Opening soon
Finished a space book. No idea what to read next?
Tell me what you’ve already read and I’ll send back a reading path: what to read next, in what order, and what to skip. Books and audiobooks.
The order is the useful part. What comes next, what can wait, and which ones you can skip without missing anything. It’s short at the moment, because a few books in the right order beat fifty in none. It grows as I read.
What you get
A path, not a list
Most “best space books” lists hand you forty titles and no order. You get the next one, and the one after that, and which ones to skip entirely.
Audiobooks taken seriously
Every pick shows whether there’s an audiobook, how long it runs, and whether the narration is worth your commute. Plenty of great physics books are awful to listen to.
Honest about the duds
A lot of famous popular-science books are not worth your time. I’ll say so, and say why. No “also consider” padding to fill the page.
What it looks like
An example. You’ve just finished Stephen Hawking — A Brief History of Time:
- Carlo Rovelli — Seven Brief Lessons on Physics Shorter than the flight to Rome, and it covers much of what Hawking covers with a fraction of the effort. Which is why it goes first. Take it travelling.
- Brian Greene — The Elegant Universe If the part of Hawking you enjoyed was the black holes and the folded-up dimensions, pick this up. Fair warning: it’s long and it takes its time. Worth it if the geometry is what hooked you.
- Katie Mack — The End of Everything Cosmology as it stands now rather than as it stood in 1988, by someone who works in the field. It has a sense of humour too, which is rarer in popular physics than you’d expect.
- Neil deGrasse Tyson — Astrophysics for People in a Hurry The audiobook pick. Three hours forty-one, read by Tyson himself, and built for a commute rather than a desk. The one to put on your headphones for.
One to skip: the illustrated editions of A Brief History of Time itself. The 1996 expanded version genuinely does add a chapter on wormholes and pages of pictures — but it’s still the book you’ve just finished, so it’s not your next read. Nothing wrong with it. It just isn’t next.
Questions
- When does it open?
- When enough people have signed up to make it worth doing properly. That’s what this page is for — it’s measuring whether this is wanted, not advertising something that already exists.
- Is it free?
- Yes. The links to the books and audiobooks are affiliate links, which is how it pays for itself. That’s the whole business model, and you should know it before you sign up.
- Will you email me constantly?
- No. One email when it opens, and after that only the reading emails you ask for.