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Top of the books pile? Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Fourth Estate, 2000). “This book marks the end of a long drought of fiction reading for me,” he says. “I’ve been so swamped reading scientific papers and monographs, along with writing books of my own [Zimmer’s Soul Made Flesh is out on 8 April] that I’ve convinced myself I haven’t had enough time to read a novel. It’s a dangerous, foolish attitude, and I’m glad to be back in the world of fiction.” All-time favourite? Moby Dick by Herman Melville (Penguin, 2003). “It appeared eight years before Darwin’s Origin of Species, but Melville was already contemplating what…