From the Bookshelf of Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge…

Lab Girl

Hope Jahren

Why we're reading this: Not many books about scientists portray us as more than one-dimensional eccentrics, Jahren brings to life…more
[close] Not many books about scientists portray us as more than one-dimensional eccentrics, Jahren brings to life the joy and the humanity in pursuing science

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Mar 30, 2020 Anastasia rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: womens-issues, class-issues, memoirbio, non-fiction, current-events, book-club, 2020

It was torture to finish this book, but I felt compelled to because it was a pick for our book club. The author is actually a pretty strong writer in terms of how she chooses words and puts sentences together and even in creating certain heartfelt scenes. It's just that much of the content was either incredibly boring or consisted of the weirdest, grossest, most disturbing stories that you could ever imagine PhD educated adults participating in. I just cringed so many times. So many times. ...more

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Feb 12, 2019 Debbie rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

Hope Jahren combines memoir and nature writing as she tells how (and why) she became a scientist. I knew that funding for research was a hurdle, but I didn’t realize just how monumental a problem it is for those who are trying to conduct research. I enjoyed learning about her personal journey, as well as the botanical/ecological ideas she presented.

“People are like plants: they grow towards the light. I chose science because science gave me what I needed—a home as defined in the most literal se ...more

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Oct 05, 2020 Kristin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: popsugar2020

I too am a 'Lab Girl', though not nearly as successful or ambitious as Jahren, so naturally reading the autobiography of a kindred spirit appealed to me. While I prefer to work in the fast-paced world of clinical medicine and organ transplantation, Jahren's career is in the world of plants, where work with seeds and seedlings can provide short-term results, but long-term research often exceeds the boundaries of both grant money and the scientist's own career, perhaps even their life. After readi I too am a 'Lab Girl', though not nearly as successful or ambitious as Jahren, so naturally reading the autobiography of a kindred spirit appealed to me. While I prefer to work in the fast-paced world of clinical medicine and organ transplantation, Jahren's career is in the world of plants, where work with seeds and seedlings can provide short-term results, but long-term research often exceeds the boundaries of both grant money and the scientist's own career, perhaps even their life. After reading this book, I felt grateful for what I have, as Jahren and especially her lab partner Bill, both of whom have advanced degrees, often put in long tedious hours in the lab, for a mere fraction of what I make annually with my bachelor's degree, and it confirms my absolute desire to not be a research scientist.
Because I've never really had an interest in plants besides watering them and eating the portions that some of them are grown especially to provide, Jahren's insights into her passion were enlightening. Where I see a bed of weeds or a moss-covered rock, she sees the one-in-a-million chance that a seed found the ideal conditions to begin its growth process and the questions of 'why there?' and 'why now?' are raised. Even in the most boring-sounding situations, like the archaeological digs she and Bill take their students on to examine soil layers and determine what weather conditions were like eons ago in order to predict what was growing in that soil, she interweaves with personal observations and anecdotes that make the book fascinating. Their scavenging ways when it comes to procuring lab equipment or saving things that 'might be useful some day' made me smile, as we use equipment in our lab today that I've seen in photos from when our lab was founded 30+ years ago and have heard that those things weren't new even back than, having been scavenged from the cast-offs of existing labs. Honestly, the decades-old stuff often works better than what is bought to replace it when it wears out or a new hire necessitates the addition of another set of instruments.
Bill as a constant presence throughout the book provides an interesting contrast to Jahren, sort of a yin and yang, where they each have their moments of stability while simultaneously being unstable. Jahren alludes to her own mental illness, presumably bipolar disorder, yet no matter whether she's going wild over a new idea for an experiment or physically unable to go to the lab for days, Bill is always there to keep things going. Bill himself seems to be a bit of a nomad, with the only constant in his life being his labwork, sometimes he's living in his car or the lab itself, yet when they leave their lab in Baltimore for Hawaii, he's managed to turn a fixer-upper home into coveted real estate despite making less than minimum wage. He's a mysterious character, but I loved that she had him and they've stayed together professionally for all these years.
'Lab Girl' also provides what might be one of my favorite lines in a book ever: 'Tell her about the day that her grandmother sat in a sunbeam and dreamed of her to the soundtrack of a tree being flogged' ...more

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Oct 14, 2017 Lisa rated it liked it

Shelves: audio, nonfiction, science

I am not a scientist, but learning about science always interests me. I also love a good memoir. This book is part scientific log (watching plants and trees grow, the use and importance of mass spectrometers as well as random science trivia) and part personal memoir of a woman who grew up loving science, making her life’s work in a field not easily entered by a woman of her time. She is damaged in many ways but she writes about her work and her personal challenges with an engaging wit. The book ...more

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