The Humans

This was the first book where I finished the last page and moved immediately back to the first page to read it again. My goodness, it made me laugh so much, but it also made me feel so much. I loved the characters, the plot, the clever language. More than anything, it made me fall in love with the human condition—all of the difficulty, absurdity, and glory of it all.

The author wrote to be the book he most wanted to read when he was profoundly depressed about all the impossible foibles of humanity. It is now the book I… show more.

While much more recent than all the others on my list, its story, told from the perspective of an alien who has recently possessed a human's body, takes a look at the world and its inhabitants in such a hilariously honest and unfiltered manner, that I think would never be able to be done if told merely by a human.

Lighting a fascinating spark of questioning why I consider normal to be normal, I found this book to be a whimsical and thoughtful insight into how delightfully strange our species must seem to anyone but ourselves.

An extraterrestrial coming to Earth and possessing a human body isn’t a new idea. That an advanced alien civilization might seek to prevent a scientific breakthrough that humans are not evolved enough to use wisely, well, that’s not new either.

But the social commentary of this book is poignant, insightful, and heartwarming. The alien arrives knowing little about humanity, and at first, it is perplexed and disgusted. But as it lives among humans, as the “husband” of his possessed victim’s wife and the “father” of their son, it comes to appreciate the depth and complexity of what it means to… show more.

What I love about this book is its heart-rich and humorous exploration of what it means to be human.

A somewhat jaded alien arrives on Earth with a mission to “save us from ourselves” by eliminating people too close to a revolutionary math theorem. The idea is that we can’t be trusted to use STEM knowledge responsibly. I get that. Nuclear warfare, anyone?

Our alien takes the form of a renowned professor (the creator of said revolutionary theorem), which means living with a disgruntled wife, a misunderstood son, and a wise dog named, of course, Newton (I adore Newton!).

The… show more.

The Humans is the story of an alien inhabiting human form.

His views on humanity change during his stay on Earth, and it asks the question - with so many deep flaws, what makes humanity worthy of saving? It’s a comedy and a drama and a love story all wrapped in one. I felt like a better human after reading this one.

An alien is sent to earth to prevent an important breakthrough, a giant technological leap forward for the human race. The alien takes the form of Professor Andrew Martin, a prominent mathematician who made the discovery. The visitor moves into Martin's home with his wife and teenage son. Tasked with eliminating anyone with knowledge of the discovery, he searches for people Martin may have told. Knowing nothing of their ways, the alien is at first repulsed by humans. But over time, his views change. He develops a bond with the son and grows to love Martin's wife. But he has… show more.

The Humans is one of those rare books that I had to hug after I finished it. Literally. Luckily I wasn’t reading it in public as there was possibly some happy squeaking involved, too. The story revolves around an alien who has been sent to Earth and tasked with finding out how far a mathematician’s potentially dangerous research has got, and who else knows about it. Initially, the alien is horrified by humans and all their emotional and physical needs, but as he learns more about us – more about what it is to be so messily, chaotically human –… show more.