100 books like The Science of Storytelling

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… show more.

Cephalopods, which encompass creatures like squids, cuttlefish, and octopuses, stand as some of nature's most peculiar inhabitants.

Without bones or outer shells, they possess the remarkable ability to alter their shape, almost resembling characters from Gary Larson's extraterrestrial sketches. What sets them apart further is their exceptional intelligence, a trait not commonly associated with their mollusk cousins like snails and oysters.

Godfrey-Smith puts forth a compelling argument suggesting that intelligent life may have independently evolved multiple times right here on our home planet. He contemplates whether consciousness, once believed to be a solely human attribute, emerged early in the animal kingdom's evolutionary journey, serving as a vital mechanism for interpreting sensory information, evading predators, and sourcing sustenance.

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.… show more.

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.  

Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor is the first of Stephanie Barron’s 14 Jane Austen mysteries, based on Austen’s “discovered” diaries about her adventures as a sleuth.  The series’ witty tone is true to Austen’s, and portrayals of Austen’s family are based in fact. In this opening volume, Jane is visiting a friend “of more fashion than means” newly married a middle aged earl—who dies, poisoned, after a celebratory party. His will divides his estate between his countess and an heir known to be too fond of her, making the pair obvious suspects. As Jane works to prove her friend innocent, the descriptions of aristocratic Regency life, dress, manners, and law are superb. 

Technically speaking, this isn’t historical fiction because, when Trollope wrote it, it was contemporary (Victorian) fiction. But if you love Austen adaptations or anything set in later periods where people wore fancy, constrictive clothing, this book is for you. Barchester is a cathedral town getting a new bishop, and, oh, man, is everyone in a tizzy. Every cleric is angling for a promotion, simultaneously falling at the feet of the exotic Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni while refusing to bow the knee to the new powers that be. And if you have a soft spot for henpecked husbands, Trollope wrote one for the ages, with wife Mrs. Proudie stealing every scene. For my money, with his keen eye and wicked humor, Trollope is the true heir to Jane Austen.

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. 

I never saw any of these puzzles before I read Mullan’s book. By solving them, he goes deep into Austen’s novels, examining her miniature world as if with a microscope, offering the reader insights into the subtleties of her art: how people inadvertently reveal through their words what they would prefer to keep hidden or how Captain Benwick, a major minor character in Persuasion, comes across as a solid human being without the reader’s hearing him utter a word. The aspiring novelist can learn much from her tricks.

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.

You will weep with sympathy and understanding.

Samuel Bamford was a poor Lancashire weaver who lived in Lancashire – a long way from Jane Austen’s Hampshire home.

Bamford and other workers campaigned for workers to be given the vote – but this was a dangerous era for anyone who tried to rock the government vote. Samuel’s recollections show what daily life was like for those who had to earn their living.

In 1819, Bamford’s hope for a better life led him and his wife to a famous workers’ meeting in Manchester – where the infamous ‘Peterloo’ massacre took place.