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<p>For those interested in sports figures, there are the auto- and biographies of Andre Agassi, Jimmy Connors, and Tiger Woods (by Hank Haney), all of which I enjoyed, and I think they were all in Overdrive which I get through our library. </p>
<p>If you want something short and not so recent, there are tons of Agatha Christie books (Poirot and Marples), both the traditional readings that are about 6 hours long, and BBC plays that are shorter. (Same with Wodehouse books)</p>
<p>If you like the Bond movies, the Ian Fleming Books are an option. Most of the later books have pretty different plots from the big screen versions, so you get a new experience, and oddly, these are about the only cases where I preferred the moves to the books.</p>
<p>If you like mysteries, the Oak Knoll series and the two Estes books by Tami Hoag were good (I didn’t care for her earlier chick-lits like Heart of Dixie or Mismatch). I also like Lisa Gardner - Warren and Rainie series, Karin Slaughter - Georgia and Grant County series, and my favorites Lee Child and Tess Gerritsen. Tessa Harris has a Dr. Silkstone series of mysteries but set a couple of centuries ago in England which reflects the flavor of that era.</p>
<p>Also in the mystery genre with some supernatural stuff, James Rollins has a bunch, my favorite being Indiana Jones Crystal Skull, and also the Sigma series like Sandstorm Sigma, Map of Bones, etc.</p>
<p>As a member of the cc family, Amy Chua’s Battle hymm of the tiger mom may get your blood pressure up. Pausch’s last lecture also has an academic flavor.</p>
<p>My all-time favorite category is science related books.
For laymen, Robert Wolke’s “What Einstein told his barber” is absolutely superb. It discusses dozens of phenomena we encounter every day - why do planes fly, why does the shower curtain cave inwards when the water is turned on fast, many with a great sense of humor added in. Also Feynman’s “surely you’re joking Mr Feynman” was a classic, but somehow most of his other books disappointed me when compared to this.
Rocket men about the whole Apollo project by Craig Nelson was superb
Others which are a bit more technical are:
Susskind’s “Black Hole War”,
Hawking’s books like the theory of everything, Grand design, etc.
Foreshaw and Cox’s book on Why does e=mc2 and why should we care
Musser’s Idiot’s guide to string theory may work for you if you aren’t as much of an idiot as me in this regard.</p>
<p>The modern scholar books are a genre I’ve liked all along in many categories, and in the science, I liked books like:
Dr. Kaler’s astronomy lectures like Astronomy I: Earth, Sky, and Planets
Kricher’s modern scholar lectures on dinosaurs and ecological systems
John Young’s lectures on Anatomy
Dyer’s lectures on bacteria
There are a lot of books in other categories, eg. if you like history, you have recent past like:
Margaret Macmillan’s work
or earlier history such as Timothy Shutt’s High Seas, High stakes and Jennifer Tobin’s books like the seven wonders of the ancient world.</p>
<p>I could go on for ever, and with my almost two hour commute and visits to the three kids living 8 hours away, I go through so many of them these days.</p>