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Arielle’s Sabbatical Syllabus


A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

wow! i have officially finished the first book in my syllabus. i lost my notes from the first quarter of the book but that’s ok! life moves on.

really not much to say other than the title really does encapsulate the nature of this book. it served as a good intro to a lot of topics, namely astronomy, a LOT of geology, chemistry, genetics, evolution, some astrophysics, palaeontology, paleoanthropology… let’s just say it was quite dense but very easy to consume!

my biggest takeaways:

some questions i will begin to ask in my daily conversations:

overall, good basis to start off with but not too many strongly worded feelings. after all, this is simply a digestible recollection of facts and stories and it is wonderful that bryson actually flew to meet many of the researchers in their habitats. it most definitely answered my broad question of “how did we/i get here” in the most physical/scientific sense and i’d recommend reading it far more slower than i did (i read the latter 75% of the book in 3 days lol)

notable quotes:

random excerpts on people i enjoyed:

other excerpts that made me smile/laugh:

appreciating life: