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"My family and friends frequently recommend books, and that's where I get my reading list. I've recently read Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, You Cannot Be Serious by John McEnroe, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There by David Brooks, and A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols."

"When I was a child, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien were my favorite stories. Now I'm reading them with my son—and he's enjoying them as much as I did. I've also been reading Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. They're fun, fast-reading novels. I wanted to find out what all the hype is about!"

"I am reading El Quijote (Don Quixote). It has been 400 years since the first edition, and I got the most recent version, which is annotated, from the Cervantes Institute in Spain. I'm also reading a historical novel, from a collection called El Capitan Alatriste, about a former soldier who became a hero of Spain's 16th-century imperial wars. This collection was recommended to me by another HHMI investigator—Carlos Bustamante."

"I like history, particularly biography. I recently finished American Prometheus, about Robert Oppenheimer. I'm just starting 1776, by David McCullough. I'm also a sucker for Garrison Keillor, who is my favorite humorist. This summer I read his Lake Wobegon: Summer 1956, and one of his short-story anthologies."