Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe by Ella Frances Sanders

If there's ever a thing to make you feel small in the world, it's examining the world itself and how we find our place within it. It's a difficult task to make the entire universe and all that it's composed of digestible and easily understandable to the average human. Eating the Sun manages to do just that.

If I were a person with a great memory, I would feel superbly smart after reading this little book. As it turns out, the part of my brain that retains facts and figures is unfortunately just a dust bowl. Things go in, but then they disappear. So I learned that there is actually a name for the different shades of grey and black you see when it's dark, I just can't remember what that name is. Did you know that the skeletal structure of a human arm is extremely close to the wing of a bird and that because some birds?/a particular species of bird?/something like that? has hollow bones and because of this, its feathers would actually weigh more than its skeleton? Let's see...what else can I "remember"...oh! This one's fascinating: did you know that you never actually touch anything directly? Everything has a forcefield of mumblesomethingsomethingparticlescan'tremember around it and so while it appears that you can feel objects, you're really just forcing apart the forcefields that are surrounding you and the object making it seem as though you're directly touching things!

Um. So.

If you have a better memory than me, you'll find this book rewarding. I mostly appreciate that vast vault of knowledge could be distilled down to only about a couple of pages per topic, all in laymen's terms with a small flourish of poetic language tying it all together. A ton of topics are covered from evolution to trees to outer space to how living things naturally synchronize. Amazing! I also loved the accompanying illustrations that added a sweet touch and a nice break between all of the facts. The only thing I have a slight problem with is that I couldn't find any references back to the sources where the author found her facts and statistics. As someone who doesn't know anything much about the topics in the book, do I just rely on the author's viewpoint? I'm sure a lot of this information, though scientific, is still subjective. In fact, at several points throughout the book, it's mentioned just how often scientists and researchers discover new information as they come to new understandings about the world we live in. But overall, this fun little reference book in a sweet package is a great alternative to all of the dry reference books out there. If only my memory was as great as my sense of curiosity.

Judge the cover: 5/5

If there's ever a thing to make you feel small in the world, it's examining the world itself and how we find our place within it. It's a difficult task to make the entire universe and all that it's composed of digestible and easily understandable to the average human. Eating the Sun manages to do just that.

If I were a person with a great memory, I would feel superbly smart after reading this little book. As it turns out, the part of my brain that retains facts and figures is unfortunately just a dust bowl. Things go in, but then they disappear. So I learned that there is actually a name for the different shades of grey and black you see when it's dark, I just can't remember what that name is. Did you know that the skeletal structure of a human arm is extremely close to the wing of a bird and that because some birds?/a particular species of bird?/something like that? has hollow bones and because of this, its feathers would actually weigh more than its skeleton? Let's see...what else can I "remember"...oh! This one's fascinating: did you know that you never actually touch anything directly? Everything has a forcefield of mumblesomethingsomethingparticlescan'tremember around it and so while it appears that you can feel objects, you're really just forcing apart the forcefields that are surrounding you and the object making it seem as though you're directly touching things!

Um. So.

If you have a better memory than me, you'll find this book rewarding. I mostly appreciate that vast vault of knowledge could be distilled down to only about a couple of pages per topic, all in laymen's terms with a small flourish of poetic language tying it all together. A ton of topics are covered from evolution to trees to outer space to how living things naturally synchronize. Amazing! I also loved the accompanying illustrations that added a sweet touch and a nice break between all of the facts. The only thing I have a slight problem with is that I couldn't find any references back to the sources where the author found her facts and statistics. As someone who doesn't know anything much about the topics in the book, do I just rely on the author's viewpoint? I'm sure a lot of this information, though scientific, is still subjective. In fact, at several points throughout the book, it's mentioned just how often scientists and researchers discover new information as they come to new understandings about the world we live in. But overall, this fun little reference book in a sweet package is a great alternative to all of the dry reference books out there. If only my memory was as great as my sense of curiosity.

Judge the cover: 5/5