Back in 2007, I put up a post listing my five favourite books of the year. Somehow, I missed 2008. Despite that, I am still happy to assert that the 2007 list includes some of the best books I have ever read.
Among the books I read in 2009, these are the five I most emphatically recommend:
- Craven, Greg. What’s the Worst That Could Happen? A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate.
- Hoggan, James. Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming.
- MacKay, David. Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air
- Rhodes, Richard. Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb.
- Morton, Oliver. Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet.
It was a tough choice.
Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood would be a natural successor to Oryx and Crake back in 2008. Unfortunately, the better book of the two remains the original.
If I had read Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed soon after it had come out, it might have been one of my choices. That said, it is a compelling and important book.
Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution certainly deserves a nod. For anyone who wants a comprehensible account of why we know as much about evolution as we do, this is the book to read.
You can read all my book reviews here.
I may eventually cook up a retroactive 2008 list.
