Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources books for adults

Apparently in mRNA:

http://news.discovery.com/earth/plants/new-plant-language-discovered-140814.htm

For light reading try The Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch who is a Whoovian author. You will see the similarities in his writing.

The Rosie Project has shades of Big Bang Theory. Be warned it is Australian but as far as I can remember there are no cringe worthy references to iconic landmarks or marsupials. Just an Aspergian looking for love in all the wrong places.

I will add Secret Life of Plants to my reading list.

Book that I found refreshing as it's written in a unique style is a novel by Helen de Witt entitled "The Last Samurai". It is more enjoyable as the story is about a HG/PG mom raising a PG son on her own in a foreign country and about his journey to attempt to find his biological father.

Funny, heartwarming, sad and endearing. And the writing style is so unique and different it just really appeals to me over and over again

Trauma Red: The Making of a Surgeon in War and in America's Cities, by Peter Rhee

The Martian, by Andy Weir.

Stephenson's books are all very lush, partially meaning they lack a good editor. "Reamde" is the weakest of the recent books.

"The Baroque Cycle" is very enjoyable... it is like Braudel's Capitalism cycle reimagined as a made for TV movie.

"Cryptonomicon" defines the 90's in a similar way to "Bonfire of the Vanities" for the 80's.

However, Stephenson's books all mix BIG Ideas with too much kinky sex for young audiences for my taste. Stross's "Accelerando" has the same problem as does anything Pynchon has ever written.

For sci-fi, my choice would be Gibson's "Pattern Recognition" which might be THE defining post 9/11 book. "Spook Country" and "Zero History" are weaker books in the triptych in that universe.

"Pattern Recognition" is clean and spare. However, one of the best books I have read in the last few years is "Wolf Hall". It is such a spare book... it is beautiful, like some eastern work of art. If you can catch when the protagonist and his widowed SIL end up sleeping together, your reading skills are at college level. "Bringing up the Bodies" is in a different style... I hope the third book is more like the first.

Thanks for the recommendation. I just finished this over the weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I'd make a recommendation back, but most people seem turned off when I say the genre is "Italian epic poetry".
--S.F.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! You might also like this interview with the author.

Not me!

In that case, I highly recommend the Barbara Reynolds translation of Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" (it comes in two parts).

Furioso is a continuation of Boiardo's "Orlando Innamorato". Both are excellent, but I fell in love (no pun intended) with Furioso first.

--S.F.