The shortlist for the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books was recently announced. (http://royalsociety.org/news/Royal-Society-Winton-Prize-for-Science-Book...) 6 books have been chosen for the shortlist out of a longlist of 13 books (At http://royalsociety.org/awards/science-books/ it says that the longlist is supposed to be 12 books but you can't expect a group of some of the finest minds in science to able to count can you?)
I try to read all of the contenders each year.

This year the judges told of the books chosen for the shortlist 'as having taken them out of their depth and giving them thrilling new experiences of the world of science', but I found them rather a disappointment. The sort of book I like is by an expert (possibly a science historian) who can make what they write accessible to the non-expert but still show some of the excitement of working in the subject. I didn't find many books like that in this year's selection. Often it seemed to be the author of a successful book writing a follow up and ending up with a work that lacks a central theme. Also, rather than experts, it seems that a lot of books are written by journalists picking a topic to write about. And it seems to me that the definition of what counts as science has been widened this year.

The books on the shortlist are listed below, with my comments following each one. The bookies William Hill give odds on each of them winning, and that is the order which I've listed them (with the odds in brackets after the title) 

Through the Language Glass: How Words Colour Your World (3/1)
To my mind this is clearly the best book. I would agree with the bookies here, but there's one problem - it isn't a science book. It starts with a description of William Gladstone's analysis of the works of Homer, and is really a book about linguistics.

Alex's Adventures in Numberland: Dispatches from the Wonderful World of Mathematics (7/2 )
This book does it's job pretty well of making maths accessible to the uninitiated. However, I thought that it lacked the excitement of bringing the latest research to the reader. For instance the chapters on chance and statistics were much the same sort of stuff that I was reading 40 years ago. Also, at over 400 pages is quite a lot to get through.

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements (4/1)
I think that I would choose this as the winner, in particular because of the descriptions of the discovery and naming of elements.

The Wavewatcher's Companion (4/1)
Seems to be an excuse to go surfing in Hawaii, as well as an attempt to cash in on the popularity of 'The Cloudspotter's guide' - but waves don't have the same sort of classification as clouds. It irritated me that when the author mentioned anything scientific he seemed to be saying 'Science - better steer clear of that, it's too hard'

Massive: the hunt for the God particle (5/1)
This would be my second choice, but I would prefer a book by someone working in the field, rater than a journalist

The Rough Guide to the Future (6/1)
This book isn't all about technological gizmos, but doesn't seem to have much to offer in their place, just a low level pessimism, without much effort to justify it - and too often the discussion returned to global warming.


The following are the books from the longlist which didn't make the shortlist (I noticed that the judges didn't give the usual stuff about how good all of the books were and how difficult it was to choose just 6)

Here on Earth: A new beginning
There was no real theme to this book. Starting with the origin of the earth and life on it, it gets on to the idea of superorganisms, but then shifts to how dreadfully we are treating the planet - if the author wanted to persuade the reader about that then he should have devoted a whole book to it.

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves
Matt Ridley, on the other hand, does devote a whole book to his argument that we aren't headed for disaster. However, it's too one sided - he doesn't give enough consideration to possible arguments against what he is saying. OK, so maybe we'll be 10 times richer in a century or so, but what will we lose in the process? Also, even those who seem to agree with him, such as Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, who warn against the perils of too much state control of our lives, are criticised as being too pessimistic.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in Space
 How do astronauts go to the toilet? Scatological is the word that comes to mind.

Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging and Mating
The authors try to make the subject accessible to the general public but fail. It reads too much like a research paper - you need to be constantly aware of the difference between mygalomorphs and araneomorphs.

The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness
This book jumps around too much between a biography of George Price and a description of other work, making it difficult to read. It isn't helped by the fact that Price's equation relates to the justification of the idea of group selection rather than being specifically about altruism.

The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years
What Technology Wants
I haven't read these two books yet, apart from the first chapter of 'What Technology Wants' (Which seemed reasonably interesting).

Maybe I'm being unfair here, and perhaps my tastes differ from those of other people, but it did seem to me that the quality of the books this year was less than in previous years.