Whew. Finally. And yes, I’m aware that should not be a reaction to finishing a book, but this one was just such an effort. Originally selected for purposes of continuous self education and finished by sheer will power, this book took a week to wade through, which is not only extremely uncharacteristic for me in general, but just plain wrong considering the relatively slender page count. And for the record I am very interested in the subject, having read extensively on and taking classes and so on. So it wasn’t that. It was definitely the execution. Nonfiction can be tricky to get right, but the key to popular science is a certain sort of accessibility that would make it…well…popular. For me that doesn’t mean dumbing down the context, not at all, I very much enjoy the fact that the author is someone very well educated on the subject and I strongly believe in reading up (the literally equivalent of marrying up), no, I’m talking about the delivery, the right tone to convey the information in a way that makes learning exciting, the way it ought to be. This learning, sadly, felt very much like a chore. The author made a choice of creating an almost (not entirely) personality free presentation of facts, arid, humorless and tragically pedantic. The latter was especially frustrating and not just in constant repetitiveness of information, but also in overexplaining, such as presolar…seriously, pre is a pretty self explanatory prefix, isn’t it. While I completely accept the fact that the author is most definitely more knowledgeable than I am on the subject and possibly in general, being talked down to (even though most likely unintentionally) just isn’t all that enjoyable. The book featured no pictures or graphics (although this might be due to it being an ARC), but actually that went perfectly well with the general thesis vibe. But all that aside, it is educational. You will learn about asteroids and comets and all the nifty acronyms scientists use studying various celestial debris. Some of this I knew and enjoyed revisiting, some of this was new. The autodidact in me was pleased, the reader in me was…tried. Look up, look up, the space is a magical place, containing secrets untold about our past, present and future. The sum of current knowledge leaves a lot to be desired and much to speculation, but in a grand scheme of things it’s positively awe inspiring. Comets and asteroids might be responsible for life on Earth, might be responsible for its annihilation too. Terrifying range of power, really. Well worth learning about, albeit maybe in a more compelling engaging way. Thanks Netgalley.