Lab Girl

I don't really know what to make of this one. I really liked Jahren's discussion of botany and chemistry when it was happening. Jahren is hard on people: her students, her co-workers, but also herself and she pulled no punches in describing herself, which led to challenging passages where I was cringing at her condescension towards colleagues and students. I liked how she depicted herself learning and growing, and making her way through bipolar disease. It was truly vulnerable and authentic. Nonetheless, I don't think I'd send one of my students to rotate through her lab – it's clear that she embraces the sort of work-to-death environment that academia is struggling to grow out of.

Speaking of generation gaps, I was surprised to find that Jahren has barely more than a decade on me. From the way she described being a woman in science, I would have guessed more like three decades. Indeed, many of her faculty members were women, and my own experience in overlapping years in the life sciences was that there was very little overt sexism.

I loved reading about her relationship with Bill, her lab manager, but I note his conspicuous absence from the press releases, her lab website and many of her publications. It's hard to read about how she sees him as a partner while he's underpaid and underacknowledged for the work he does. Finding grants to pay people is brutal – I know that personally – but now she's a big deal and he could have fancy titles and a nice profile on the lab website but he's not even mentioned. Perhaps that's how he wants it, but it's weird to write a book about your friendship with an employee and then not use any of your employer privileges to support said employee.

I really enjoyed this book. I liked hearing about how the author found her love of science while helping her father as a young child. I found it interesting to know how much she had to work to get the grants needed to keep her business growing and surviving.
The author explains many things throughout the book and it always makes me happy to learn new things. My eight-year-old grandson listened to some with me, and each time we were in the car, he asked for me to put it on. He didn't get to listen to much, but he found it interesting.

I almost abandoned this book early. It seemed the author was trying too hard to prove herself. Boy was I wrong. This is a phenomenal piece of writing and storytelling and science text.

This books is great. Deep, inventive, full of science and feelings and written with passion. Highly recommended.

Recommended if you are especially interested in botany.

Loved it! Opened my heart and eyes in unexpected ways.

The overall narrative was very loose. It was hard to tell what time each chapter was set in and how time was moving.

It's funny, I really enjoyed the plant chapters. They made the plants and trees feel so much more alive.

Вам, скорее всего, понравится. Я специально посмотрел отзывы и все писают кипятком. И я понимаю почему. Начало очень увлекательное и погружающее, потому что у Хоуп хороший подвешанный язык — интересно читать. Но я не смог осилить.

Я ожидал, что это будут какие-то истории в духе рабочего романа, когда автор увлекательно рассказывает о своей работе. Но здесь все смешалось: кони, люди и залпы тысячи орудий и вот это все.

История шалыгает то вверх, то вниз: то про работу, то про детство, то про семью, то про что-то еще. Каждый отдельный блок сам по себе очень хороший. Такой американский язык, напоминающий «Над пропастью во ржи». Однако, я никак не мог дождаться, когда же мне начнут рассказывать про деревья: какие они классные и как устроены. Была история про семечко, которое может пролежать 10000 лет пока не дождется условий для роста и потом снова Хоуп уносит в какие-то воспоминания.

Мне очень не хватило редакторской работы, чтобы как-то разложить все по полочкам. Возможно, если сидеть на даче в выходные, когда на улице дождь, а у тебя перед камином тепло, есть печеньки и кокао — можно увлеченно залпом прочесть книгу, но когда у тебя много работы и ты читаешь это то в очереди, то в такси, то перед сном... Не знаю, я не хотел откапывать из завалов снега то, за чем я пришел. Так как у автора хороший слог и истории (по отдельности), то ограничусь перечитыванием цитат из книги, которые отметили другие читатели, чтобы чем-то вдохновить себя.

I loved this so much. Really phenomenal writing about family, friends, and plants. It made me think about my childhood trees - the one with the swing in KY, Gus (a maple) in OH, the black walnut in MI - and how I need some adulthood trees to talk to and love.

An amazing and inspiring amalgam of science and personal memoir.

Unfortunately, I don't understand the excitement and buzz about this memoir. I picked it up on audio because several bookish friends loved it (both on audio and in print), and I found it meditative but lacking something. Most memoirs indicate growth. Instead, I found Jahren's treatment of students as an academic pretty poor. She also spent a lot of time on minor stories, while barely scratching the surface on some of the meatier ones. The chapters I loved, I really loved - but they were few and far between for me.

Botanist and geochemist (digging holes and analysing soil) Hope Jahren shares her life story of how she set out on her path to become a scientist, the many labs she built up over the path of her career, the demons she battled, and all the rush and the frustrations of discovery and hard work. The beautiful red thread through it all is her work partnership with Bill, the odd sidekick with whom she shares a love for nature, an unbreakable dedication to research and a great sense of deadbeat humour. The book is a wonderful mix of bizarre adventures and Jahren lays it all bare - the good, the bad, the painful. Absolutely recommend. I feel like i read a novel.

“Lab Girl” is an interesting memoir, interspersed with descriptions of various science wonders, which dovetail to developments in the author's life. Hope Jahren is a talented writer, who is able to tie many insights from science and get life together. Yet, I never really was drawn in. There was nothing forced or fake about the book, so it may be that I have too much on my plate at the moment. At some point, I plan to take another pass at this book when things have calmed down.

This was a difficult one for me to get through, but I was fascinated by the intricacies of science research. And thus, I made it!

Slowly grew on me (no pun intended) but turned out to be one of the most interesting books I have read in the past year. Satisfying combination of memoir of a quirky scientist and plant biology lessons, all very readable. Not sure I liked Hope Jahren but I certainly admire her.

Hope Jahren's writing has the ability to make almost anything she chooses to write about seem interesting and worth knowing. Lab Girl is comprised of two parts: stories from her life and career, and information on the plant life she studies. The personal stories are warm, poignant, sometimes funny, and always engaging. The educational sections are, well, educational in addition to being engaging even if the subject of botany holds little interest for you. Mostly, it's because Jahren is a really great writer. Definitely worth reading.

I was thrown by the beginning, as she basically glosses over graduate school and job-hunting, which are no cake-walk, but I eventually appreciated that she wanted to give deeper attention to a certain period of her career. I know a lot of scientists in their PhD/post-doc/job application period, and it made me think “this book is disconnected from reality” when it started off breezing through all that like it was nothing. Unfortunately that was sort of my strongest feeling about it. Except that I really liked Bill.

Clue 1. Happy, exuberant state.
Clue 2. Read 290 pages in one sitting.
Clue 3. Desire to tell everyone about book.
Clue 4. No interest in picking up another book until euphoria subsides.

Analysis?

Yes, I read a fabulous book today. Hope Jahren combines the stories of her life with alternating and connected stories of the plant world to create a brilliant book. Five stars.

I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway, but the opinions in my review are my own and not based on that.

I wasn't entirely sure I would enjoy this book since it is the story of a scientist and her work in a lab studying trees and plants. But I was very wrong. This was a wonderful read. I learned many things along the way that fascinated me about nature and the world around me and I will never look at a tree the same way. For instance, did you know the seed of a hackberry tree is surrounded by a white lattice work to protect it, and is made of opal?

That's not the only gem in this book, however, Hope Jahren weaves a fascinating story of her relationship with her lab partner Bill and her life coping with her own Bi-Polar disorder. Her description of a manic episode is the best I have ever read! Her entire book is laced with humour and is very readable and easy to relate to.