There is so much packed into this small volume. I perhaps understood 17% of it, that might generous. It is definitely a stretch to wrap my mind around ideas of physics, reality and time, but it is thought provoking and challenging.

Rovelli does a good job trying to make his ideas accessible to all.

Amazingly well written even when the subject matter became extremely opaque and felt like it was sometimes slipping through my fingers. There were some points where I was feeling like I didn’t fully understand, but then, to my surprise, afterwards I was able to recall quite well what was meant and how the concepts fit together. Really genuinely great book which totally challenged my world-view and made me feel like I understood a hell of a lot more. Quantum mechanics seems fundamentally un-understandable, but this book made me feel like I at least had a sort of analogic grasp. Is that a real word? It is now.
informative inspiring fast-paced

This is an easy-to-read book that discusses the journey to Quantum Gravity. This is NOT an in-depth or "for the beginner" book of Quantum Gravity, but instead, a history of how Science went from its beginnings to the understanding that Science has, which is still evolving, of quantum gravity. With chapters devoted to Einstein and other scientists, this is a good book to really understand how we got to where we are, written in an inviting, layperson readable book.

I love Carlo Rovelli. His writing is so beautiful, and this book was a great explanation of the history behind quantum gravity.
hopeful informative inspiring reflective relaxing medium-paced
infinimata's profile picture

infinimata's review

4.0

Read this on a plane trip. It's essentially a longer, more detailed companion volume to [b:The Order of Time|38714658|The Order of Time|Carlo Rovelli|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1519238759s/38714658.jpg|56537968], with more details about Rovelli's ambitions in re loop quantum gravity, and more historical context about the lead-up to that research. If you liked that one, you'll like this one; if you haven't read that one, go ahead and read this one anyway. "Time" is slightly more mind-melting since it focuses on the counterintuitivity of time at the quantum level, but "Reality" is still a fine overview of a subject that can be notoriously hard to even get a leg up on.
informative

Since everything is made of correlations, I will speak to my interaction with this book 😉 I had a wonderful experience taking notes and theorizing along with the presented information. The book was well organized, and used language fairly clearly to explain it's core concepts (always a struggle with physics books imo - a lot of general language is predicated on "mistakes" in understanding that can get in the way of describing new theories in plain terminology). 
Would highly recommend to readers curious about the concepts of space and time, and for anyone who has ever been fascinated by the puzzle of "infinity". 
My one critique is a few paragraphs with a fairly derogatory tone towards both autistics and indigenous mythologies/tales.
adventurous challenging informative fast-paced

This was our book club pick for last month. I'm relatively science literate but this isn't the kind of thing I usually read. I wouldn't exactly classify it as an easy read, but on the other hand, he explains the concepts as clearly as is possible for someone who was an English major. I've read Elegant Universe and Brief History of Time, so the ideas weren't entirely new to me, but it is the most up-to-date version of them and makes an interesting read. There is a fair amount of poetic description, and our group was divided among those who felt the poetic language was what made the book worth reading and those who felt the poetic parts dragged and wasted time. I was somewhere in between-- I enjoyed the lovely language at the beginning, but by time I was 2/3 of the way through, I really wanted him to just get on with it. Worth reading. Sometimes you have to just keep going and it becomes clearer later on.
funny informative reflective medium-paced