Origin of Species

After much struggle I have finished reading "Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin. It took me over a month to go through ~360 pages of the text. True - I read mainly while commuting but still I feel a bit ashamed that I needed so much time and effort to go through a book that started modern life science. In my defense I will say that I am much worse biologist than Darwin was - I know a lot about how a cell work, how the DNA carries out genetic information but I suck when it comes to systematics, botany or zoology. On the other hand, Darwin lacked the knowledge of genetics so his arguments regarding heredity where hard to follow - with understanding of genes things became much simpler.
I feel a deep respect to this book and the man who wrote it. Although it was dry at places and sometimes plain boring, I admire the simple well presented arguments for the theory of modification with descent, as Darwin called theory of evolution. If not for my lack of knowledge, that must have been obvious for a well educated person from that era, this book is popular science plain and simple. Much different from the way scientific works are written nowadays.
Now I need to give a try to the "The Voyage of the Beagle". Before I will do that I need some downtime - I am going to read Wolves of Calla by Stephen King.