Lab Girl

Ma swoje mocne momenty, ma swoje słabe i wręcz infantylne momenty.
To, że historia jest napisana przez kobietę daje inną perspektywę na organizację nauki, środowisko naukowe. Poza tym jednak pamiętnik ten z czasem staje się coraz bardziej tkliwy (chyba tak po prostu "po kobiecemu") i opisuje relacje prywatne, czy w pewnym momencie wręcz szczegółowy opis porodu. Nie brak jednak ciekawych opisów amerykańskiego systemu nauki czy botanicznych badań autorki, jak również niektórych sytuacji z życia badaczki.
Co drugi rozdział poświęcony jest na opis drzewa (od ogółu do szczegółu) - nie można nie porównać tego do dużo lepszych "Patyków, badyli" U. Zajączkowskiej.
Książka dość nierówna i pamiętnik na przestrzeni stron przyjmuje różnoraką formę. Były strony, gdzie "akcja" bardzo wciągała, a były i takie, które omiatało się przelotnie.
Niemniej jednak samą autorkę całkiem polubiłem, i choć nie jest to nigdzie wprost opisane, to czuje się ten wzrost doświadczenia i wpływu, wzrostu w hierarchii badaczki w gronie akademickim.

Carl Sagan said, "If you wish to make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." Hope Jahren had to do exactly that because there didn't seem to be a place for her in the one she was born into. Along the way she meets Bill who needed a place as well and she creates one for both of them. That's what science is really about--not taking things for granted--but it's difficult feeling like a misfit because you're seen as one by those who do.

This is a book about the painful sort-of-success of the unorthodox point of view, including the unorthodox points of view of plants. It's a sort-of-success because even the plants are still struggling to survive (no thanks to humans), as is science for curiosity rather than commerce or defense.

I'd like to tell Ms. Jahren that when I was in grad school, my thesis adviser managed to convince the department of defense that they should fund projects that were less likely to be of use to them than exploring the inner life of trees. It's a different form of creative writing.

This is the first book I've pre-ordered for a long time, based on reading Hope Jahren's blog (#HopeJahrenSureCanWrite - an accurate name) and interviews on various media.
I was not disappointed.
The first thing that struck me is that this reads more like a novel than a straight memoir in that her use of language is similar to that you would find in literature and the events related seem to be picked more with a novelist's eye to revealing the characters and their motivation than to, say a journalist's eye for narrative.
My previous benchmark for a book about life in biology labs is [b:Natural Obsessions: Striving to Unlock the Deepest Secrets of the Cancer Cell|23825157|Natural Obsessions Striving to Unlock the Deepest Secrets of the Cancer Cell|Natalie Angier|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1438557140s/23825157.jpg|43437374], but Natalie is a journalist and writes that way. I prefer Lab Girl and will recommend it even to people not interested in science because it will be a "good read", whereas you have to have a good deal of interest in a life in science to read Angier, but they're a good pair if you are so interested.
Lab Girl is also interesting to me because Hope Jahren is such an unusual (and talented) person. She would have had to be to shoulder her way into a white male-dominated profession. This is also the story of Hope and Bill, Bill being an equally unusual man with complementary talents, as they work together over a very long time as they find ways to find out what plants are up to.
The biographical chapters are interspersed with some fascinating facts about plants. I'm a plant person myself, though mostly from the gardening point-of-view but I have done undergraduate-level study of plants so there wasn't a lot new to me except the "putting in perspective" parts where she tells us, for example, how much paper you would get from a medium-sized tree's leaves, or how much magnesium you need to make their chlorophyll. But Hope's prose poetry on even the things I know were a pleasure to read.
I've never really wanted to be a lab scientist. This book convinced me I wouldn't want to be - my personality doesn't fit that well. However, there were so many other touch points with my own unusual life, things we've done both important and trivial (e.g. we both read Jean Genet at about the same age, both moved countries and cities several times in pursuit of life goals) and ways we look at things that provoked a shock of recognition, that it helped me think about my own life in new ways, and what I might try next as I look for yet another change in career.
You will do yourself a big favour if you read this.