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.  

I love Jane Austen’s novels – the fine detail with which she paints characters based on everyday life, as she described it in a letter to her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh: “… the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour...” Sadly, Austen died at age 41, in the prime of her life, and the peak of her writing skills. Her last novel was unfinished. Most biographers surmise that she died of Addison’s disease – an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the patient’s adrenal glands, slowly sapping their energy for lack of the stress hormone cortisol. Ironically, the illness can be brought on or exacerbated by chronic stress, which certainly towards the end of her life Jane Austen experienced in spades.

When her father died, Jane Austen, being a woman, did not… show more.

This book parodies the gothic novels popular in Jane Austen’s time. Ann Radcliffe, whose novel Udolpho features prominently, was the queen of this genre. Her stories boast chilling elements like murder plots, the Spanish Inquisition, skeletons, evil nuns, and more.

The heroine of this book, Catherine Morland, enjoys this kind of writing a bit too much; mistaking real life for fiction leads her to see murder and intrigue where there is none. It’s a good warning for us imaginative types not to let fantasy run away with us. (There’s no harm in enjoying a spooky tale within reason, though; Henry Tilney, the novel’s level-headed hero, has read Udolpho and thoroughly enjoyed it.) 

Doody offers a comprehensive study of the names of people and places – real and imaginary – in Austen’s fiction. 

Illustrating how Austen’s creative choices reveal her virtuosic talent for riddles and puns, Doody also picks up deep stories from English history. 

Showing how Austen names signal class tensions and regional, ethnic, and religious differences, readers gain understandings of Austen’s literary techniques and cultural commentary. 

In Marriage Markets, June Carbone and Naomi Cahn, both law professors like Lynne Marie Kohm, examine how macroeconomic forces are transforming our most intimate and important spheres, and how working-class and lower-income families have paid the highest price.

Their book shows how the best-educated and most prosperous have the most stable families, while working-class families have seen the greatest increase in relationship instability because greater economic inequality has profoundly changed marriage markets.

The failure to see marriage as a market affected by supply and demand has obscured any meaningful analysis of the way that societal changes influence culture. But Jane Austen understood this principle very well.

Jane Austen wrote and revised most of her novels in a cottage lent to her by her brother in Chawton, England. This book is a fictional account of a group of individuals in post-World War II Chawton who are all lost—or have experienced great loss. They band together in an attempt to save Jane Austen’s home from destruction. I loved getting to experience the story from each of the character’s perspectives, and the author’s prose is delightful. This novel is a testament to how people from all walks of life have been changed by Jane Austen, and how reading Jane Austen can save us.

In Shannon Winslow’s Regency retelling of Pride and Prejudice, we finally get to experience the story from Darcy’s perspective. The story closely follows the original novel, but with some added scenes that fill in the gaps during the time when Darcy is apart from Elizabeth. Ms. Winslow cleverly added an original character as a rival love interest for Darcy. I enjoyed seeing a totally different side to Austen’s most famous novel and witnessing Darcy’s character growth as he struggles to overcome his own pride and prejudice and find true love.