In the old days books were described as 'X meets Y', while more recently it's the fans who get the mention - in this case 'perfect for fans ...

Facebook seems determined to become more and more useless to those who want to use it as a platform to draw attention to blog posts. First o...

Something that struck me very early on when reading this book was the statement 'The evolution of the new media environment, particularly in...

There is a wide gulf between the worldviews of physicists and philosophers. Many physicists present a rather sweetly naive, child-like view ...

The third novel in a series can be a bit of a let down, but Robert Jackson Bennett makes this the best so far. In his beautifully imagined w...

Regular readers will be aware that I've been using the AI software Littlebird as a virtual personal assistant for over 6 months now and fi...

Sixty years ago, books about astronomy for general readers were almost unheard of. There were books aimed at enthusiastic amateurs who wante...

I've always loved the 'introducing X, a graphic guide' series from Icon Books, with titles such as Introducing Infinity: a graphic guide . T...

This is notably the weakest of Martin Edwards’ novels featuring the mysterious Rachel Savernake (mysterious to the world though not to the r...

This is described as the definitive biography of Charles Darwin - and I really can't argue. It's a condensation of the original two-volume e...

I have always enjoyed the work of Jon Ronson and Louis Theroux, including their use of blatant faux nativity (I’ll come back to this) - at o...

Janice Hallett has a super power - she can prevent you from stopping reading. It’s partly the format, a continuous flow of emails, texts, Wh...

This is an oddity. I heard about this book on the excellent Science Fictions podcast, where I was told that anyone with an interest in popu...

In the past I've found Steven Pinker's books hypnotic - I drift along enjoying the words and feeling I'm getting something deep from it with...

By a small margin Jim Al-Khalili's The World According to Physics is my favourite of his books, both because the 'three pillars' concept at...

Dorothy “Little” Sayers

Is it not a curious fact that in a world steeped in irrational hatreds which threaten civilization itself, men and women—old and young—detach themselves wholly or partly from the angry current of dail...

I don't use Facebook to find out about science - it's a bit like asking for a gold watch in a pound shop. But inevitably the algorithm does ...

The forensic scientist's work forms a fascinating part of crime drama, with the pathologist playing a big supporting role in many police pro...

I've just read Jim Al-Khalili's excellent new book On Time (review out next week) in which he spends a little time on the special theory of...

REVISIT SERIES An updated post from July 2016 There is often a degree of desperation in the way that scientists try to justify expenditure o...

My two favourite social media platforms are X and Bluesky - I love the contrast between their typical posts and the way I get a totally diff...

It has always seemed a hope that we could help readers to think about science through science fiction, and this latest book in Springer's no...

Listening to recent episode of Ed Balls and George Osborne's usually excellent podcast, Political Currency, I felt that the pair failed to ...

I've always been a bit of a sucker for (real life) ghost stories and UFO sightings. When I was a youngster, my dad got books on the Borley R...