Brief History Of Time

The God Delusion

Short History Of Nearly Everything

If so, how many of them have you read all the way through?

Not the Dawkins, but the other two, and yes.

Yes. 3. Why do you ask?

I am just preparing a presentation which has a section that compares the three.

I had a feeling that the first certainly gets bought and stays unread on people's bookshelves whereas the second and certainly the third are actually read.

I thought I would ask OTF before I made a fool myself by asking for hands in class.

In saying that, OTFers are the type of people who would but AND read all three so not neccesarily representative

Bored Of Discipline wrote:

QUOTE:
Brief History Of Time

The God Delusion

Short History Of Nearly Everything

If so, how many of them have you read all the way through?

All of them.

All of them.

Bored Of Discipline wrote:

QUOTE:
I am just preparing a presentation which has a section that compares the three.

I had a feeling that the first certainly gets bought and stays unread on people's bookshelves whereas the second and certainly the third are actually read.

Yeah, the Hawking book is certainly the most demanding of the three, and moreover Hawking is the least fluent writer.

Bored Of Discipline wrote:

QUOTE:
Brief History Of Time

The God Delusion

Short History Of Nearly Everything

If so, how many of them have you read all the way through?

Got all three.

Brief History Of Time: barely dipped into

God Delusion: finished

Short History Of Nearly Everything: got quite a long way into, then got distracted and let it go, but intend to resume at some point

Only got Short History Of Nearly Everything and got up till mid-way before I got depressed about the underlying doom and gloom.

It may be a US-centric view, but I've always thought of Godel Escher Bach as the heavyweight champion in this respect.

It was on the New York Times best seller list forever and its display was almost mandatory on Upper West Side coffee tables, but the only people I know who have actually read it all the way through are all on here.

Just the Dawkins. Never had any real inclination to read either of the others, since I've read enough similar generalist books already (eg The Fabric of the Cosmos).

Ginger Yellow wrote:

QUOTE:
Just the Dawkins. Never had any real inclination to read either of the others, since I've read enough similar generalist books already (eg The Fabric of the Cosmos).

Which dwarfs Hawking's book, I have to say.

ursus arctos wrote:

QUOTE:
... the only people I know who have actually read it all the way through are all on here.

Yeah, I think it is different on this side of the water. I don't know anyone who bought that book to plonk on a coffee table; everyone I know who has it is at some level a maths fan. I don't think was a best-seller to the same degree here.

I love that book, I do, by the way.

Ursus: It's well worth reading all the way through. In fact, I'd go as far as to say it's the most enjoyable non-fiction book I've ever read. The only really hardgoing parts are in the maths heavy section explaining Goedel's theorem, where he rather cruelly leaves some of the problems as an exercise for the reader. Even that's not too bad for the most part and a casual reader isn't going to lose anything skimming a couple of pages.

Edit: incidentally, while I was in Cambridge (Mass) I picked up Metamagical Themas, an edited and postscripted collection of Hofstadter's Scientific American columns. It's pretty awesome too. We seem to share a lot of the same fascinations.

I love the fact that he puts exercises in.

Have 2 & 3. Read both, 3 at least twice. (Very useful for a science eejit like what I am). I thought the Dawkins was feeble shite.