(no subject)

I told ms_ntropy that I had made a goal for myself to read more nonfiction, and she recommended me Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. Trustingly, I went and reserved it at the library. Little did I know that by doing so I would be committing myself to reading a 600-page history-of-science textbook a year after escaping my last school-mandated science class! Yes, perhaps the 'Nearly Everything in the title should have been a clue.

However, despite the flashbacks to the days of midterms and problem sets I kept having while toting it around after reading it my head is full of entertaining prose (I had actually never read a book by Bryson before, and was pleasantly surprised!) and possibly a few snippets of useful information stuck there as well, so I guess I must admit it was not a bad thing really. I wish I could claim that I enjoyed it because I was Seriously Interested in Knowledge for Knowledge's Own Sake, but I am afraid I must confess that what I really enjoyed reading about most was the dead-Victorian-scientist gossip. Almost as fun as dead-author gossip for bitchiness and backstabbing! (In some cases literally; one scientist ended up curator of the donated-to-research twisted spine of the other scientist whose life he had previously dedicated himself to ruining. How is this not soap opera material?) So, real scientists may scoff, but I say, pop science histories chock full of tales of rivalry and fraud for the win!