First Impressions: Sapiens

I’ve made it a very specific goal of mine to try and read more non-fiction books in order to educate myself a little outside of school and to acquire more basic knowledge. In order to accomplish this goal, I’ve started to read the very renowned book Sapiens – a brief history of humankind. Here are my first thoughts!

I discovered this book through my cousin telling me that every student at the university has this on their shelves. And because I couldn’t resist a challenge, being the way I am, I bought it the second I remembered her words when I discovered it at the bookshop in Vienna.

I am more than 130 pages in and let me tell you this: this book is incredible. Having read the first 50 pages, I could take part and contribute to many (random) conversations about history and the evolution of the species homo sapiens in a way I wouldn’t have been able to before.

This book displays knowledge everyone should have in order to communicate in clever ways (or at least seeming clever) in some kind of historical, political, sociological or biological conversation – which are, in my family at least, not very rare.

Moreover, it provokes you to think in ways I haven’t explored much before; like overthinking if permanent settlement was a wise choice and what distinguished our species, Homo sapiens, from the other species of the genus homo.

Furthermore and most importantly, I never would have thought that a non-fiction book could ever be so gripping and hard to put down for me. Normally, I have immense difficulties sticking to a non-fiction book for a longer period of time. However, this book proved itself to be quite the opposite kind of read. Whenever I started reading, I had problems laying it aside, could not stop thinking, talking and discussing the facts I’d just read – it was fantastic.

So far, it’s simply going great – I will finish it and then review it in total! Happy reading!