Lately I have not been very good at taking the time to read books, but every now and then you stumble upon books that are so good that it feels almost impossible to put them away. Unfortunately you do not often find those qualities in non-fiction books, but the last book I have read, A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, falls into both categories.

A Short History… is a book that tries to explain “almost everything”, from how the universe came into existence, to the circumference of the Earth and why there is that there is life on our planet. It does so by, in an exciting and well-written way, step through the history of human sciences, with many intriguing anecdotes about eccentric scientists (I, for instance, didn’t know that Carl von Linné was so preoccupied with sex).

A very good book, that I recommend even to those that do not normally read science literature. The book is written in an easy tone, although in the English version there are the occasional complicated word (it would be strange if there wasn’t, considering the subject he is trying to describe), so it can possibly be interesting to find a translated copy.