I picked up Symphony in C by Robert M. Hazen. Here's my note about the first few pages:

In a very short window of between three and twenty minutes after the Big Bang, Hydrogen, Helium, and Lithium were birthed. For years we were taught in school that all other elements were various fusions of only these three elements. We, as usual, have been misinformed.

For every 4,500,000,000,000,000,000 Hydrogen atoms birthed, the nucleus of one Carbon atom was as well. Some Nitrogen and some Oxygen was too. It would seem that the four major elements of Life was indeed present right at the creation of the universe.

Simple math suggests that if 10^80 Hydrogen atoms were born in that 17 minute window (as now theorized) then there were 10^64 Carbon atoms in existence in the 21st minute of the the universe's existence. The rest of the Carbon came later, birthed from the stellar forges of the Heavens.