No rating - Did not finish.

I got about halfway through this book and couldn't keep going. I got the impression the author thinks her readers are all living under a rock and are too stupid to understand anything that hasn't been written in overly simplistic language. She also doesn't care enough about her readers to be bothered to check the information she includes in her book. There were numerous errors including not knowing the correct atomic structure of deuterium and stating that Democritus developed the heliocentric model (that was Aristarchus, Democritus dealt with atomic theory). That left me wondering how much other information is wrong with the book. The author also does not include references so I have no idea where she is getting her information. I found the writing style to be rather tedious and somewhat repetitive, and didn't really learn anything new in the half of the book I read.

This might be an interesting book for a young teenager who doesn't know much about science in general.

This is a really good introductory book to the field of astrobiology and what it takes for a planet to be habitable. I read this as research for a scifi story I'm writing, an I'm really glad I did, it's really educational and touches on most of the same bits as the documentaries I watched (Like Richard Hammond's How to Build a Planet) did, but it covered those steps more in-depth and also went into some other requirements for a habitability. Like, before I read this book, I had no idea that plate tectonics were necessary for creating an atmosphere. ( )

"It was ok" is maybe the most positive I feel towards this book. I'm not exactly sure what audience Dr. Preston is aiming for, but I definitely felt like the prose was intended for a teenager or younger. Science communication often tackles with how to inform your audience without necessarily being condescending; Goldilocks and the Water Bears introduces lots of concepts and helpfully italicizes them when first mentioned, giving off the feel of a textbook. Some of these chapters, like the one describing what defines life and conditions life might need, definitely felt textbook-ish, especially with several italicized vocabulary words per paragraph.

One of my earlier criticisms as I was reading was that I'm finding pop culture references walk a fine line between potentially dated and cool enough to draw the reader in. The first chapter of this book discusses science fiction and how our space fantasies may inspire us to develop similar technologies or look for life in various ways. While not the focus of the book, the short explanations for some pieces of media (like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) were very general- I initially dismissed this as "Well, it is a tangent so best not to linger on it..."

I read a library copy, and an earlier reader had penciled in corrections in a few places (slashing through a comma at one point, correcting numbers elsewhere, and in a later chapter, crossing out "carnivorous" and writing in "allotrophic" in the margins). I also take issue with the use roughly once a chapter of "Fun fact: [fact here]." If it's a fun fact, shouldn't the fact speak for itself?

Perhaps her TED talk is more engaging, but the prose is very eh. I'd maybe recommend this to a middle or high school reader. ( )

An astrobiologist from the University of London provides an overview of life—what it is, what it requires, how it may have emerged on Earth, and how it could exist elsewhere. The focus is on the planets of the Solar system, but it makes some speculations for places beyond. The clever title and causal prose makes this a fine introduction to the subject for students and casual readers. ( )