My top 5 favorite books

Reading is different to everyone. It's leisure to some, but tiring to others, it's a learning experience to some, but a casual activity to others. Some take it very seriously, others just lightly. For me, it is largely a great opportunity to learn. That is why, my list won't include fictions. Although I have read few fictions as well, I don't think comparing fictions and non-fictions is fair.

The books I read (and which are in the list) are heavily biology based, more specifically -Zoology, and quite factual in nature. I love fact-intensive books. Books that made up this list are filled with astounding facts accompanying a "storyline"(my favorite kind). Contrarily, my favorite book is highly factual and doesn't have a storyline. Here's the ranking:

1. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong

2. Different - Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist by Frans de Waal

3. Immune: A journey into the mysterious system that keeps you alive by Philipp Dettmer

4. Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life by Peter Godfrey-Smith

5. The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us by Steve Brusatte

An Immense World

I cannot find a word sufficient enough to explain how wonderful this book is. I see no other book worthy of taking the top spot and replacing this master piece in near future. It beautifully elaborates how amazing, bizarre and wonderful nature is. Every line of the book had something I had never known before. A perfect book to get to know just how incredible and intricate the work of our creator is, I mean, AI who?

It is based on the concept of Umwelt - which is "the part of those surroundings that an animal can sense and experience"—its perceptual world. It basically discusses how the same surrounding is perceived differently by different creatures; what we see is not the same as what (and how) a bee sees and what we smell is not the same as what a dog smells. The book is loaded with accounts of astonishing creatures- like four-eyed spiders, birds with a view greater than 270 degree, the network of ants, scallops with hundreds of eyes (which sort of functions like the sense of touch). It also talkes about animals that use electric and magnetic fields and other insane phenomena animals.

The book is beautifully structured and goes into a great depth on every topics. Your life will never be the same after reading this book (not exaggerating)! I hold no criticism of the book. You should definitely read it if you find nature fascinating.

Different

An exhilarating page-turner, this book will leave you flabbergasted as you learn intimately about our closest relatives. You will be amazed to learn how intelligent and beautiful chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and other monkeys are. This book is all about primates and us (also primates). The author discusses issues, myths and misconceptions that rose and accumulated through countless naïve studies on primates and how those ideas fed patriarchy. He talks about gender, gender roles, ape and monkey intelligence, mating etc. He also explains the basis and origin of toys and how they are not exclusively humanistic. The flow and structure of the book is well organized and not so factual and hence easy to follow and remember. The author picks up an aspect common between us and other primates, discusses it with respect to each other, and then compares to declare similarities and differences. He is daring and doesn't shy away from speaking real science. You will learn about Bonobos-the forgotten ape, and how science concealed studies on them because the female of the species is dominant. I recommend this book to everyone as it will make you appreciative of not only the great apes, but also our own species and the opposite sex and why beauty lies in differences and not in similarities. As the debate on GENDER related issues is at it's peak, this book will give you unique insights.

Immune

This book is written by the person behind a famous science YouTube channel- Kurzgesagt. Immune system is one of the most underrated, complex and the least understood system of the body (after the Central Nervous System). The author has done an excellent job in simplifying this complex system. He beautifully parallels the immune system to a battle field and all its cells and chemical messengers as combatants. It is amazing how he managed to gather all the simultaneous processes and present it neatly. He starts by explaining how and why the immune system evolved, moves on to the innate immune system, then the adaptive immune system and how the adaptive immune system works differently when a virus attacks as opposed to bacteria. The best part is when he discusses cancer and allergies. You will also get to know about HIV and how brutal it is. I again recommend it to everyone as we all should know how our body protects us.

Other Minds

Its been almost a year since I read this book. This book helped me find my comfort reading genre- factual books. It is about cephalopods and their unusual brilliant intelligence. Cephalopods include octopuses, cuttlefish, squid etc. The author explains how these primitive mollusks, due to the absence of a hard outer covering/ shell, managed to develop a brain as a defense mechanism, which was as smart as of mammals like dogs and elephants. Octopuses are among the few animals which can recognize themselves in a mirror. The evolutionary history is he most interesting part. After reading this book, I got my hands on a bunch of factual non-fictions and I loved them all.

The Rise and Reign of the Mammals

We all love fantasy and adventure-worlds that don't exits in real life. Well, this book is about an adventure land (though a terrifying one) which was actually real. This book is hard to follow as it is filled with species, class, order and family names. You need lots of patients to absorb the most out of the book, certainly a challenging book and not for everyone. The reason why I was able to get through owes to the fact that I am really attracted to this theme. Knowing about how the earth was millions of years ago is so fascinating. The book starts with an introduction of dinosaur and mammals' common ancestor, and then the mammalian line is traced. The best part about the book was learning about alien creatures that walked the earth. There were mammals that looked like lizards, mammals that were mix of a hippo, a horse and/or a giraffe. The animals back then were a mix of some that exist today and looked like what someone would photoshop in a fun assignment. An epic thriller if you are even remotely interested in lifeforms that existed millions of years ago, and how we are related to them.