In A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson observed that, among textbook authors, "there seemed to be a mystifying universal conspiracy... to make certain the material they dealt with never strayed too near the realm of the mildly interesting." 
Luckily for the modern reader, contemporary science books have come a long way from the dry, never-interesting conspiracy of the scientific textbook--and Bryson's own work is a testament to that fact. A Short History of Nearly Everything (which, at 500+ pages, is not actually short) tackles the history of, well, everything. From the Big Bang theory to the rise of modern civilization, Bryson offers a quick tour of the greatest concepts of scientific theory, all in his characteristically witty style.
Where Bryson's sense of humor elicits the occasional chuckle and inward smile, Mary Roach's writing brings about tears of laughter. Truly, it's hard to believe that writing about cadavers (Stiff), digestion (Gulp) or military science (Grunt) could be so funny, but with anecdotes, footnotes and a sense of tell-all determination, Roach packs her books full of scientific detail and laugh-out-loud delights.
Humor is not the only way to make scientific study accessible, of course. In her memoir, Lab Girl, Hope Jahren writes about her passion for scientific inquiry and her curiosity about the world through the lens of her career as a geobiologist. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot explores the intersection of scientific study and social justice through the story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black woman whose cancer cells were used--without her knowledge or permission--as the basis of myriad studies over the last several decades.
"We are part of this universe; we are in this universe," said Neil DeGrasse Tyson (astrophysicist and author of Death by Black Hole). Studying that connection can be both fascinating and entertaining; we offer these books as proof. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm
