The Book Pirate’s Musings on… A Short History of Nearly Everything

I didn’t finish it. There is doubt in my mind that I ever will. Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything is not by any means a bad book. From what I read it’s very interesting and reads a lot better than a high school science book which, I believe, was the author’s intent. Since there is a need to cover a lot of ground, the topics tend to come in perfect ADD-size bites of information. It doesn’t let a topic drag on. Often the information prevented is filled with facts that may not particularly relate to the overall topic, but make the person Bryson is talking about more interesting. It’s similar to going on Wikipedia and reading about some random person and discovering that he collected stamps in addition to discovering dinosaur bones. Irrelevant, but interesting.

The book however, it just too much for a fiction reader who doesn’t care much for science to take in. I credit this to two small problems that prevented me from finishing this book.

1)Small font, no pictures
2)Found a hardbound copy of Maxx Barry’s Syrup

Sadly, I’m going to put this book back on the shelf and go back to reading books that interest me. The only reason I started this book was because I thought during the summer I should try and learn something. What I learned was not to try and read 700+ page science books.

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 6:08 pm.
Filed under: Musings, Thoughts on Books.