Hope Jahren
A memoir telling the 20 year story of what it is like being a woman scientist. Jahren is a botanist who documents her journey through grad school and subsequent setting up of 3 separate labs as she moves from school to school to find her home. Along the way, we are invited into her life story where she details the subtleties of scientific thinking, work relationships, funding, mental illness, family, students and humanity's relationship with the planet. All of this is chronicled in a way that truly provides insight into the mind of a scientist. Jahren uses a storytelling device where each chapter is preceded by a short description of something fascinating from the world of plants that she then parallels in her own story. She clearly loves plants and the earth and the amazing life that these plants are. This is clearly communicated and gives the reader a true appreciation for both the complexity of life and the crazy adaptability of living things to make live over generations possible. This is a fabulous story. At the same time, I found it to be a story that easily walks that middle ground of books. Every time I sat down to read it, I was enthralled and educated and engaged. But is was not a thriller/page turner such that when I set it aside, it did not demand that I come back. As such, I was allowed to read this over a longer span that I normally spend on books, and maybe because of this, the appreciation set in more slowly, and more deeply.
4 stars (out of 4)
No comments:
Post a Comment