The best books about defying gravity and breaking out of the way we are taught to think

Murder and mayhem in Africa, but turned on its head. This novel is set in Nigeria, and who could argue with the mad charm of traffic jams, family dynamics, a young woman who simply can’t help killing the men in her life, and her long-suffering sister who keeps helping her clean up the mess? Every page vibrates with wackiness and warmth, while the blood keeps flowing. Gravity-defying because it should be grim but you find yourself chuckling before the first corpse is cold.

I picked up this book when I was writing my book about rape and was immediately reminded about the joys of music and art and birds and all the unlikely connections life has to offer. Mozart wrote music inspired by a starling, and the author, inspired by a baby starling in her own life, followed his story to Europe and back. Most unexpected, most illuminating. Gravity-defying because the Muse follows no earthly laws.

Her father died. She adopted a goshawk named Mabel and immersed herself in falconry. But of course. Grief works itself out in the damnedest ways, and I can totally relate to the connection between a parent’s death and entering into a relationship with a fierce and foreign species. As an added bonus, MacDonald is a magnificent writer. Gravity-defying because you can open your heart and let grief fly out.

Everything about this book is wonderful. It is science and philosophy and joie de vivre and sarcasm and a mad appreciation for nature’s vagaries and human foibles, and if you have a garden or a terrace or even a window in your life, you need it. The sky will never be the same. Gravity-defying because…well, just look up.

If I’d read this book as a teenager, I might have been compelled to learn to be a pilot. I love the way Vanhoenacker is so passionate about his craft. Along with talking about flight, he comes up with concepts like “place lag” rather than “jet lag,” putting into words those emotions all of us who have sometimes gone bewilderingly far, whiplash-inducingly fast have felt, but could never express. Gravity-defying because you can choose to soar away from bad weather, boredom, or the tyranny of time and place.