Last year I read some really cool books that are somehow related to my work. I also read books that were so annoying, I didn’t even finish them. I wanted to share some of my thoughts here.
Jim Ottaviani, Maris Wicks: Primates
Lovely comic book about three women researchers who study primates (Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas). Great gift idea! Link to book
Steven Strogatz, The joy of X.
Highly recommended! Great book with essays about fun math. Made me want to learn more. Link to book.
Jennine Capó Crucet: Make Your Home Among Strangers
I very much enjoyed this novel about a young cuban woman who is the first of her family to go to college. It’s an easy read, but it has some insights that may be useful for those of us who teach. Link to book.
Vanessa Woods: Bonobo handshake
Well written memoire by traveler, writer and bonobo researcher Woods, with a lot of background on Congo and neighboring countries. The descriptions of awful violence during the wars in Congo may be upsetting to some. Link to book.
Bill Nye: Undeniable
The topic of this book, evolution, is dear to my heart, but I didn’t manage to finish it. It is simply not well written / edited. Link to book
Frank Ryan: Virolution
This book was definitely worse than Bill Nye’s book! It is not well written and it is full of nonsense about evolution. Disappointing, because it would have been nice to have a good popular book on viruses and evolution. Here Carl Zimmer explains why the book is not recommended: link to book review.
Being A Better Scientist 
Cool blog! Hopefully I will read some of these book recomendations in the future.