Interesting books

[watervole]

Having been ill recently, I've not had a chance to get Richard a birthday present.  I'm thus looking for recommendations for interesting books.

Interesting in this context means chewy.  Coffee table books are out.  Recreational mathematics, physics, astonomy, earth science, natural history, biology, English history are all good subjects (but not necessarily the only ones).  The key thing is that books are in depth (think university level) and chock full of factual interesting material that is well written.

What have you read recently that would fit the bill?  (the book doesn't need to be in print - we're perfectly happy buying second-hand if the book is interesting)

I'm leaving comments visible as I'm hoping that people will bounce off each other's ideas.

Comments

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Has he read The Elegant Universe (http://www2.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall03/005858.htm) by Brian Greene? it's well written and fairly demanding

[jophan.livejournal.com]

I don't read much of this stuff unless it's linguistics, but the Aventis shortlist should be a good place to start looking:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4783042.stm

[fifitrix.livejournal.com]

I've heard that the sex.com book (not about sex, but about a row over ownership of the domain from the early days of the internet) is supposed to be really interesting.

There is a fawning review of it on the Register at the moment, which you should take with a pinch of salt because the author used to write for the website!
However, a colleague is reading it at the moment and says it's really interesting. (Especially if you are interested in the history of the internet etc.)

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

It's difficult as I haven't the faintest what he has actually read. From the stuff I love, which is mainly biology/anthropology/geology

Anything by Matt Ridley (but particularly The Origins of Virtue), Jared Diamond (particularly Germs and Guns and Steel, Richard Forty (partiularly Trilobite!, Steven Pinker (above all, The Language Instinct or Richard Dawkins.

[peaceful-fox.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't be surprised if he has read this one, but:

The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe
by Roger Penrose

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Jerry White, London in the Nineteenth Century. A hardback, I hauled it around everywhere for a week it was so rivetting.

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

Currently I'm re-reading Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind. When I originally read it, I was in the sixth form; now, many years later, I wish I had actually read it when I was studying relativity and quantum physics a year or so later! Whilst Penrose takes no prisoners, it's not a textbook - but what I am finding is that it fills in a number of the philosophical gaps - questions you're just supposed either not to ask, or to already know the answer, as an undergraduate. (My parents got me The Road To Reality for Christmas and I am working up to that).

I'd also recommend anything by Martin Rees.

[djelibeybi-meg.livejournal.com]

For recreational mathematics, you could try ordering from Ian Stewart's collection: Does God Play Dice?; Math Hysteria; From Here To Infinity et al. They've been on my wish-list for a while as I too like fun with maths. Ian can blow your mind if you talk to him about time travel (I'm fairly sure he's convinced me it's possible but he may have been toying with me).

His partner in crime for the Science of Discworld books is Jack Cohen. Jack's non-fiction books include "Oligodeoxynucleotides: Antisense Inhibitors of Gene Expression (Topics on Molecular and Structural Biology)" and "Magnetic Resonance in Biology". I've not read these but have tried his fictional works. I can't say that they were an easy read.

Jack Cohen

[johnrw.livejournal.com]

Jack has a book version of his talk "The Possibility Of Life On Other Planets" which goes by the same mouthful. However the same text is available in paperback titled "What Does A Martian Look Like?" He's also a fascinating man.

I'm assuming you have Dougal Dixon's After Man: A Biology of the Future"?

Re: Jack Cohen

[djelibeybi-meg.livejournal.com]

Jack is one fascinating man - and a blatant letch[1].

He and Ian's lectures at Discworld conventions are very well attended. At the last one, I was wandering between halls to hear a loud cheer and round of applause. They more than earned their guest spots at the event.

At our wedding, he spoke a few words of wisdom (sadly, not in Yiddish) and joined us later as the party indulged in light and heavy discussion until the early hours.

[1] Not that I'm complaining. It's refreshing to be in the company of a man who knows what he likes.

[asphodeline.livejournal.com]

I was recommended The Cloudspotters Guide as something a bit different and good for "difficult" people who've read lots. I haven't read mine yet but it does look good.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cloudspotters-Guide-Gavin-Pretor-Pinney/dp/034089590X/ref=pd_bbs_2/203-7845127-0687142?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180727753&sr=8-2

[temeres.livejournal.com]

How could I not recommend Dawkins?! Not The God Delusion, though, since that is rather weak by his standards. But The Ancestor's Tale ought to be in every household.

Someone has already mentioned Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker. I second both of those.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I am tempted to friend you on the evidence of your recommendations alone!

[temeres.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sure, go ahead. Have we met at a con at all?

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Possibly... or at least have seen each other. Though I haven't been around much recently, because of other commitments.

[kerravonsen]

"Longitude" by Dava Sobel
"The World Beyond the Hill" by Alexi and Cory Panshin

[melodyclark.livejournal.com]

I love reading things from varying directions, so long as the internal logic of each perspective holds out, so you'll find all sorts of woolly stuff on my list of book loves. I love all of Terence McKenna's stuff, principally his ethnobotanical/ethnological work with the ayahuasceros, especially "Invisible Landscape". Co-Reading Carl Sagan's "Demon-Haunted World" is a fascinating exercise, in that Carl spent a few weeks before his death with Terence at Dojo McKenna. This was either a last minute understanding of the possible larger landscape or evidence of the axiom "no atheists in the foxholes" or probably something in between. lol

I like a lot of Hofstadter's later stuff (although the whole evolution of his thinking is fascinating from a psychological standpoint), while recognizing (as with Terence) he's positing within the limits of his own neurology.

Also, Robert Anton Wilson and about a dozen other writers. (That's not helpful, is it?)

If Richard likes to read the odd book for reasons beyond the material in the book itself, there's always one of the unintentionally funniest books I've ever read, Frank J. Tipler's "The Physics of Immortality" (his "The Physics of Christianity" is a knee-slapper as well). It's the strong anthropic cosmology gone batshit crazy. lol

I'm sure it didn't help, but I intended it to.

[dumain.com (from livejournal.com)]

Given that his wife claims Sagan died a non-believer (in God, an afterlife, the supernatural, etc ) wouldn't medical marijuana be a more parsimonious explanation of time spent with McKenna?