Summer’s here! Since I’m solar-powered, I’m all charged up for a season of fun. How about you?
Summer’s the time to try new things, experience new adventures, and explore new worlds. This is true for my reading selection as well. Maybe it’s because my circadian rhythm is still calibrated to the academic calendar. I’m usually a nonfiction, idea books type of reader, but for summer, I like to venture out to travel books, selected fiction, biographies–more story-based books. Here’s my summer reading list for 2016, taken from my antilibrary–the books on my shelf that I haven’t read. If you’ve read any of them, please let me know what you think! And I’d love to hear about what you’re reading too.
Summer Reading List
Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood by Oliver Sacks
I got this book for $1 from Half Priced Books. Score! I recently finished another of Sacks’ book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales, which is the scariest book I’ve ever read (will tell another time). With this and his essay collection, Gratitude, I’ve concluded that I enjoy his writing tremendously. Oliver Sacks had a poetic voice in telling human stories, a virtue that I find existing in my favorite authors. Uncle Tungsten is about his childhood and his love for the elements in the periodic table (in fact, in Gratitude, he wrote about his personal collection of these elements and how he thought about aging something like traversing across the periodic table, each atomic number matching his age). It’s probably the perfect mix of nerdy and poetic for me.
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
In my household, I’m usually the book buyer. But this one is my husband’s, also an engineer and fellow nerd. This is the only book I’ve seen that he read enthusiastically, sparking all kinds of conversations about technology and innovation at home. Apparently, it’s the kind of book that makes you want to build a plane. We’ll probably repeat those conversations when it’s my turn to go through the book.
Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande
Having listened to Atul Gawande’s audiobook, Being Mortal, I’ve grouped him together with Oliver Sacks (and Paul Kalanithi and, my guess, Siddhartha Mukherjee–see below) as medical practitioners who are also excellent writers. They seem to reflect deeply on the human experience as they encounter individuals in medical crises, and this is an amazing trait. I look forward to hear more from Gawande.
Beauty Is A Wound by Eka Kurniawan
Eka Kurniawan is an acclaimed Indonesian writer whose works’ translations have been increasing rapidly over the past year. The books themselves have been published for many years in Indonesian, but only last year were this book and another one, Man Tiger, translated to English. I read Man Tiger last year, and it is a spectacular piece of literature. I’ll be reading Beauty Is A Wound in Indonesian, my mother tongue.
Yes, I am so late for this one. I have a copy and it’s about time I read it.
Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow
Gotta have a brainy book on the list. The first time I saw this book, it was at a bookstore. Its catchy neon green caught my eye. Sure enough, its topic of thinking and the workings of our mind was one of my favorite reading subjects. Over the next few days, I kept thinking about this book and I finally bought it online. Imagine my surprise when I saw the hidden text on the cover. Pssst…Hey There. Yes: You, Sexy. Buy This Book Now. You Know You Want it. These texts were so subtle that you couldn’t see them on the physical book cover, especially if you didn’t know they were there. So did I buy this book because it subliminally tricked me into doing so???
Notable New Releases
Or, books I would buy right now if I didn’t have some 50 unread books piling on my shelf. They sound so interesting!
Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space by Janna Levin
Two things that make this book super appealing: gravitational waves and women in science. I was among the thrilled and goosebumps-covered people when on February 11, 2016, the LIGO scientists made the public announcement that they had detected gravitational waves for the first time ever. Their observations confirmed Einstein’s theory from 100 years ago. The fact that the science works is simply amazing to me. This book is the story of these LIGO scientists and their work through decades of trying that finally bore fruits this year. I’m also thrilled that just this year, there have been super interesting books written by women in science!
The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Siddhartha Mukherjee’s first book, The Emperor of All Maladies, was a best-selling book on cancer. Here, he writes about the history of how the gene was and is being continually discovered.
Walking the Himalayas by Levison Wood
Stories of adventurers discovering the world at a pedestrian’s pace have fascinated me since I read Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between. It brings into view an intimate story of humanity that we don’t usually see through the regular media.
So there goes my reading list. What are you reading this summer? Please share in the comments below!
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