Below, a link to an item in the Tuesday Science section of the New York TImes. The article discusses the pleasures of the literary genre known as LabLit. This form requires that the action be set in some locale or setting in which real science is being conducted by real scientists. This is miles away from the Hollywood version, in which people may traipse around in while labcoats, but it becomes clear very quickly that the real point is to be found somewhere else: a treasure hunt, a love story, a who dun it, a save the world. The science is a prop, or a tool, and the characters quickly lose their scientific identities and become villains, heroes, tough guy, or whatever. So the entrance bar for true LabLit is pretty high. Attentive readers of these lines will say: “wait a second. This all sounds familiar. Didn’t this guy write about this before”? To which I answer: “Full marks for paying attention”! Yes, I have blogged about this before. And I covered then a lot of the same ground the Timesman treks over in yesterday’s article, down to a discussion of the web site called, well, LabLit, and orchids to Dr. Jennifer Rowan who runs the site, in addition to teaching at, University College, London is it? Dr.R is herself a published novelist twice over, so she knows the drill. The author of the Times article adds something new and nifty: the distinction of having read at least thirty of the novels on the recommended LabLit page. My own experience has been more modest. I don’t have any Stakanovian goal to reach. I just picked some that I thought might be fun reads. A number of the books might be a little hard to locate without a great deal of web hunting and pecking, as some are out of print and may not be found in even the larger libraries. As we head into the time of the WInter Solstice and the Glad Gift Giving Season, a person could do worse than peruse this selection for suggestions about a present to the nerdy science guy who also like other stuff… a very difficult species to corner and capture, when striking names off the gift list.