Slow in spots but utterly fascinating in others, kept me from stopping reading this book.

Definitely interesting! I learned a lot of what I wanted to, and about what I didn’t know I didn’t know. It meanders a bit from topic to topic, which the author advises us about in the first pages. It makes the book easy to pick up and put down, so that could be a plus or a minus, depending on your reading style.

The narrative (anecdotal, scientific, and historical) is very euro-centric, particularly UK-centric (for sensible reasons I’m sure). I don’t blame the author for that, but I would have liked to explore deeper into east or south Asian history and science in particular.

The best basic explanation of planetary tidal mechanics is found right in the middle of the book, explained step-by-step, in a way I appreciate. I was able to use dining implements at a restaurant representing the earth, earth’s water, the moon, and the sun, to relay the same lesson to a companion.

There are a handful of photos throughout the book, but they are black-&-white and grainy, printed on the same paper and with the same ink as the text. As such, they don’t really add anything; I wish they were in color and better quality as mid-book inserts.

For the first half of the book I was disappointed with the lack of science detail. When I read "[y]ou may be relieved to know that I will leave the mathematics aside here", I was not at all relieved. Then reading a few paragraphs on how tides were used in various literature of the 1800s let me to think this was not the book for me.

So, yes, there is more lore than science, but in the end I enjoyed the book. Contemplating the tide, the history of science, visits to extreme tides... all good stuff. There was a up-tick in some of the science later, but ultimately it was a missed opportiunity on that front.