I first came across Jane McGonigal when I saw her TED talk on how to see the future. When I heard that she was publishing a book on the topic, I immediately pre-ordered it from Amazon. Imaginable is a fascinating read and covers a lot of ground on how futurists like McGonigal approach their future-focused research.

I’ve read every biography that Walter Isaacson has written. His books on Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs were two of my favorites. I love his writing style and comprehensive approach to researching the people he is profiling. His biography of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, Ph.D., one of the inventors of CRISPR technology and gene editing, is one of those volumes that I couldn’t put down. Isaacson traces the arc of her life from early childhood to her ground-breaking discovery of CRISPR in his usual highly engaging fashion. A great read.

This was a book recommended by Dr. Bertalan Mesko, The Medical Futurist, on his website. In an age where critical thinking is in short supply, Think Again by Adam Grant examines the critical art of rethinking: learning to question your opinions and open other people’s minds, which can position you for excellence at work and wisdom in life. His stories and examples teach us to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility over foolish consistency. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.

While not a new publication, I came across Self Tracking as part of my research into the current state of self-tracking devices and their expanded use in personalized health care. Gina Neff and Dawn Nafus describe what happens when people turn their everyday experiences—in particular, health and wellness-related experiences—into data and offer an introduction to the essential ideas and key challenges of using these technologies. They consider self-tracking as a social and cultural phenomenon, describing not only the use of data as a kind of mirror of the self but also how this enables people to connect to, and learn from, others. This book is especially relevant today, as we question things like who owns our health care tracking data, how it can be used, and whether patients should be compensated for the use (or misuse) of their data.

I loved Andy Weir’s novel The Martian (not so much the movie version, though). So when he published his latest novel Project Hail Mary, I downloaded it on its release date and finished it in a single reading. Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. I loved the way Weir structured the entire novel. And the second half of the book, where Grace uncovers how to communicate with the alien being he’s encountered, is utterly fascinating. I know there’s a movie version in the works. Hopefully, I’ll enjoy this one better than the last adaptation of Weir’s The Martian.

Stephanie Storey’s Oil and Marble: A Novel of Leonardo and Michelangelo is another “how did I miss this one” finds. First published in 2016, Storey’s novel covers the period of a few years at the very beginning of the sixteenth century when Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti both lived and worked in Florence. Leonardo was a charming, handsome fifty-year-old at the peak of his career. Michelangelo was a temperamental sculptor in his mid-twenties, desperate to make a name for himself. Having read Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo, I found the juxtaposition of his work and Michelangelo’s work at this critical point in each of their careers an excellent, engaging read.