Fans pick 100 books like Starry Messenger

In this book, I loved the way the author explains the creative process and what it takes to engage your muse and catch ideas. In a different way from The War Of Art, I learned what holds us back from expressing ourselves creatively and how we can overcome this fear of being seen.

Elizabeth Gilbert shares stories and philosophies about how to be more creative every day in a funny and optimistic way.

Now turning to the human body, Bryson continues his long tradition of combining loads of engaging, thoroughly researched information with ironic humor.

He dissects his subject system by system, starting with the normal structure and function of the skin and eventually moving to the “nether regions.” He follows with chapters on what can go wrong and what can go very wrong. Whereas other books focus on single systems, e.g., skeleton or gut, The Body is broader in its scope but understandably not so thorough.

For a single book to heighten a reader’s marvel and understanding of the human workings, this is the one.  

This book introduced me to the powerful concept of “upper limit problems” which helped me see some of the self-sabotaging behavior I used to engage in (picking fights for no reason, finding things to be annoyed about, giving too many f*cks about silly things) for what it was.

The idea goes that we all have internal “thermostats” that regulate how much success, happiness, and fulfillment we allow ourselves. Then, as we get close to the upper limit of those self-set limits, we engage in sabotaging behavior to bring things back down to a level we are comfortable with.

This one concept alone changed my own behavior and helped me help others see where they might be “upper limiting”. An unexpected life-changing book.

This is technically an audiobook only (sorry!) but another unexpected gem full of insights that have changed the way I view life and live life.

His delivery takes some (a lot of!) getting used to, but the substance is powerful in its simplicity. As the title suggests, it’s about “the art of exceptional living” and offers lots of tips about how to live a more thoughtful, fulfilling life and is timeless in the topics it explores (happiness, relationships, fulfillment, discipline, success).

Another audio that I go back to again and again and that delivers something important and new each time.

For everyone who bought A Brief History of Time and was even more confused by the end, this is for you. There are no pictures, just lovely words, lots of incredible facts, and some lovely connections between seemingly unconnected things.

It's a great dipping book, too, as each chapter deals with different aspects of why and how we got to where we are.

I savored this book sip by sip, wishing that each chapter would have lasted a little longer, a little longer. I felt a “healthy envy” for anyone lucky enough to have had a teacher like Klein in high school.

It’s impossible not to fall in love with the cosmos while reading his work. His ability to explain complex scientific concepts in an accessible and poetic manner is admirable.

Each chapter has given me an unforgettable early morning coffee, revealing at a pace the magic that science holds in every corner.

I like this book because it challenges conventional scientific thinking, advocating for a more open-minded and exploratory approach to scientific inquiry.

I find it interesting because it delves into various scientific disciplines, from physics to biology, highlighting instances where entrenched dogma and ignorance have hindered progress. It argues for the necessity of questioning established paradigms and embracing curiosity-driven research to foster genuine innovation.

As I’m interested in the intersection of philosophy, history, and science I find this book very compelling, as it offers fresh perspectives on how scientific breakthroughs occur and the importance of intellectual humility in the pursuit of knowledge.

When I was a young mother, I read this collection of essays about physics, cosmology, astronomy, etc., by the science writer K.C. Cole. As I was reading, I kept writing down quotes from it in a notebook, something that I don’t normally do. In my daily neighborhood walks with my infant son, my thoughts about this book and the cosmos collided with what was I was experiencing, and I was completely taken with the elegance of our world. This sparked the original idea for my own book. Though this collection was written for an adult audience, there are concepts, ideas, and thinking that are packaged up in glorious words: beautiful descriptions of the world we live in that are pretty mind-blowing. 

It's a history of scientific advances, particularly in cosmology. It’s old now and I don’t know if it’s the best book on the topic, but it influenced my thinking a lot when I was a teenager.

Many advances in science require letting go of what you think you think you know. Letting go of even obvious assumptions – that the sun goes around the earth (plain to the naked eye); that the world is made of 4 elements  – fire, water, earth, wind; that time flows the same everywhere for all people.

My book similarly shows some of the current assumptions that are holding us back – that human intelligence explains our success, the nature of intelligence, and what ultimately drives growth and prosperity.

Randall, a noted astrophysicist, explains how the extinction of the dinosaurs could be related to galactic astronomy and the distribution of dark matter in the galaxy. Her fascinating idea involves disturbances of our myriad Oort Cloud comets at the very edge of the solar system by encounters with clouds of exotic dark matter. The collisions with dark matter, the resulting comet storms and mass extinctions occur roughly every 30 million years as we cycle through the galaxy. Her provocative hypothesis provides a potential remarkable consilience of astronomy, geology, and the history of life.