Fiction books focus on the unexplained, on what might be – the ones that do not yet exist in the real world but on which the author can speculate in his books. This genre usually is related to, but not limited to – science, technology, time-travel, exploring space and alien life. What makes these novels great is the kind of interest that they can create in the reader’s mind through an intriguing storyline and a sharp narrative.

The world has seen numerous fiction writers, whose literary works have been converted into movies and TV series. These kinds of stories have attracted our attention for ages because the human spirit is always eager to go beyond the realm of the known facts. We search for the unknown, the mysterious, and what evolution has in stock for us. Some readers might even find fiction to be more interesting than what’s happening in the real world. One familiar feeling among science fiction book readers is that the writer bases his writings on what is almost being achieved by scientists, believing that in due time, we will discover something fantastic.

The Truth is, space and extra-terrestrials never fail to impress both the young and adult minds. Demographics reveal the average age of science fiction fans between 29 and 43 years. Maybe that’s on the low side. It could be higher.
Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244018780946).

The study further revealed that most readers encounter their first science fiction book by the age of 15. It seems to point out the fact that science fiction becomes even more appealing as people grow up. Of all readers canvassed, about 72% said that they were proud of the fact that they love science fiction books. Many respondents in this survey summarized what the after-effects of reading an original and good quality science fiction have done to them:

1. Helped improve their skill acquisition capabilities.
2. Helped improve their puzzle-solving aptitude.
3. Helped them keep their minds open to listening to others.

Among the excellent sci-fi book writers, there are several new fiction books that become available each day and make for some superior quality reading. Getting to know more about the books, authors, and publishers is not a difficult task today as the Internet makes it easy to get information about the new book releases.
Reading fiction books opens the readers’ mind to the world.

This is an important book. We need a bigger population of non-fiction readers for writing reviews.

 

Let's start. 

 

First chapter is already on what happen when we sleep. 

 

So, the first part of when to sleep and what is the best time to wake up is already known. 

 

The second part is on larks and owl chronotypes. Questions that one answer would determine if a person is morning person or night person with different peak period of performance.

 

200 pages in. 

 

This is good. The part about how Freud get it all wrong in term of dreams related to sex.

 

The dream is a mild de-stress for some, but might caused more stress for the very depressed. 

 

Some writers do use dreams to make plot, including Stephen King. That's part is good.

 

One more chapter. 

 

Knowing that children benefit from bed time reading is great. And all the more reason to encourage this habit. 

 

Done.

 

It is a bit light.  Not that academic as one would think, but interesting never the less.

 

The thing is, the book read like a self help book without woo. That would be good for the mass market.

 

So, four and a half stars. Not perfect. Not great. Like a good pancake with maple syrup. 

 

I am under a science-related department from a local university and I never touched any literary science writing besides Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. In fact, the book was recommended by a local book club, none of my classmates or professors did. Rather recommending literary science books, people around me recommend boring textbooks. Not even a glimpse of literary writing can be seen from those expensive thick-bound books, except old editions.

 

Throw those textbooks (not literally).

 

One day, I did few clicks online and saw that there are literary science awards garnered for authors and their works. I am happy that I saw my only beloved science book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, won the 2004 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.  I did more clicks and found out that this award was started since 1988. So old that I was shocked that I never heard of it since the day I first remembered my oldest memory (the day I first sucked my mom’s breast, talking Murakami).

 

"The Royal Society Winton Prize celebrates outstanding popular science books from around the world. This prestigious prize is open to authors of science books written for a non-specialist audience."

 

This year, like National Book Award, announced their first ever longlisted science books qualified for the award. (I think longlist is currently trending.) The longlist composed of promising works from different researchers, scientists and academe around the world written for general readers. I am happy that the prize just announced their shortlist last September 25, 2013.

 

 

So far, I’m hoping that Caspar Henderson’s The Book of Barely Imagined Beings will win this year’s Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. I’m sure those cute little critters will win the judges’ hearts.

 

Don’t forget this year’s winner of PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow, and another literary science writing award to watch out. I’m pretty sure that I will spend more money this time. Those are loads of great books and I’m kicking for more science stuff.

Russell's clarity alone is a reason to read this book, any time.

The book is an easy read, articulate and entertaining. It's not a part of Russell's influential theories, rather an aside. Russell presents a history of refutations, from an analytical/scientific perspective, of arguments in favor of God's existence.

Written in a style accessible to the large public, the book can serve as introduction to the controversy between religion and science, as well as offer an enjoyable moment to the reader familiarized with it.

It's Russell, it won't disappoint unless you're looking for what he's not.

Bertrand Russell was an extremely intelligent, witty and entertaining writer, and I enjoyed most of this book in the way I would have enjoyed a very good comment thread on Goodreads; perhaps the book in question was the Bible, or The God Delusion, or one of Ann Coulter's more demented outpourings. Russell has set the ball rolling with a provocative review, designed to tease and infuriate people with religious sympathies; he then proceeds to dispatch the resulting army of trolls, to the amusement of all those who consider themselves skeptical about religion. "You really ought to turn it into a book!" says some well-meaning participant towards the end of the debate. Everyone has forgetten this remark five minutes after it's been made. But Russell, to general amazement, comes back a couple of weeks later and says he's done it and uploaded the result to Smashwords: it's available for $1.99. A few people download the PDF and post reviews saying it's pretty damn good, and it proceeds to sell a fair number of copies.

As the title suggests, the book undertakes to examine various areas in which Religion and Science find themselves in conflict with each other, and considers the grounds on which we might prefer one to the other; I trust no one will be surprised to see Science winning every round. After a brief introduction, Russell gives you a broad hint at what he's planning in the second chapter, which is largely concerned with Galileo and his battle against the nefarious forces of the Inquisition. Russell expresses his admiration for Galileo's Dialogues on the Two Greatest Systems of the World, a transparently rigged pretence at an even-handed comparison of the geocentric and heliocentric systems, and then borrows all Galileo's rhetorical devices: he confuses the facts, misrepresents the Church's side of the argument, sets up and demolishes strawmen, and delights the scientists in his audience while infuriating the churchmen. Galileo, according to everyone who can read him (unfortunately, I do not read Italian) was very funny, and Russell appears to be no worse than his illustrious predecessor. As you can see in my reading notes, there were numerous passages I immediately had to copy out for the benefit of my fellow Goodreaders.

A lot of the book, I felt, was basically entertainment. Towards the end, though, it started getting more serious, and I was reminded that Russell was a good philosopher and an excellent logician. In particular, I very much liked his brief and trenchant analysis of ethics. Science, argues Russell, cannot pronounce on ethics, but this is for the simple reason that statements in the realm of ethics are not within the purview of objective knowledge in the first place: they can always be paraphrased as expressions of personal desire or preference, and hence are purely subjective. This argument is probably well known to modern philosophers, but I had not seen it before and Russell puts the case nicely.

In the conclusion, Russell suddenly sobers up and tells you what he's really talking about. It's not the Christian Church; it's the new religions of Fascism and Communism, which, as he says, have already killed more intellectual dissidents than the Church did in the last three centuries. You remember that he's writing shortly before World War II. He can see what most people are still trying to pretend isn't there, and he has every reason to be desperately worried. All the clowning around was just to get your attention; you thought you'd avoided being fooled, but he's tricked you at a deeper level than you were expecting. Nice work, Russell. If you really were on Goodreads, I would start following your reviews.