Best Science Books 2011: Cryptomundo

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure.

Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year.

All the previous 2011 lists are here.

This post includes the following: The Top Cryptozoology Books of 2011.

• The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth by Richard Conniff
• When Bigfoot Attacks by Michael Newton
• Tracking Bigfoot by Donald Wallace and Lori Simmons
• In Search of Sasquatch by Kelly Milner Hall
• Weird Waters: The Lake and Sea Monsters of Scandinavia and the Baltic States by Lars Thomas and Jacob Rask
• The Water Horses of Loch Ness by Roland Hugh Watson
• Loch Ness, Nessie & Me by Tony Harmsworth
• Strange Monsters of the Pacific Northwest by Michael Newton
• Monsters of Wisconsin: Mysterious Creatures in the Badger State by Linda S. Godfrey
• Monsters of Illinois: Mysterious Creatures in the Prairie State by Troy Taylor
• The Mystery Animals Of The British Isles: Gloucestershire and Worcestershire by Paul Williams
• The Mystery Animals of the British Isles: The Northern Isles by Glen Vaudrey
• The Cryptid Creatures of Florida by Scott Marlowe and Charlie Carlson
• Monsters of the Gévaudan: The Making of a Beast by Jay M. Smith
• The Werewolf Book (2nd Edition) by Brad Steiger
• Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore by Benjamin Radford
• Searching for Sasquatch: Crackpots, Eggheads, and Cryptozoology by Brian Regal
• Tracking the Man-beasts: Sasquatch, Vampires, Zombies, and More by Joe Nickell
• Owlman by Jonathan Nola
• The Inhumanoids by Barton Nunnelly
• Scattered Skeletons in our Closet by Karen Mutton
• Destination Truth: Memoirs of a Monster Hunter by Josh Gates

I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in various media outlets. If you see one that I haven't covered, please let me know at jdupuis at yorku dot ca or in the comments.

I am picking up a lot of lists from Largehearted Boy.

The summary post for 2010 books is here and all the posts for 2010 can be found here. For 2009, it's here and here.

For my purposes, I define science books pretty broadly to include science, engineering, computing, history & philosophy of science & technology, environment, social aspects of science and even business books about technology trends or technology innovation. Deciding what is and isn't a science book is squishy at best, especially at the margins, but in the end I pick books that seem broadly about science and technology rather than something else completely. Lists of business, history or nature books are among the tricky ones.

And if you wish to support my humble list-making efforts, run on over to Amazon, take a look at Steve Jobs and consider picking that one up or something else from the lists.

(Dear FSM, I'm finally coming to the end of this. Just a few more posts to go, now that I'm getting back to it.)