The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! 😌
nathanjhunt's review against another edition
challenging
sad
slow-paced
1.0
My 38th book finished in 2023.
My friend Stewart gave me this book before I left the UK. I've been carrying it around the Caribbean, South America and Asia since then. I began reading it in Peru, then started again three months later in Vietnam. I left it in a homestay in Hue.
I hated this book. I hated every single thing about it. With every turn of the page, I had to quell the urge to kill myself. This rubbish took me three months to get through, and I could only do that by playing it through text to speech using Google Lens.
Nick Lane is a talented author - talented at turning the most curiously interesting subjects into the most mundane droll trash I've ever heard. How can he possibly make evolution, sex, dinosaurs and death so goddamn boring??
I absolutely hate myself for sticking with this book. By far the most boring thing I've ever had the displeasure to put myself through.
My friend Stewart gave me this book before I left the UK. I've been carrying it around the Caribbean, South America and Asia since then. I began reading it in Peru, then started again three months later in Vietnam. I left it in a homestay in Hue.
I hated this book. I hated every single thing about it. With every turn of the page, I had to quell the urge to kill myself. This rubbish took me three months to get through, and I could only do that by playing it through text to speech using Google Lens.
Nick Lane is a talented author - talented at turning the most curiously interesting subjects into the most mundane droll trash I've ever heard. How can he possibly make evolution, sex, dinosaurs and death so goddamn boring??
I absolutely hate myself for sticking with this book. By far the most boring thing I've ever had the displeasure to put myself through.
randomprogrammer's review against another edition
4.0
As usual, difficult to get through in audiobook format, but definitely a lot of interesting stuff in here. It's been a few years since reading Lane, but if I remember correctly, I liked this book more than The Vital Question, and found it more accessible.
rhyslindmark's review against another edition
3.0
I'm a Nick Lane fanboy and liked this book. However, it suffers from the same issue as the rest of Nick's work — a slow and irrelevant last 1/3rd.
The first 2/3rds was amazing — on how life, cells, and photosynthesis began. But the last third, on consciousness and death, was too long and out there.
I'd highly recommend this to understand how certain core biological patterns emerged, but definitely feel free to skim the last few chapters if you're not interested in them.
The first 2/3rds was amazing — on how life, cells, and photosynthesis began. But the last third, on consciousness and death, was too long and out there.
I'd highly recommend this to understand how certain core biological patterns emerged, but definitely feel free to skim the last few chapters if you're not interested in them.
mark_lm's review against another edition
5.0
One can study the biochemistry of photosynthesis in some detail and be unaware of the different pathways that exist and existed in different organisms, of its effect on the color of the sky, of its effect on the structural components of large plants and animals, and of the peculiarities of its evolutionary origin. Nick Lane gives a brilliant overview of the nature, significance and origin of the 10 greatest inventions of evolution including, the origin of life itself, DNA, photosynthesis, the eukaryotes, sex, movement, sight, warm bloodedness (homeothermy), consciousness, and death. I found the degree of detail to fit well with the text's readability and I was uniformly impressed with the author's knowledge and presentation. The relative low point, for me, was the chapter on consciousness. There is a great deal of interest there, but I think I am a little more radical than the author on this topic; he blows off Dennett with a single paragraph and he ends his discussion of the tragic case of a girl with hydranencephaly by stating that if it is the case that if the roots of consciousness are not to be found in the cerebral cortex, "then the neural transform, from firing to feeling, loses some of its mystique". Yes, that's what Dennett says, and it loses all of its mystique.
sleepyredwolf's review against another edition
1.0
FUCK this book FUCK NICK LANE and FUCK YOU BIOL 101
yilulikestoread's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
2.75
Yes I am rating it because I went to the trouble of reading it. Not going to lie, one of my least favourite non-fictions. Probably because I was forced to read it but also it was quite strange and I dont think that I was really taught anything. It was all kind of short snippets of knowledge and nothing in that much detail. I did however like the pictures (something which normally makes a non-fiction good in my books).