Gaia Vince, award-winning science journalist, author, broadcaster, speaker, and author ofNomad Century, selects from her library some of her favourite and formative reads…
• Le Petit Prince
By Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943)
This is perhaps the first travel book I read as a child and, like the best of them, it introduced me to ludicrous characters, thought-provoking conversations and a tour of other planets…
• The Invention of Nature
By Andrea Wulf (2015)
The extraordinary adventures of the remarkable polymath Alexander von Humboldt around Latin America and Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries, a time of revolution in science, nationhood and philosophy.
• Gulliver’s Travels
By Johnathan Swift (1926)
In which a mariner travels the world and gets caught up in a series of fantastical adventures, dangerous scrapes and ethical dramas in fictional lands. Great fun and one I should probably re-read as an adult to understand the political satire Swift intended.
• Making Babies
By Anne Enright (2004)
Becoming a mother is very much a personal voyage into uncharted territory. Nothing prepares you for the unreality of birth and new motherhood, but this honest, visceral and humane review does the best job.
• White Teeth
By Zadie Smith (2000)
The story of immigrant families living in London, their ambitions, triumphs and heartaches, brilliantly told with empathy and humour.
• Gödel, Escher, Bach
By Douglas Hofstadter (1979)
An adventure in mathematics and cultural cognition, this book is one to re-read and dip into, full of puzzles and patterns.
• Cod
By Mark Kurlansky (1997)
A delightful book on a subject in which I had no interest, but was nevertheless possessed by, propelled on a world tour through history, from the Basque country to the Americas by way of Iceland and Greenland.
• The God of Small Things
By Arundhati Roy (1997)
A beautifully written family story that transports me to the humidity of lush and dusty tropical Kerala.
