Confessions of a Conjuror – Derren Brown
Nerd Do Well – Simon Pegg
The Terror Conspiracy – Jim Marrs
The Trouble With Physics – Lee Smolin
Dave Gorman Vs the Rest of the World – Dave Gorman
The Psychopath Test – Jon Ronson
The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex – Mark Kermode
Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography – Walter Isaacson
God, No! – Penn Jillette
The Final Reckoning – Sam Bourne
Of those, only two were fiction (I think the Pullman book counts as fiction), and I only read the Bourne/Freedland book as an easy page turner over Christmas. I was on a physics/pop. sci. bent this year, it would appear. I strongly recommend Manjit Kumar’s Quantum – on top of being a great overview of each of the major players in the early development of quantum theory, it’s also a fascinating record of the intellectual battle that Einstein and Bohr had for many years. A great read.
I guess it was a given that I was going to devour the Steve Jobs bio. Some think that Isaacson was the wrong choice for the book, and maybe he was – I’m not good enough to judge that – but it was a thoroughly riveting read nonetheless. It was also a thoroughly uncomfortable read – it’s never pleasant when the people whom you admire turn out to be someone entirely different.
I’m a sucker for a conspiracy book, and Jim Marrs does it soooo well. Crossfire is a tremendous chronicling of the JFK assassination, and The Terror Conspiracy, whilst a touch more cuckoo that Crossfire, is still fascinating.
A further data point – all but one of those books were ebooks, read on a Kindle. The only physical book I read was the Hawking/Mlodinow one, and that was only because someone bought it for me. It reminded me that hardback books are heavy.
What Did You Do, Ray? 