memoir written by a female botanist. Short chapters on some aspect of plant life followed by longer chapter telling stories from her life that correlates somehow to the plant life chapter - her years growing up in the Midwest in an unemotional household, college, her early years as a college professor and setting up her research lab on a college campus, her friendship with her lab director - like a sibling, and becoming a mother herself which is the ultimate in creating life and nurturing it. Not too sciency but even with the loose format it seemed to drift a little. No real ending. I did like reading about how a research lab is started and funded.
Helpful Score: 1
When I started the book I was sure I was never going to be able to get into it. It is one of the most unique memoirs I have read, so far. Here is one example of why this book drew me in and kept me interested. "For trees that live in the snow, winter is a journey. Plants do not travel through space as we do: as a rule they do not move from place to place. Instead they travel through time, enduring one event after the other, and in this sense, winter is a particularly long trip. Trees follow the standard advice given for any extended travel within a rustic setting: pack carefully." To me it reads like poetry and I love it. As for Hope Jahren, she is hard to pinpoint on the kind of person she is. I conclude that she is intelligent, chained to knowledge, and has a hard time connecting and expressing without coming across as harsh or cocky. Plus, she is not completely comfortable with herself. Here is one more quote that I am going to finish with, to me it helps explain her and life in general. "Science is work, nothing more and nothing less. And so we will keep working as another day dawns and this week turns into next week, and then this month becomes next month. I can feel the warmth of the same brilliant sun that shines above the forest and onto the green, but in my heart I know that I am not a plant. I am more like an ant, driven to find and carry single dead needles, on after the other, all the way across the forest and then add them one by one to a pile so massive that I can only fully imagine one small corner of it. "
