Books are life!! All right, perhaps not for everybody, but for me they are as important as eating, sleeping, and the Math Lab! I love reading books, writing books, reading about books, and writing about books. So following are a few of the books I read during 2007 and which I recommend most highly.

• Infinity Beach is a science fiction novel by Jack McDevitt which combines a well-developed sense of future history with an absorbing mystery;
• Her Majesty’s Dragon, by Naomi Novik, is a historical adventure set during the Napoleanic Wars but with a twist: the warring nations had an air force consisting of men and women flying on intelligent dragons. This is the first novel in the acclaimed series which tells how one ship’s captain inadvertently becomes bonded with a young dragon;
• Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling is an absorbing story about the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, complete with a cast of true, but fascinating characters. This is history at its most interesting;
• Roma Eterna is a series of stories set in Robert Silverberg’s alternate history in which the Roman Empire survived into modern times, but suffered the same type of problems post-Roman nations experienced in the real world; Silverberg is one of the masters of science fiction and this book shows he has lost nothing over the years;
• The Judgment of Caesar is a mystery set in classical Alexandria whose main characters include Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. Author Steven Saylor has obviously done his research well, for the novel replicates true historical events closely while telling an absorbing story as well.

There you go, folks! Something for everybody. Next time I’ll share my favorite cd’s of the past year.