I’ve just finished reading Sarah Dunant’s The Birth of Venus, and I thought the book was wonderful.  It is beautifully written, with an engaging story and a heavy dependence on history.  It talks a lot about art too, which I loved.

I thought the writing was really impressive, making it so easy to see just what she wanted you to.  It comes highly recommended.

Verdict: A+

Next up:

Natalie Angier’s The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science.

I am excited about this one.  Amazon’s synopsis reads:

Pulitzer-winning science writer Angier (Woman: An Intimate Geography) distills everything you’ve forgotten from your high school science classes and more into one enjoyable book, a guide for the scientifically perplexed adult who wants to understand what those guys in lab coats on the news are babbling about, in the realms of physics, chemistry, biology, geology or astronomy. More important even than the brief rundowns of atomic theory or evolution—enlivened by interviews with scientists like Brian Greene—are the first three chapters on scientific thinking, probability and measurement.