Book One - Post One “How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming” by Mike Brown

I’ve been having a really rough week this week, and honestly this book was a very welcome distraction. Mark Brown takes what would normally be very technical, dry, and jargon-laden material and constructs a coherent narrative which is both funny and engrossing. I love Mark’s humorous tone, and he really allows his charming personality to shine throughout his writing. In a way, this book is more of an autobiography than a book about the fate of Pluto, and I find myself more engrossed in the narrative of his life than in the scientific discoveries he begins to uncover. Normally time jumping between different periods of a person’s life within a novel is super confusing, but Mark never uses this technique purposelessly. His writing structure has a great sense of flow, and I feel like the technique is always used to help with the novel’s pacing. 

I love the story in the first chapter where he talks about how he discovers that what he had originally thought were stars dancing through the night sky as a child were actually planets the whole time and how this inspired him to fall in love with exploring and mapping distant worlds. This story reminds me of how I was inspired to follow my own path in life by becoming enchanted by movies and attempting to uncover the secrets behind how the filmmakers managed to create it. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about trying to reconnect with what really drives me. I’ve been feeling a lot like Mark when he was working on his dissertation and was so focused on his own work that he couldn’t realize the ramifications of the discoveries that were taking place around him until much later. I just need to reignite my drive like Mark rediscovered his passion for charting unknown worlds.