Another Review of Universe

Posted on December 10, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi

Well, isn’t this nice: A good review of The Rough Guide to the Universe in Astronomy & Geophysics, the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. Here’s the link; you’ll need to scroll about two-thirds of the way down the page to get the review.

For those of you who don’t want to bother with the click, the review is basically summed up in this sentence: “It is not a book that goes into any great depth, but it is a lot of fun and gives a good general overview of current astronomy.” And this line is nice, too: “A book for someone who wants to find out more about astronomy, but would recoil from something that looks like a textbook, or a children’s book, or anything that looks too dull, thick or heavy.” Since that is indeed exactly that the book is intended to be, I am of course very pleased by the review. Also, it’s very nice to have an official “thumbs up” from the Royal Astronomical Society; I figure if I’ve made astronomers happy I’m doing something right.

I’ve been very pleased and relieved that so far I haven’t seen a bad review of Universe, and most of the reviews I’ve seen have been positive to very positive. Being as nuts as I am about the field, that means a lot to me. Of all the bad books I have the potential to write, I’m glad this wasn’t one of them.

I should also note that Amazon has actually thought to bundle Universe and Book of the Dumb together in a package deal: You can get the both of them for $22.23, which is $7 off the list price of both books.