A little light reading.
Here are the books we’ve previously picked as part of Curious Reading Club.
If you want to get a copy of a book from an earlier month, take a look in our shop. Titles are available at a discount as long as they are still in stock.
September 2025
The Pacific Circuit: A Globalized Account of the Battle for the Soul of an American City
Alexis Madrigal
“Arm-wrestles a wild host of ideas into a handbook for anyone who lives in the 21st century”
August 2025
Strata: Stories from Deep Time
Laura Poppick
"A lingering peek into what happened over epochs longer than any of us can really imagine... poetic and practical, mixing some luxurious, reflective nature writing with Poppick’s own recollections as a participant in the field. "
July 2025
The Salmon Cannon and The Levitating Frog and Other Serious Discoveries of Silly Science
Carly Anne York
“A charming, breezy tour showing how questions that seem inane have actually led to deep and powerful scientific discoveries”
June 2025
Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
Karen Hao
"A critical and incredibly detailed blow-by-blow of the most influential company in AI… meticulously explores the unseen damage that the wider AI industry causes around the world"
May 2025
On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us And Why It Matters
Bonnie Tsui
“Tsui uses her own story and talents to explore what it means to be alive, to move, to live inside a body that can probably do more than you might expect.”
April 2025
Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World
Henry Grabar
"Trembles with the kind of obsessive nerdery you might expect. But it also fills its pages with a cast of memorable characters... incisive, serious and a little bit silly."
March 2025
What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
“A tremendous collection of interviews and ideas... a reminder that there are climate answers all around us, if only we look properly and act accordingly.”
February 2025
Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space
Adam Higginbotham
"Shows how this was a disaster that was years in the making, the result of corner-cutting, political pressure and institutional failure."
January 2025
Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind
Annalee Newitz
“How the nation’s taste for conspiracy theories and disinformation has turned from a weapon deployed by the military into an arsenal used to fight domestic culture wars.”
December 2024
Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture
Kyle Chayka
“A book that explores how the internet takes an almost infinite landscape of ideas and ends up grinding it up into a kind of creative equivalent of pink slime.”
November 2024
By The Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight For Justice on Native Land
Rebecca Nagle
“A single crime becomes a locus for a detailed examination of US history, power, and control.”
October 2024
On Tyranny Graphic Edition: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Timothy Snyder and Nora Krug
"Lessons from history that help contextualize what's happening today."
September 2024
Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves
Nicola Twilley
"Combines history, science and food to show us something new about modern life... a sense of constant discovery and revelation."
August 2024
Another Word For Love: A Memoir
Carvell Wallace
"A sweet, savage, optimistic examination of what it means to be human. It is a tremendous, moving piece of work."
July 2024
Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life
Ferris Jabr
"Combines poetic portraits of the ordinary and approachable with a thrilling look at some of the most awe-inspiring sights in the natural world."
June 2024
The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No
Carl Elliott
"Even if they show systems at their worst, people are standing up—and we are here, reading about them, hearing them."
May 2024
A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging
Lauren Markham
"The book starts by looking at a tragedy that happened in the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, but it ends up going much further."