Cal Flyn interviews Sandra Knapp at Five Books:
You chaired the judging panel for the 2025 Royal Society Book Prize. What were you and your fellow judges looking for when you selected the best new popular science books?
There are so many good science books that it was really, really difficult. We were looking for books with interesting, solid, well-researched science, but which were also incredibly readable. You want a book that a reader will come away from having learned something new about science, but also that they had a good time reading that book. So it’s about learning and pleasure being mixed into one, and the product being something that you perhaps want to read again.
It does seem that there are different flavours of intelligence. One being what it takes to make a brilliant scientist, and another being able to communicate clearly those complex ideas.
Yes. Not all of the books on our shortlist are actually written by scientists; some are by science writers or journalists. But whichever side of that spectrum you sit on, you need to be able to put yourself in another person’s shoes to be able to tell a story in a compelling way.
More here.
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