I have never cared much for geology. enthusiasts say the pleasure derives from its slow motion: Shifts occur, sediments accrete over eons, static landscapes conceal dynamic lives. Time itself allegedly expands in a Proustian way and becomes "deep time."
I have enough trouble getting through Proust. Books about rocks likewise fail to stir me. The sole exception is A Land, an intimate and eloquent history of Britain's human landscape and its geological underpinnings by the late archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes. Alas, the others capture little of geology beyond its glacial pace. Woe to the writer whose attention turns to stones.
