Hope Jahren is a geochemist and geobiologist. The book is her memoir and is divided into three parts. The first part traces her childhood to becoming a scientist. The second part traces her growth as an independent researcher and the third part is where she marries and becomes a mother. The chapters of her personal quest are interspersed with chapters on plants.
I have mixed feeling about the book. I purchased the book about 3 years back and found I could not go beyond the first few chapters. This time I finished the book while traveling between Chennai and Delhi. Airplanes are good for reading.
The chapters on plants are just fantastic. I learned a lot. I learnt about the way trees can communicate, the way they combat infection, the way they grow- there are minor quibbles like when she says DNA is a protein. But I can live with it for the sheer exuberance she exudes when she talks about plants. It is so infectious.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about her personal journey. Half-way through the book, I kept on asking why did she choose to become a geologist? What motivated her to pick that subject rather than the usual route of botany given her love for plants.
All the figures in her life her shadowy- I did not get any sense of her family or her relationship with them. Once she leaves home, they are left behind too. The same happens with her advisor. The only figures that does stand out is Bill, who is her lab manager and fellow adventurer.
I also do not agree with her that laboratory is your life. And that one has to spend more than 18 hours in a lab to be successful or to be counted as scientist. I have a lab and I have a life. The two are separate. It is possible to have a lab and do lots of things outside the lab. One of my students recently asked me whether it was necessary to spend so many hours in the lab and if she did her Ph.D. will she still have to time to read books and do other things. My answer was an emphatic No, you do not have to spend all your life in the and Yes, you will have time to do all the things you love while doing Ph.D. It is, infact, essential to have a life outside the lab. It is all a matter of proportion.
Of course, it is quite true that by not putting in all-nighters or working for 18 hours a day I have also not had the kind of success that she has or won the kind of awards that she has. So I guess it evens out.
I have mixed feeling about the book. I purchased the book about 3 years back and found I could not go beyond the first few chapters. This time I finished the book while traveling between Chennai and Delhi. Airplanes are good for reading.
The chapters on plants are just fantastic. I learned a lot. I learnt about the way trees can communicate, the way they combat infection, the way they grow- there are minor quibbles like when she says DNA is a protein. But I can live with it for the sheer exuberance she exudes when she talks about plants. It is so infectious.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about her personal journey. Half-way through the book, I kept on asking why did she choose to become a geologist? What motivated her to pick that subject rather than the usual route of botany given her love for plants.
All the figures in her life her shadowy- I did not get any sense of her family or her relationship with them. Once she leaves home, they are left behind too. The same happens with her advisor. The only figures that does stand out is Bill, who is her lab manager and fellow adventurer.
I also do not agree with her that laboratory is your life. And that one has to spend more than 18 hours in a lab to be successful or to be counted as scientist. I have a lab and I have a life. The two are separate. It is possible to have a lab and do lots of things outside the lab. One of my students recently asked me whether it was necessary to spend so many hours in the lab and if she did her Ph.D. will she still have to time to read books and do other things. My answer was an emphatic No, you do not have to spend all your life in the and Yes, you will have time to do all the things you love while doing Ph.D. It is, infact, essential to have a life outside the lab. It is all a matter of proportion.
Of course, it is quite true that by not putting in all-nighters or working for 18 hours a day I have also not had the kind of success that she has or won the kind of awards that she has. So I guess it evens out.
