Book 1:

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
This has been on my to do list for a long time...but I have been "too busy" to be only busy...but alas now I took the bull by the horn and gunned for this.
Having quite a lot of interest and having education and job that have a strong need for knowledge on physicks of course made the leap to this book a lot easier. Having intel on basic physics will make it easier to understand, but then again Neil goes a long way to make it understandable for everyone.
Book starts with the Big Bang and finishes up into reflecting life in universal scale. Inbetween those quantumphysics and hyper large scale reflestions Neil tells about the different ways we can think about the birth development and life of the universe and what we know and don't know about it for example knowing why most natural shapes are sphericalan the dark matter being something we know is there due the gravitational calculations not matching without it but we have no idea what it is as it could be something in a dimension we do not understand yet.
Chapter on exoplanets and search for life was also very interesting
I highly recommend the book as it is short but very high on information about where we come from where we are and where we are going "in unimaginable scale". Good stuff to know as general knowledge too. The book might look like a uninterezsting and too heavy read, but imo it was not.
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Pokerwise had another loosing day finishing up at 4BI down. One bad play but other than that just running into nutz with 2nd nutz was the story thistime.
Tonight its back to the tables again. Was too tired to run an early morning session as the flu has been punishing.
GL&HF