Books like The Smallest Lights in the Universe — picked by fans

OK, maybe it’s funny to recommend a book that sold in the millions. But this, and the TV series that went along with it, remains the best explanation of the evolution of astronomy and, especially, the social context for that evolution. Carl Sagan is by far the best science popularizer of the past century.

The subtitle of this book says it all. As a planetary scientist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Yeomans’ job was to plot the courses of known and newly-discovered NEOs – that is, asteroids and comets that in space terms come close to Earth’s orbit – and determine if and when they might be on a collision course with our planet. With more than 25,000 known NEOs orbiting around up there, it’s not an easy task. But Yeomans makes the crucial point: it’s not the space rocks we know about that pose the biggest threat, but rather the thousands and thousands of large near-Earth asteroids we don’t know about that are the greatest danger. It’s not like the movie Armageddon; it would take years to develop a space mission to deflect or destroy an incoming asteroid, so it’s crucial that we find and track them – as Yeomans says, before… show more.

The search for life outside the Earth is NASA’s greatest quest, and this book will bring you up to speed on it. Just a few decades ago, scientists thought life arose on the Earth in shallow seas, warmed by the early sun and zapped by energy-producing lightning. The best place to look for alien life was on Mars, where bacterial life may have formed in the shallow pools that covered the young Mars, and then hunkered down in subsurface spots of Martian water and ice as these pools evaporated. Scientists now suspect life arose in warm vents deep in the Earth’s ocean. Subsurface oceans in the moons of the outer Solar System may contain similar vents that serve as breeding grounds for primitive life. Kevin Hand describes NASA’s current missions and instruments to find this life in alien oceans.

Imagine for a moment that we found life on Mars.

That discovery would shake our world, change our outlook on the universe, and answer the question of whether we’re alone.

Sarah Stewart Johnson, a planetary scientist, has spent her life thinking about this possibility and delves into both her and our obsession with the Red Planet in this beautifully written book. Part memoir, part historical account, and part scientific exploration, this book made me want to ditch a career in journalism and take up astrobiology. You’ll never look at Mars the same way again. 

The frame-tale—also known as a “story within a story”—is one of my favorite fictional devices, and Margaret Atwood’s deft handling of three separate storylines makes this book a truly astonishing read.

Though her characters are fictional, their story is set against a backdrop of major Canadian historical events of the 1930s and 1940s. The exterior tale carries Iris Chase, an unhappily married upper-class woman, from childhood to death, while the real author of the interior story—a novel about a pair of illicit lovers that contains an embedded science fiction tale (the eponymous Blind Assassin)—is one of the story’s biggest mysteries.

This novel is ambitious, engaging, and wholly surprising. 

I love the way this book moves between Scotland and Sudan, as told from the perspective of a devout Muslim woman working as a translator for a Scottish academic at Aberdeen University. The story itself is a work of translation and a highly original rewriting of the encounter between East and West, Islam and Christianity, English and Arabic.

All those binaries break down: the English, for example, is Scottish, and the way to pronounce Arabic turns on a difference between Arab-speaking regions so that in both speech and writing, the reader encounters subtleties of translation usually overlooked in the tiresome cliches about “West” and “East.”

I love teaching it to learn with my students the politics of translation. The book has my favorite rewriting of that famous map-pointing scene at the beginning of Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”—Aboulela restores as Arabic names the blank spaces on the map of… show more.

I picked this book up, thinking it might have to do with witch trials in Europe during the 17th Century, and in a peripheral way, it does because it’s very loosely based on the life of Katharina Kepler, the mother of famous astronomer Johannes Kepler. (And really, how can you resist the title.) But the novel delivered so much more.

It’s a witty, searing meditation on community, gossip and envy, the strictures of society, the corruption of power, and a woman’s determination to be her own person. Add to that some of the funniest, most absurd situations I’ve read in a long while. Some sections of the novel are truly laugh-aloud.

I fell in love with Abigail Thomas’s memoir, her wise voice and writing style.

Her brief vignettes capture the sacredness of ordinary moments: a dog on the couch, a shared meal, a loss remembered. She taught me that healing isn’t dramatic; it’s built quietly through presence and acceptance.

Reading Safekeeping feels like sitting with a friend who has lived, grieved, and found peace in the small details that hold a life together.  

This book is an amalgam of different experiences. DuBoi Blanch, from an elite upbringing, comes to stay with his sister Stella, who criticizes him as “sub-human” and “coarse.” The book exposes distinct cultures, attitudes, and conflicts, displaying aristocratic and ordinary lifestyles. 

I love the book because it delves deeply into emotional conspiracies, introducing desire, which is the most conspicuous and established component of emotion and has been presented both physically and mentally. Suspense is hanging in the air as we see the initial sexual assault being perpetrated by Blanche’s brother-in-law. 

The story's conclusion serves to underscore the theme that unchecked desire can lead to downfall or suffering, highlighting the inherent risks and moral dilemmas associated with pursuing one's ambitions without considering the broader implications. It provides a moral lesson or insight into the human condition, showing how the choices driven by desire can shape the course of our lives and… show more.

With this piece of historical fiction, we are back to “Who is Shakespeare,” and did he write all those plays? We are asked to consider parts of Shakespeare’s life where there is no historical record at all. In this novel, he did pen his plays and poems, but he had a lot of help from a smart, learned woman. Yes, another great woman behind the man story. And yet, we are allowed into not only Will’s and Katherine’s collaborative writing process but into their love story. Thus we end this list as we started with Shakespeare in love.