h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

ah, a topic one should never get me started on unless one can withstand hours of unchecked ranting! here are my recommendations, grouped according to author:

NON-FICTION
1. carl sagan: i was a saganite long before i started reading dawkins (whose books you will find further down in this list, mind you). if you're a defender of science and skepticism, i would highly recommend 'the demon-haunted world: science as a candle in the dark'. it's a celebration of science, and sagan debunks pseudoscience so well (get ready to be tickled). and, if you like hard science fiction, sagan's one and only novel 'contact'.

2. richard dawkins: 'the blind watchmaker' is a must! and i really liked 'river out of eden' as well. (i won't bother mentioning 'the selfish gene' - doubtless you've already heard of that book thanks to dna )

3. michael shermer: 'why people believe weird things'. another incredible book on debunking pseudoscience. the section on creationism is a must-read - although i believe it has recently made an appearance in scientific american...

4. henry petroski: 'the evolution of everyday things'. if you're the sort who's wondered how forks came about, or who invented the zipper, then you *must* read this book. it's provided me with loads of little nuggets of information, that are wonderful for after-meal storytelling sessions (the story of how 3m started as a sandpaper company, and wound up marketing things like post-it notes and cellophane tape is one that can be retold many times to different audiences).

FICTION
1. pg wodehouse: the jeeves and wooster books are fantastic. i'd read some of his other works before - namely the blandings books - and wasn't all too impressed. but then i picked up 'piccadilly jim' and liked that (it was just too silly for words)... and i'm currently chewing my way through the jeeves books - albeit very slowly, because i keep on getting hysterical laughing fits. start with 'carry on, jeeves', and you'll find yourself getting drawn into the world of bertie wooster (who, incredibly, manages to get himself into hopeless situations where the victim can only be extricated out of the mess by a deus ex machina - namely jeeves)

2. douglas adams: 'the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy'. like ,duh>. 'last chance to see' is wonderful as well - and it's amazing how dna manages to get ecology and humour to blend so well.

3. jerome k. jerome: next to adams and wodehouse, jerome is my favourite english writer. his comic account of three totally clueless young man seeking a bit of adventure, 'three men in a boat', is worth at least two reads. 'j' (whom i assume must have been jerome himself) tends to remind me of the thoroughly incompetent bertie wooster.

4. arthur c. clarke: i'm sorry! i just love hard science fiction. i would recommend *anything* by this guy, although i like his space odyssey and rama books best ('2001: a space odyssey', '2010', '2061' and '3001'; 'rendezvous with rama', 'rama ii', 'garden of rama' and 'rama revealed'. and h2g2 fans will find a bit of a surprise waiting for them at the end of 'rama revealed'. i refuse to elaborate)

5. isaac asimov: there goes another sf author. once again, i would recommend just about anything by asimov. of course, i would also recommend that you read them in chronological order - not in the order he wrote them, mind, but in the order of events. you'd start off with the robot books (make sure you read 'the positronic man'!), then go on to the empire books (there are three), and then finally the foundation series (it ends with 'foundation and earth' - which i don't see anymore in bookstores). i'm still having trouble placing 'the end of eternity' - i don't know if one should read it *before* one reads the rest of the books or *after*. those of you who have read it will know what i mean.

6. neil gaiman!!! his sandman comics are brilliant, and his books are a must-read: 'good omens' (with pratchett), 'american gods', 'neverwhere', 'stardust' and 'coraline'. oh, and you might want to check out 'the books of magic' (he wrote the 4-part miniseries that started off the tim hunter comics).

7. raymond e. feist: i must say that i've enjoyed every book written by this fellow. great fantasy stuff, especially the riftworld books. i must, of course, warn you that we're talking about a *series* of books, and not one or two stand-alones. not a good thing to start reading unless you have easy access to them, or a great deal of money to spare!

MISCELLANEOUS

1. 'voodoo science: from foolishness to fraud' by robert park. another book on debunking pseudoscience. has a lot of good stuff on homeopathy

2. i've just read this book called 'level 4 virus hunters of the cdc' written by two ex-cdc people, joseph mccormick and susan fisher-hoch. it's a wonderful account of the field work those cdc people have done on lassa and ebola, to name but a few.

3. 'the devil's dictionary' by ambrose bierce is one of those books you can dip into, like dna's 'the meaning of liff'. in no other dictionary will you find definitions like "HISTORY: n.
an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools" or "APOLOGIZE: v.i. to lay the foundation for a future offence". it's a little hard to find; fortunately, it is now available online

oh golly, and i forgot some of the most essential reads:

1. robert heinlein's 'stranger in a strange land'. i know that there are two schools of thought regarding this book: those that think it is an incredible work of genius, and those that think that heinlein had taken leave of his judgement. me, i think that it's absolutely fabulous.

2. george orwell's '1984'. big brother is watching you. enough said.

3. anthony burgess' 'a clockwork orange'. i would not recommend it to anyone below the age of 18, but it *is* a really good book. my friends and i went about saying 'yarblockos' and going on about how we were going to 'tolchock' people for weeks after we read it.

4. joseph heller's 'catch-22'. it's the book to read, if you're suffering from excessive paranoia and think that the world is out to get you also, you would have to read this book to understand the movie...

I agree with you about Neil Gaiman's books / graphic novels. I'm not a big fan of 'superhero comics' but the Sandman is in a whole different league. The concept of the Endless really appeals to me - an entirely different way of looking at the world / stories. I try to recommend them to people but most of them (especially the girls for some reason) are put off by the fact they are 'comics'. It's such a shame as they are some of the most thought provoking stories I've ever read. I'm currently lending 'American Gods' to people & seeing if I can suck them in that way, as it articulates some of the same concepts.

If you like his mixing of reality, fiction & myth, then you might want to try some of Kim Newman's stories. (He actually features in the Sandman story 'Calliope' as one of the interviewers - the one with the side-burns). He writes very good alternate history / horror stories. My particular favourites are 'Anno Dracula' which summises that Dracula marries Queen Victoria (after Albert's death) and 'Ubermensch' (a short story) that looks at what might have happened to Superman if he had landed in Germany (instead of the mid West) in the 1930's. They are gripping stories, written (like Gaiman) by someone who is frighteningly well-read. In both cases they educate as well as entertain. Definately worth searching out.

gaiman rules! although i'm a very bookish person, i'm nevertheless also a big fan of vertigo comics (i'm collecting tim hunter and lucifer, which is a spin-off from sandman). it helps that one of my close friends is also a vertigo reader, 'cause i get most of them from him (i'd never be able to afford all, and you know how many different comics series are under vertigo!). i like it how the comics are all interrelated, and how they're mostly spin-offs from one another.

did you know that gaiman once undertook to draw and write a 24-hour 24-panel comic called 'heliogabulus'? (he failed) probably the only example of neil's artwork around. he was mostly rambling, but then again, anybody would after slaving away for 20 hours. it's still available online, i think.

yeah, i'm using 'american gods' to convert friends as well! we recently gave it to a close friend of ours for her birthday, and we inscribed on the fly-leaf: 'may this enlighten you'. i'm not sure if she's read it, and if so, what she makes of it.

(ps: would it shock you to learn that i'd never gotten around to reading 'the kindly ones' and 'the wake'? my friend had everything *but* those two , and i'm too mean to get them myself...)

Yes I would be shocked. How can you leave a story arc hanging in the air like that? If you think they're too expensive, then put them on your Xmas / birthday list and get other people to buy them for you. Whilst they're not the most amazing books in the series, they help it all make sense. I particularly like the last Hob Gadling story.

only problem is - i can't find them in any of the bookstores!! that's why i'm still asking around for people who have copies of 'em...