When it has me wishing the traffic jam on the way home had lasted just a little bit longer.
Few books grab me like that. Last year, it was Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, And the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language. This one might have been written for me, I loved it so much.
More recently, with regard to my nonfiction reading, it’s Sam Kean’s The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements. I haven’t finished this one yet, but I like what I’m reading so far. I have high hopes.
One book that did not entertain me as much as I’d liked—during a bona fide traffic jam, courtesy of the New Mexico Department of Transportation— was David Standish’s Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations, and Marvelous Machines Below the Earth’s Surface. Not a terrible book by any means, but not what I wanted it to be. Which is a problem when you’re stuck on the bus.
As you can tell, I enjoy nonfiction books with very long titles.