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I’ve never been able to read a novel on a screen or even a Kindle, preferring the tactile experience of a paper book.
A number of my friends preferred the opposite, keeping everything in electronic form – until recently.
We spend so much time staring at a screen these days that many have returned to books as an escape during their leisure time. The computer has become a device with which you work, watch TV, and socialise.
Reading is a welcome break from all of that. It’s also useful to have a book or two around during load shedding, which will be back for the rest of the week come this evening.
If you’re looking for something to add to the bookshelf or the steadily growing pile of books on your bedside table, Fortune rounded up a few new titles, and we picked our top five:
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
I can attest firsthand to the fact that Nobel Prize-winning Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the most singularly beautiful writers of contemporary fiction. Klara and the Sun appears to be a return to something bordering on science fiction, tackling similar questions to the ones he confronted in his 2005 novel, Never Let Me Go.
The story is set around Klara, an ‘artificial friend’, who from her place in the store observes those who come in to look around and those who pass on the street outside, hoping that a customer will choose her.
The novel, much like Never Let Me Go, asks you to question what it means to be human.
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson
Walter Isaacson, known for his excellent biographies on people like Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein, has turned his talents to mapping the life of American biochemist and Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, one of the inventors of Crispr, a system that can edit DNA.
Crispr has been used to create “designer babies” in Japan that are born immune to HIV, and in America to cure sickle cell anemia.
Financial journalists Max Frumes and Sujeet Indap put their hard-hitting journalistic skills to good use as they take us on a deep-dive into a classic casino heist, that includes a $31 billion leveraged buyout and a string of financial engineering transactions by Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital.
Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am by Julia Cooke
To serve as a flight attendant on Pan Am in the 60s and 70s you had to be fluent in two languages, be a certain height and weight, have a college education, and be under the age of 26.
Julia Cooke weaves together stories from Pan Am flight attendants from that era, and how they went above and beyond – especially during times of war.
I’m not a fan of self-help books, but Amy Shah has an MD after her name and is a leading nutrition expert. Besides, I think we’re all so ‘effing tired’ right now that anything is worth trying.
A closer look at the book also reveals that it’s not another drawn-out soliloquy about ‘sending your intentions out into the universe’. It gets you back on track by targeting the complicated relationship between your gut, your immune system, and your hormones.
Just keep in mind that a book isn’t the ideal way to manage everything and if you’re feeling really unwell or weird, you should seek medical attention.
A book like Klara and the Sun, on the other hand, is undoubtedly good for the soul.
[source:fortune]
