An outstanding list ...

... at So Many Books: My Favorite Five in '05 . C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces is a great book, Lewis's masterpiece in fact. And Muriel Rukeyser I have always loved for reminding us that "the world is made of stories / not of atoms." Rukeyser, by the way, was no scientific illiterate, and her biography of J. Willard Gibbs -- probably the gratest scientist America has produced -- is still well worth reading.