10 Geekiest Beach Reads Of 2015
Fiction, non-fiction, youth fiction, and even self-help. Here are 10 new books every geek should bring to the beach this summer.
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Happy summer to Geeks everywhere (well, at least in the Northern Hemisphere). 'Tis the season to grab a book and a deck chair and get a little sun on our bodies after being trapped in data centers and office cubes all year. Beach reading, even if it happens in your backyard with your toes in a kiddie pool, calls for lighter fare. But we Geeks aren't content to totally slack off. We still need our fill of robots, drones, and other worlds to keep us going.
Our beach reading list for Geeks aims to fit the spirit of the summer and still maintain Geek sensibilities. You don't find too many beach books about robots having a summer fling, though those of you looking for something provocative can turn to the 2007 hit Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships. Likewise, murder mysteries where the Butler did it with a smartphone are rare, though there is a great mystery set around Charles Babbage's Difference Engine.
This list offers sci-fi, narrative non-fiction, and a sprinkling of young adult books for sharing with the kids in your life. There's even one self-help book for those looking to kick-start the summer with a new attitude or maybe a new career. Every book on the list is new this year to either hardcover or paperback. And of course, nearly all of them have e-versions.
Here's one admission I'll make: The list is painfully short of female authors. I picked the titles based on topic alone, and didn't pay any attention to the mix of authors until the end (definitely an error on my part). I find I woefully failed in that department, and I feel that it means in part that our publishing industry has failed woefully as well. Rather than go back and change my list, I thought it might be more effective to admit the problem and ask you to help me fix it. You're welcome to tell me about your favorite authors, regardless of gender, but I especially want to hear who your favorite female writers are.
Please check out the list of what I'll be reading this summer. Add to the list for me. Tell me in the comments section below what you can't wait to kick back and read. And have a safe, relaxing, and informative time at the beach.
Authors: Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
We lost Pratchett to Alzheimer's disease this year. His 40-year career brought us enough classics to fill all our summers. This year, Pratchett and Baxter give us something fun for the summer: an artificial intelligence that is aging and trying to cope with the loss of its mind. One can't help but see a parallel between the AI and Pratchett's condition. This is the fourth book in a series that started with The Long Earth). Throughout the series, AI and humans are friends and live beside a new race of humans called the Next. The three "species" must work together to save the world (actually, many worlds).
Author: David McCullough
There are few things as fascinating as the story of the beginning of a new type of technology. And when it is told by McCullough, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, it's impossible to pass it up. Here, he tells the tale of the Wright Brothers historic flight at Kitty Hawk. What better place to read about a flight on a beach than at the beach?
Authors: PW Singer and August Cole
Here, we go from the first flight to what that flight has wrought. Ghost Fleet imagines World War III fought with drones, cyber-warfare between hackers, and every other weapon of the near future. Singer and Cole are experts in cyber-security and drones, and this work of "speculative fiction" might be a tad too close to home. If you want a book that combines the kind of tech we talk about at InformationWeek every day with the page-turning qualities of a good thriller, this is your best bet.
Author: Jason Kotecki
This is the only "self-help" title to make our list. Kotecki doesn't like the way we follow rules (how we're supposed to hate Mondays or hide our true selves from other people). He names 40 rules that we blindly follow which he thinks are making us unhappy. What drew me to this book is the picture of the penguin with a balloon strapped to it. The illustrations make the book shine, and it is a quick summer read to help you get a little fun and inspiration back in your life.
Author: Dan Ariely
A behavioral economist, Ariely pens a column for the Wall St. Journal in which he answers reader's questions about the rational and irrational parts of our nature. Ariely has gathered the best columns from that series here, and combined them with comics to illustrate his points. The book serves as a lighthearted way to see how we behave irrationally every day, as in choosing to drive somewhere rather than fly, even though driving is more dangerous than flying. Ariely's concepts, clear writing, and entertaining style make this a must-read.
Author: Jeffry Brown
If you're looking for a fun, light read, this is the series for you -- and one you can share with your kids. Buy it for your kids and then sneak it away from them. Imagine Harry Potter set in the Star Wars universe, instead of Hogwarts, and written as a comic book. Brown, the book's illustrator, as well as its author, has a light and airy style that works for kids, with a sensibility that makes it fun for adults, too.
That's all, folks. I'm looking forward to plowing through as many of the titles listed here as possible this summer. What is on your summer reading list? Will you help me bring gender balance to my reading this summer? What kind of book do you like to read on a hot summer day? Tell me all about it in the comments section below, and share your favorite fun summer reads.
That's all, folks. I'm looking forward to plowing through as many of the titles listed here as possible this summer. What is on your summer reading list? Will you help me bring gender balance to my reading this summer? What kind of book do you like to read on a hot summer day? Tell me all about it in the comments section below, and share your favorite fun summer reads.
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