life—and mind—on Earth.
'Brilliant' Guardian 'Fascinating and often delightful' The Times
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE
What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?
In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself - a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared.
Tracking the mind's fitful development from unruly clumps of…
I am a science journalist and magazine editor. I feel really lucky to be a bioscience specialist – it really is at the forefront of solving some of the great challenges of our time, from making sustainable fuels and materials, to climate change mitigation, age-related disease, pandemics, food security, habitat restoration…plus there’s an incredible diversity of life on our planet still to be discovered. I always try to relate scientific progress to our everyday lives: it’s not just about creating new knowledge, it is about how that knowledge might improve our health, change our outlook, transform society, or protect the planet.
Richard Dawkins is sadly now known mostly for his divisive polemics on religion and identity politics, but his early books on biology were unbelievably powerful.
The Blind Watchmaker helped flesh out, clarify, update, and expand Darwin’s theory of evolution for a massive audience, while also elegantly dismantling the common argument that life is so sophisticated that it must have been ‘designed’ by some kind of creator.
As a young biologist, I read The Blind Watchmaker and was wowed by the way Dawkins explained how, under the right conditions, amazingly complex designs can arise from a simple system – without the need for anyone directing it or creating it.
Dawkins not only helps explain how life on Earth has advanced into the myriad forms we see on Earth today, but goes on to suggest that evolutionary systems might be at play in other aspects of our lives, like language and culture.…
The Blind Watchmaker is the seminal text for understanding evolution today. In the eighteenth century, theologian William Paley developed a famous metaphor for creationism: that of the skilled watchmaker. In The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins crafts an elegant riposte to show that the complex process of Darwinian natural selection is unconscious and automatic. If natural selection can be said to play the role of a watchmaker in nature, it is a blind one-working without foresight or purpose.
In an eloquent, uniquely persuasive account of the theory of natural selection, Dawkins illustrates how simple organisms slowly change over time to…
Master the Art and Craft of Writing
by
Leon Conrad,
A comprehensive collection of engaging and effective exercises tailored for writers at all levels. Whether you're a beginner eager to find your voice, a seasoned writer exploring new genres, or a professional honing your craft, in this book, you'll discover invaluable techniques that will transform your writing journey.
I’m a sociologist who has just written a book about the ways that we engage with death and dying online, and before that I wrote a book about media coverage of disasters. Macabre subjects have always fascinated me, I guess, not because they are macabre but because they reveal a great deal about the ways we live and our sense of the value of life itself.
This book is a really fun investigation by a brilliant journalist who leads readers through a thorough yet skeptical look at the Silicon Valley-based movement known as “radical life extension” or “transhumanism.”
From hobbyists, to hackers, to scientists, to venture capitalists, a broad contingent of people in and around the “tech” space are convinced today that techno-scientific advancement will eventually allow humanity—or at least a certain small cadre of the wealthiest and savviest humans—to live forever.
There are heavy ideas here, and the book will give you a lot to think about, but it manages to be a breezy read despite the often troubling subject matter.
“This gonzo-journalistic exploration of the Silicon Valley techno-utopians’ pursuit of escaping mortality is a breezy romp full of colorful characters.” —New York Times Book Review
Transhumanism is a movement pushing the limits of our biology—of our senses, intelligence, and lifespans—with technology. Its supporters have reached a critical mass and now include some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley and beyond, among them Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Ray Kurzweil.
In this provocative and eye-opening account, journalist Mark O’Connell explores the staggering (and terrifying) possibilities that present themselves when you think of your body as an outmoded device. He visits…
I’m an author and a college writing professor with an MFA in Creative Writing. Additionally, I am involved in and teach other art forms and the humanities including music, film, and literature. I enjoy researching and writing about literary figures, musicians, and other creatives, all of which have been a focus in my children’s books.
A luminous portrait of Jane Austen chocked full of spirited text and shimmery illustrations that capture the times. The story highlights the beginnings of Austen’s great career as a novelist from her youngest days all the way to famous writer. It’s a great addition to any classroom or library. Like Jane Taylor before her, Austen’s success paved the way for women authors to come.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen is one of our greatest writers.
But before that, she was just an ordinary girl.
In fact, young Jane was a bit quiet and shy; if you had met her back then, you might not have noticed her at all. But she would have noticed you. Jane watched and listened to all the things people around her did and said and locked those observations away for safekeeping.
Jane also loved to read. She devoured everything in her father's massive library, and before long she began creating her own…
The fundamental connection between law and economics rules most of the world. This is especially true in romantic relationships, whether the parties realize it or not. Being “Janites” ourselves, in addition to our day jobs of family law professor and economic consultant, we could not help but read Jane Austen and be blown away by her genius understanding of both law and economics. Moreover, the principles she draws out that govern much of her characters’ decision-making are just as applicable today in the world of online dating and Tinder. We hope our book enlightens you on law and economics in new, surprising, and romantic ways.
Doody offers a comprehensive study of the names of people and places – real and imaginary – in Austen’s fiction.
Illustrating how Austen’s creative choices reveal her virtuosic talent for riddles and puns, Doody also picks up deep stories from English history.
Showing how Austen names signal class tensions and regional, ethnic, and religious differences, readers gain understandings of Austen’s literary techniques and cultural commentary.
In Jane Austen's works, a name is never just a name. In fact, the names Austen gives her characters and places are as rich in subtle meaning as her prose itself. Wiltshire, for example, the home county of Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, is a clue that this heroine is not as stupid as she seems: according to legend, cunning Wiltshire residents caught hiding contraband in a pond capitalized on a reputation for ignorance by claiming they were digging up a "big cheese" - the moon's reflection on the water's surface. It worked. In Jane Austen's Names, Margaret Doody offers…
I’ve loved the Regency era since first reading Jane Austen’s novels, but in writing my series of 19th-century adventure fantasies, I discovered there was so much more to the period than I’d ever dreamed. Though their culture and traditions aren’t like ours, I’m fascinated by how much about the lives of those men and women is familiar—the same desires, the same dreams for the future. I hope the books on this list inspire in you the same excitement they did in me!
Any tour of Regency England needs to start with the familiar, and Jane Austen’s Englandprovides an excellent overview of the geography, traditions, and politics of the period. Though the title says Jane Austen, I love how much detail it has on things Austen never wrote about, like childrearing and crime (especially counterfeiting, which you’ll have to read to believe!). Whether you read it cover to cover or search out interesting facts, this book has everything you need to start your journey.
An authoritative account of everyday life in Regency England, the backdrop of Austen's beloved novels, from the authors of the forthcoming Gibraltar: The Greatest Siege in British History (March 2018)
Nearly two centuries after her death, Jane Austen remains the most cherished of all novelists in the English language, incomparable in the wit, warmth, and insight with which she depicts her characters and life. Yet the milieu Austen presents is only one aspect of the England in which she lived, a time of war, unrest, and dramatic changes in the country's physical and social landscape. Jane Austen's England offers a…
I have spent my life both in the classroom (as a university professor) and out of it as a passionate, committed reader, for whom books are as necessary as food and drink. My interest in poetry dates back to junior high school, when I was learning foreign languages (first French and Latin, and then, later, Italian, German, and ancient Greek) and realized that language is humankind’s most astonishing invention. I’ve been at it ever since. It used to be thought that a writer’s life was of little consequence to an understanding of his or her work. We now think otherwise. Thank goodness.
Keats, beloved of English majors and ordinary readers everywhere, died at 25.
No other writer – not Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, George Eliot, Jane Austen – would be remembered today if he or she had died at that age.
W.J. Bate was a magisterial Harvard scholar. His two sympathetic biographies, of Keats, and of Samuel Johnson, both won Pulitzer prizes and are still readable and important. They breathe life into their subjects and deeply humanize them.
The life of Keats provides a unique opportunity for the study of literary greatness and of what permits or encourages its development. Its interest is deeply human and moral, in the most capacious sense of the words. In this authoritative biography--the first full-length life of Keats in almost forty years--the man and the poet are portrayed with rare insight and sympathy. In spite of a scarcity of factual data for his early years, the materials for Keats's life are nevertheless unusually full. Since most of his early poetry has survived, his artistic development can be observed more closely than is…
I stumbled across Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice when I was twelve years old and fell in love with her humorous, witty writing and quirky characters. I saved my allowance and bought an omnibus of her complete works, but it wasn’t enough: I was hooked and wanted to read more books like hers. A decade later, I started to write books like hers, and my first Regency-set romantic comedy was published in 2001. The movie Mr. Malcolm’s List, based on my novel, was released in theaters in 2022, and I had the pleasure of hearing people laughing as they watched it, as I had so often laughed while reading Austen’s work.
P.G. Wodehouse is a comic genius best known for his series of books featuring Wooster and Jeeves, but this book differs from his usual fare in that it has a female protagonist and a sweet little romance.
I loved Jill, who is the type of heroine Jane Austen might have invented: loyal, spunky, and highly principled. Jill’s adventures take us from London to 1920s New York, but this isn’t historical fiction. Like Austen’s books, this is a contemporary novel written in the era in which the author lived.
I love Austen because of her wry humor and her feisty female characters, two things that are also present in this very fun book.
P.G. Wodehouse's classic tale (originally published under the title "The Little Warrior") of Jill Mariner, a wealthy young woman engaged to Sir Derek Underhill. Following financial disaster, Jill's life takes several adventurous turns with schemes, relatives, chorus girls, and the search for love.
I love Jane Austen’s novels. I first read Pride and Prejudice when I was about 14, but it’s far too long ago to remember when I first read the others, and I’ve now read them all many times. I’ve also always been a singer, and I learned the piano when I was young, so I immediately noticed the music in the novels. I started writing about it seriously in the 1990s, but it wasn’t until 2007 that I realized that her music collection was still around and started making concert programs out of it. The new book brings all these things together.
There are more comprehensive biographies of Jane Austen, but I love this one, which charts the relationship between Jane and her favorite brother, Henry. He was a banker for a while but also a soldier and became an Anglican minister.
E.J. Clery has done tons of research but she also writes beautifully and brings it all together into a moving and fascinating story that shows a new side of Jane Austen. I discovered that Jane didn’t just stay home writing and embroidering but often went to London and stayed with her brother and his wife (their cousin Eliza). They went to the theatre together, they had parties, and she met French aristocrats who’d escaped from the Revolution.
When it was announced that Jane Austen would appear on the new GBP10 note in 2017, few were aware that a GBP10 Austen banknote already existed - issued by her favourite brother. Handsome, clever and enterprising, Henry Austen founded a bank business and charmed his way into the top rank of aristocratic society before going spectacularly bust in the financial crash of 1816. He left an enduring legacy, however, for it was Henry who supported Jane's dream of becoming a published author.Literary critic and cultural historian E. J. Clery presents a radically new vision of the much-loved novelist, revealing how…
