When Einstein's Wife arrived in the post, as I often do while sitting at my desk, I thought I'd look through the first few pages to get a feel for it. Two and a half hours later I was still reading it. I ought to stress that this does not reflect a superbly well-written book. If I'm honest, the writing style is pretty solidly in the 'solid academic' mode. However, the content fascinated me.

There were two reasons for this. One is that it reflects the circumstances in which Einstein did his early work, including those remarkable papers of 1905. I found out significantly more about his performance at university, for example, as a result of reading this. The other is that it uncovers the way that history - and specifically history of science - can be distorted to get a particular message across. So we get a kind of detective story, uncovering the blatant manipulation of what was (and wasn't) known. That being the case, I have to admit that this book will probably…

Matt Parker had me thoroughly enjoying this collection of situations where maths and numbers go wrong in everyday life. I think the book's title is a little weak - 'Humble Pi' doesn't really convey what it's about, but that subtitle 'a comedy of maths errors' is far more informative.

With his delightful conversational style, honed in his stand-up maths shows, it feels as if Parker is a friend down the pub, relating the story of some technical disaster driven by maths and computing, or regaling us with a numerical cock-up. These range from the spectacular - wobbling and collapsing bridges, for example - to the small but beautifully formed, such as Excel's rounding errors.

Sometimes it's Parker's little asides that are particularly attractive. I loved his rant on why phone numbers aren't numbers at all (would it be meaningful for someone to ask you what half your phone number is?). We discover the trials and tribulations of getting calendars …

Only a couple of weeks ago, reviewing a 1960s SF book, I bemoaned the fact that science fiction novels of ideas are less common now. Although it is correctly labelled a space opera, Ancestral Night delivers ideas with aplomb.

Let's deal with the space opera aspect first. Elizabeth Bear provides some excellent adventure scenes in space, and we've the usual mix of huge spaceships and interesting aliens. Main character Haimey Dz is an engineer on a ship that salvages wrecks - but, as we gradually discover - she also has a forgotten past. A major feature of the storyline (one that seems to link to the medieval idea of the lost wisdom of the past) is ancient technology from a long-dead race with capabilities, notably manipulating spacetime mentally (Bear has yet to point out that the travel technologies used here could manipulate time as well as space), which fit well with Arthur C. Clarke's magic definition.

I particularly liked the (surely intentional) nods to the much-misse…

I have to admit I find magic acts rather tedious entertainment - but I do enjoy trying to work out how the trick was done and then (ideally) finding out how it really was undertaken - so I was fascinated by the idea of a book that claims to cover 'the science of magic'. (By magic, I should stress, I don't mean the fantasy sorcery version, but the very down-to-earth engineered version used in magic shows.) This handsome book proved to be a distinct curate's egg: there were sections I pretty much skip read as they were somewhat dull, but other parts that really captured my attention.

The reason that some sections don't work so well was the classic academic writer's problem of not realising the importance of narrative and storytelling (which you'd think a practising magician like Gustav Kuhn would realise). The book comes alive when we are told about specific tricks or people or situations, but sometimes it becomes a collection of facts, a lecture on, say, a pa…

At first glance this might just be another 'What AI is good at and not so good at' title. And in a way, it is. But, wow, what a brilliant book! Marcus du Sautoy takes us on a tour of what artificial intelligence has achieved (and possibly can in the future achieve) in a range of fields from his own of mathematics, through game playing, music, art and more.

After a little discussion of what creativity is, we start off with the now very familiar story of DeepMind's AlphaGo and its astonishing ability to take on the hugely challenging game of Go. Even though I've read about this many times before, du Sautoy, as a Go player and mathematician, gives a real feel for why this was such a triumph - and so shocking. Not surprisingly he is also wonderful on what mathematicians actually do, how computers have helped them to date and how they have the potential to do far more in the future. After all, mathematics is by far the closest science to game playing, as it has strict rule…

A collection of three novellas and a short story from one of the recognised masters of the 'golden age' of science fiction. These 1950s stories demonstrate well both why this period was given this title back then - the quality was far higher than, say, the 1920s and 30s - and also why that gold has tarnished in quite a big way since. By Asimov standards, the characters here are slightly more three dimensional than usual, but still from the stock cupboard, while women only feature as part of the scenery.

Still, there's some good material. The Martian Way is a bit of a precursor for Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - space colony under pressure from the dominant Earth realises that it has to find a way to be truly independent. In this case, the problem is water and the solution is recognising the wider resources available to those with mastery of space. Youth has some of the feel of a Bradbury story with young protagonists (inevitably both male) - though Asimov c…