Sorry for the confusion. (I've edited my comment for clarity so people don't think I was insulting SH.) I wasn't saying Hawking's prose was dry. That attribute was intended solely for the DP book. With ABHOT, I was comparing the ratio of readers aware of the book vs actually reading it. ABHOT has become sort of a "poster child"[1] among bibliophiles for books owned for vanity and I thought HN readers would get that reference.

[1] example from WSJ that mentions the common meme about ABHOT: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-summers-most-unread-book-is...

If you own ABHOT and haven't read it, do yourself a favor and give it a shot. It's extremely interesting and a fairly easy read.

Context: My formal physics education ended in high school.

I'll piggyback on you and highly recommend the "crash course astronomy" series on YouTube. It's 50 or so ~10 minute videos that does a broad overview of all of astronomy up to the current moment, starting back when the older civilizations first studied the stars just by looking up with their naked eyes.

It is fast paced and packs a lot of information into each episode, so I do end up rewinding sometimes. And being a passive video, I think retention won't be as high. However, the short videos are very approachable and bite sized. It's very well done and the host is quite entertaining. The past year, my interest in space and physics has increased a bunch. It feels like learning the deeper history and context in which all of humanity is embedded.