At the time he died, I’d been a fan of Douglas Adams for about 25 years. After he died, they released a collection of essays, works in progress, notes and such. In it, he described the amazement he had for his favorite author, who he described as having an amazing way with words. The guy that amazed me with “It flew in much the same way a brick doesn’t.” was amazed by someone else’s way with words. So, I put down Salmon, walked to the nearest bookshop, and bought a couple of volumes by P.G. ( if I may call him that) Wodehouse and began a new era of fandom that rivals my adoration of dear old Doug.

Momo by Michael Ende. He also wrote The Neverending Story. Where The Neverending Story is about imagination, Momo is about listening and time.

I have never met anyone who has read Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space series. It’s one of my favourite sci-fi’s and I can’t even get someone I know to read it, everyone thinks it’s boring :)

After Man by Dougal Dixion.

It’s a book about speculative biology. It hypothesizes that humanity will lead to the extinction of most of the animals we know. After that new animals will evolve to take their place. The book speculates that rabbits will take the place of deer, and that rats will evolve into dog like animals .

The best part about the book is that there are great illustrations.

To my knowledge it’s not a very well known book, just because speculative biology is a very niche subject.

The Art Of Learning - Josh Waitzkin

If you saw the movie Searching For Bobby Fischer, you might remember the main character Josh Waitzkin. Based on a true story and book written by his father, the movie tells the story of Josh who becomes a world renowned chess champion at a young age.

IRL, Josh also goes on to compete internationally and excel in Tai Chi Push Hands. In his book, he talks about how he isn’t inherently talented at either of these disciplines but that he’s learned how to learn and that it can be applied to any interest.

Any translation of “The Divine Comedy” should be atleast interesting! Possibly the best feat of poetry of our time.

Back when I was an edgy teen, the saga of Darren Shan and the adjacent content of the Demonata were good as far as I can remember. I don’t know if it will hold up for a more mature audience despite that being the demographic.

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.

Quoting from wikipedia:

The book is set “roughly two thousand years after a nuclear war has devastated civilization … [and] … is written in a stylistic, imaginary dialect based on and inspired by the dialect of Kent”

“The struggle with Riddley’s language is what makes reading the book so absorbing, so completely possessing."

It takes a while for your brain to adjust, but once it does, you don’t even notice.

A Salty Piece of Land by Jimmy Buffett… No, seriously.

He has the reputation as “the patron saint of drunken uncle beach bums”, but if you dig into his earlier catalogue, its rife with beautiful, lyrical storytelling songcraft. When you consider that, itss no suprise that he can write a decent book.

“Red Harvest” by Dashiell Hammett.

Almost 100 years old, and it is still one of the best things you’ll ever read.

If the plot sounds familiar, it’s because it’s been stolen over and over and over.

A private detective is hired to investigate corruption in a small city. When the man who hire him is gunned down, the unnamed hero decides to set all the town’s gangs at each others’ throats to see what shakes out.

The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Eskov. It is an amazing book, though some of it is lost in translation. If you are reading it in English, make sure to use the v2 version which fixes a lot of issues with the v1 version.

Social Life in the Insect World by Jean-Henri Fabre

Pretty much most manhua/manhwa. There’s sadly no manhua/manhwa community here.

Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing. It’s a very easy read all about how weird currency is. My only gripe is that Jacob Goldstein often leaves out too much detail of historical accounts in favor of keeping the book light and accessible.

Rymdväktaren (“The Space Guardian”) and Nyaga, a duology by late Swedish author Peter Nilson. He was a prominent doctor of astronomy at the University of Uppsala, and a board member of the International Astronomical Union. But he also released many works of poetry.

The books are pretty fantastical and have a lot of speculative ideas but you can tell they are grounded in a solid understanding of physics and cosmology, with a big chunk of interesting philosophy thrown in. A lot of mind boggling stuff happens. For example the protagonists try to build a quantum computer that simulates the universe and end up creating an actual universe, which causes some weird effects on physical constants of our universe.

The main theme is how information is encoded in physical events and whether it can be preserved past the end of our universe. It’s been a long time since I read them but at the time I enjoyed them immensely. Unfortunately no English translation seems to be available.