I've been accused of reading books based on their heft. According to the theory, the bigger the book, the happier I am. This is true, for some books. I'd be in heaven if the next
George R. R. Martin was a thousand pages long. I feel the same way about good science writing. One of my favorite science writers, Natalie Angier, has a new book out:
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. It's only 320 pages, but that makes it easier to carry around.
The first reading I ever went to at Powell's was Natalie Angier. She was touring for her book Woman: An Intimate Geography. It is still one of the best readings I've been to. She's a great speaker. This was the bad old days when we had readings in the Purple Room. She was back at Powell's recently with The Canon. I hope she loved the new reading space.
The Canon promises to be in the same vein as two of my recent favorites, Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud by Peter Watson and A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. I love books that make me smarter. When I was reading Ideas I felt my mind expanding; the scientific ideas that had fossilized in my brain twenty years ago began to crack.
I'll read anything by Bill Bryson because he's so damned funny. A Short History of Nearly Everything was entertaining and enlightening. I feel the same way about Natalie Angier. I picked up Woman on a whim, but when, in the first few pages, she body-slammed Camille Paglia, I was hooked. Her writing is smart and funny; she is a joy to read.