Way back in my last year of high school, when I had to choose what programs to apply to at which universities, I considered studying geology for about eighteen seconds until I realized, looking at the courses I would have to take to get a degree, that I have absolutely zero interest in rocks and rock accessories. Like zero. Maybe even less than zero.
And there’s a lot of rock-talk in The Origins of Everything in 100 Pages (More or Less), which is good to get me reading outside my comfort zone. Plate tectonics and astro-geology formation of planets and the like. But every page, my eyes glazed over. Every single page I had to tell myself to focus and not go off and play Tiny Tower. I don’t know whether it was my aforementioned disinterest in geology or that the writing style, while sort of chummy, is also a bit dry, or that maybe, with my background in science (a non-geological science, but a science none-the-less), reading a pop-science book just doesn’t cut it for me anymore, but almost none of the information from this book penetrated my brain. I’d like to imagine that, in an amorphous, don’t-ask-me-to-describe-the-details sort of way, I now have a better idea of planetary formation after the big bang all the way to appearance of Homo Sapiens; maybe holistically I am more well-informed after reading The Origins of Everything in 100 Pages (More or Less). Or maybe not. It’s so frustrating to read a book and have all its ideas float away like smoke.
In short, I still only abstractly think of geology as interesting. When I have to actually learn about it, it’s all Charlie Brown teacher noises inside my head.
And The Origins of Everything in 100 Pages (More or Less) is not 100 pages. My copy is 137 (including unnumbered and small roman numeraled ones) or 124 numbered ones, so somewhere between 124% and 137% of the suggested 100 page length. Man, scientists sure are wishy-washy when it comes to precision with numbers 😉
The Origins of Everything in 100 Pages (More or Less) by David Bercovici went on sale November 22, 2016.
I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.