Hawking: A Brief History of Time

In Stephen Hawking's  A Brief History of Time, Hawking goes to great lengths to make this a readable popular science book. While striving to make it concise and educational I found that the constant name dropping of other scientists annoying and his writing style to be so droll that I could barely continue reading. While I already had a basic grip of the nature of physics, I finally put a name to a few things I already knew.

This book isn't so necessarily a history of time. It's more a science book explaining why there is no God and if there is one, why he has his limitations by which he created a Universe. Every other sentence he has to credit another scientist with their dues of creating a masterwork in their own right and explaining why Einstein was either right or wrong. He does a lot of explaining how our thoughts on a certain theory evolved and was generally accepted. Hawking goes out of his way to make it understandable and for anyone who doesn't know much about science and physics in particular (or astronomy) this book would be helpful for an introduction to a college course. I had a basic knowledge of most of this and just found the book to be utterly boring.

Watched some Big Bang Theory while reading this book and Hawking is so highly revered in the nerd community it feels sacrilegious to write anything negative about him. I have many more positive things to talk about about that show, but I will take a stand right here. I have so many problems with Sheldon, I could right a twenty page essay on it. Hating to be so concise here about one of the books in the list, I just have to suffice with this:

This is a science book. It has no narrative. Do not expect to be entertained. You will not. It has a lot of math in it. If you don't like science or math do not bother with it.

That said, I'm happy to be moving on to something more narrative based that actually has something to do with humanity. This is after all a growth project and a social experiment on my part. I am excited to move on to book three: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.

Go!