Brief Answers to the Big Questions: Reviews by 2023 Reading

[Winter, Group Reads]

Tell us what you thought of the book! You can leave your review here. Even if you read the book outside of the group, please feel free to let us know what you thought of it.

Please make sure to mark your spoilers by typing [spoiler] at the start and [/spoiler] at the end but replacing the [] with <>.

[Meg]

I gave this book 4 stars, here's my review:

I'm a scientist, but I've always struggled with physics. I didn't understand half of it, but I think this book is the closest I've ever come to understanding time, black holes, and the big bang. It's a great read anyway, Hawking's personality shines through. As well as being incredibly intelligent, he was also pretty funny and very honest.

[Beth]

Also a 4-star read for me. NGL I was very weighed down in places trying to comprehend. But it was an excellent challenge for my brain cells, and I was fascinated to read Hawking’s perspective on these questions.

And, as Meg mentioned, Hawking’s humor shone through.

A few of my favorite of his comedic appearances.
1. For Comic Relief, auditioning actors to be his new voice: https://youtu.be/PqXOlfwlVag?si=qePhs...
2. Anyone Can Quantum with Paul Rudd: https://youtu.be/Hi0BzqV_b44?si=beeZ2...
3. Interview with John Oliver: https://youtu.be/T8y5EXFMD4s?si=DzCcY...
4. All of his Simpsons and Futurama appearances

[Ciara]

The prospect of reading this gave me flashbacks to one of my ex-boyfriends telling me, "I just feel like the woman I marry one day is going to understand physics," during his break-up speech. Joke's on him, because now he's a dentist in Utah & I...kind of understood this book? Sort of? Or at least I kinda felt like I did while I was reading it? & I'm also in a place in my life where it really doesn't matter because once you're in your mid-40s, no one cares about your college major anymore.

My big takeaway re: theoretical physics is that they are all Owen Wilson's character in "The Royal Tenenbaums," saying, "We all know that a particle can't be in two places at the same time, but what my thoery presupposes is...maybe it can?" & then they just take it from there. Time doesn't matter before the beginning of the universe because time didn't exist as a concept before the beginning of the universe & what cannot be conceptualized is just kind of who cares...Unless we're talking about galaxies 50,000 light years away, which might be impossible to ever get to, but they can still technically be conceptualized, so we should definitely spend a lot of time figuring out whether or not there could be life there, & also machines count as life & probably humanity's best bet at saving itself (which is a worthy goal...why, exactly?) is to build machines that become smart enough to build machines that can build themselves in perpetuity so they can escape this galaxy & go replicate forevermore elsewhere, where the strictures of a human lifetime are no boundary.