Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

From the publisher: Geobiologist Hope Jahren has spent her life studying trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Lab Girl is her revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also a celebration of the lifelong curiosity, humility, and passion that drive every scientist. In these pages, Hope takes us back to her Minnesota childhood, where she spent hours in unfettered play in her father’s college laboratory. She tells us how she found a sanctuary in science, learning to perform lab work “with both the heart and the hands.” She introduces us to Bill, her brilliant, eccentric lab manager. And she extends the mantle of scientist to each one of her readers, inviting us to join her in observing and protecting our environment. Warm, luminous, compulsively readable, Lab Girl vividly demonstrates the mountains that we can move when love and work come together.

Lab Girl is Hope Jahren’s memoir and first book, and though it is about her life in science, you can tell that she also has a background in English. Her writing is beautiful and easy to follow, even when describing intricate scientific experiments. Indeed, she did start off as an English major in college before turning to science, but Lab Girl makes it clear that science is her true love. Even those who are not big into science will come out with a newfound interest in the subject due to Jahren’s affectionate descriptions of her work and trees in general. She manages to teach the reader a lot about what she does without making it seem like you’re reading a textbook. 

Jahren is a geobiologist, and studies trees and plants. Lab Girl follows her as she goes to college in Minnesota, gets her PhD at the University of California Berkeley, meets her best friend and lab partner, Bill, and builds several labs all over the world. Despite her love of science, her early years were lonely ones, and her story makes for an enlightening but often sad read. She discusses her mental health struggles, giving vivid descriptions of manic depressive episodes stemming from her Bipolar Disorder. She also talks frankly about the sexism she endures in her field. In telling about her first scientific breakthrough, she says “On some deep level, the realization that I could do good science was accompanied by the knowledge that I had formally and terminally missed my chance to become like any of the women that I had ever known”. She works with very few other women, and is often looked down upon and endures condescension and gossip about her looks and intelligence from the men she works with, except for Bill. Jahren meets Bill at Berkeley, and the two bond quickly over being outcasts in their field. Jahren hires Bill to work in her lab at Berkeley, and they have worked together ever since. Hope and Bill’s friendship is my favorite part of the book. They are there for each other every step of the way, at any time of day, and to help with any problem, work related or personal. 

I am not a big “science person”, so I was worried that this book would be boring or go right over my head. That was not the case. The book has interchapters, before each chapter about her own life, Jahren includes a short chapter about the growth or history of trees. These interchapters tie in to her story and she draws parallels between her life and the life cycle of trees. While some of these shorter tree chapters did drag a bit for me, they were mostly interesting and a creative way to tell her story while also showing how important and alive plants are. Overall, Lab Girl is a beautifully written story of an interesting and adventurous life. I would highly recommend it for anyone interested in environmental activism or women in science.

Jahren is passionate about environmental conservation and keeping our planet green and healthy. She ends the book with a plea to the reader to plant a tree, so I will end this review in the same way. If you are able, plant a tree this spring. Tree seedlings are fairly cheap, and it’s a great outdoor activity if you’re stuck at home during quarantine. Jahren continues her fight against climate change in her new book that came out in March, The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here. The Galesburg Public Library owns a copy, so if you enjoy Lab Girl, be sure to check it out. If you’re looking for more books on this subject, check out The Overstory by Richard Powers, also available as a print book and an ebook. 

The Galesburg Public Library owns Lab Girl as a print copy, an ebook, and an audiobook.

The Warehouse by Rob Hart

Imagine a world ravaged by gun violence and environmental damage, where a huge corporation that sells everything to everyone and delivers the items by drone limits the choices of where you can live and work. In Rob Hart’s The Warehouse, the giant company Cloud has put other retailers out of business and become the only place to work. Paxton and Zinnia pass the test and start their jobs. Paxton ends up in security;  Zinnia works long days racing against the clock, picking items to mail to customers. They work at Cloud. They eat at Cloud. They sleep at Cloud. Zinnia puts up with sexual harassment from a manager; Paxton competes against others for the approval of his boss.

But neither Zinnia nor Paxton is who they seem. Each is keeping secrets, and each has an agenda. However, it’s not easy to stand up for yourself when you are a tiny cog in the Cloud.

The Warehouse is likely to be this year’s big, almost-there dystopian novel. And it all feels like it could come true next week.

Rob Hart dedicated his book to Maria Fernandes, a woman who worked part-time at several Dunkin’Donuts to make ends meet and who died from gas fumes while taking a nap in her car. In the meantime, Dunkin’ CEO Nigel Travis earned $10.2 million the year she died. The Warehouse is not a perfect book, but it will make you think hard about the relationship between corporations and their employees and about income inequality.

I read an advance reader copy of The Warehouse, which comes out on August 20. The Galesburg Public Library will have it in print and as an ebook.

Half-Earth by Edward O. Wilson

Publisher description: Half-Earth proposes an achievable plan to save our imperiled biosphere: devote half the surface of the Earth to nature. In order to stave off the mass extinction of species, including our own, we must move swiftly to preserve the biodiversity of our planet, says Edward O. Wilson in his most impassioned book to date. Half-Earth argues that the situation facing us is too large to be solved piecemeal and proposes a solution commensurate with the magnitude of the problem: dedicate fully half the surface of the Earth to nature. If we are to undertake such an ambitious endeavor, we first must understand just what the biosphere is, why it's essential to our survival, and the manifold threats now facing it. 

***

Edward O. Wilson knows his subject backwards and forwards, and his passion is admirable. This short work covers a lot of ground, meandering about on a large variety of topics. 

Although I agree wholeheartedly with the author’s suggestion to set aside half the planet for nature and am also passionate about the biosphere, I found the book a bit preachy and dull in parts. It was kind of like reading a really long sermon. The text was also a bit repetitive, in the way of people trying to convince others to understand their passion. I found some of the chapter transitions very abrupt. Much of the information in Half-Earth was not new to me; I'd heard or read a lot of it before. As so many environmental works are, it was also downright depressing to read.

On the plus side, Wilson quoted Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of my favorites, who noticed man’s movement away from the natural world over a hundred years ago. Occasional sentences jumped out at me and made me think, like “Keep in mind that every surviving species (including us) is therefore a champion in a club of champions. We are all best of the best, descendants of species that have never turned wrong in the maze, never lost. Not yet.” (p. 117 of the digital advance reader copy) 

Depressing as they are, I feel it is important to read books like this one if we are ever to change the way humans treat the rest of the biosphere. Half-Earth proposes a bold idea and would be a good book for discussion. Short as it is, it would also be a good starter book for someone not already well-read on the subject.

Half-Earth is scheduled to be published March 7. I read a digital advance reader copy.

Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson

There’s a new genre of fiction that is becoming ever more popular – climate fiction, or cli fi. Plots are focused on the environment and especially our planet’s climate. Climate fiction is benefitting from the fact that dystopian and apocalyptic novels are super hot right now – or maybe climate fiction is helping drive that popularity.

The Galesburg Public Library’s Food for Thought book discussion group found the water shortage dystopian novel Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis to not be scientific enough in explaining how we as a society could reach such a crisis. Then we discussed Kim Stanley Robinson’s Forty Signs of Rain, and we found it to be a little too scientific. We all at times felt a little overwhelmed by the facts, background information, and explanations of primate behavior and how the scientific proposal and grant process works.

Still, those who finished the book were glad they had done so, and we all agreed it could make a great movie.

Most of the book is set up – the flooding crisis in Washington DC does not take place until the last 100 pages. But there are two more books in the series so Robinson could take his time introducing his characters. Scientists, politicians, biomathematicians at a start-up, and refugees from a low-lying island nation all meet and interact as we are fed the circumstances driving the planet toward an environmental crisis.

It’s refreshing to have a male author writing about a lactating working mother whose husband works from home and assumes most of the childcare. Their toddler is a real character in the book, not just a plot device.

The politics in the book (published in 2004) seem all too real. The animals in the Washington zoo are released to fend for themselves as the city floods, something that recently happened in the country of Georgia. I often wonder how so many Americans can vote against their own interests, and one of Robinson’s characters agrees:  “You work every day of the year, except for three lousy weeks. You make around a hundred thousand dollars. Your boss takes two thirds, and gives you one third, and you give a third of that to the government. Your government uses what it takes to build all the roads and schools and police and pensions, and your boss takes his share and buys a mansion on an island somewhere. So naturally you complain about your bloated inefficient Big Brother of a government, and you always vote for the pro-owner party….How stupid is that?” (p. 74)

Quite a few times as I read Forty Signs of Rain I found myself thinking “Yes, that’s so true!” Another example:

“The battle for control of science went on. Many administrations and Congresses hadn’t wanted technology or the environment assessed at all, as far as Anna could see. It might get in the way of business. They didn’t want to know. …And yet they did want to call the shots. …On what basis did they build such an incoherent mix of desires, to want to stay ignorant and to be powerful as well? Were these two parts of the same insanity?” (p. 114-115)     

   

If you agree that climate change is a real planetary issue that needs to be addressed and don’t mind a fair amount of facts and figures, you might enjoy Forty Signs of Rain. If you think climate change is a load of bunk or just don’t think we can afford to do anything about it, the book would probably just make you mad.

The Galesburg Public Library owns all three books in Robinson’s Science in the Capitol series.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

I’d never read any Margaret Atwood before choosing Oryx and Crake for book club. I listened to the audio version, narrated by Campbell Scott. Wow, Atwood is a great writer. But this is one disturbing book.

The book is narrated by Snowman, who seems to be the last remaining original human on earth. There is a new race of genetically engineered people, but they have very little in common with Snowman. Society has collapsed. Cities are in ruins. Over the course of the book, Snowman talks about his present life - sleeping in trees to avoid being eaten by genetically engineered monsters, scrounging for food, water, and supplies, answering questions from the perfect children of the other race - while also telling us about his childhood, about his relationships with his best friend Crake and his one great love Oryx, and what happened to bring the planet to its present state. (Bonus points from me for multiple references to Alex the African Grey Parrot.)

The narrative grabbed me from the third paragraph on page 1: “Out of habit he looks at his watch – stainless-steel case, burnished aluminum band, still shiny although it no longer works. He wears it now as his only talisman. A blank face is what it shows him: zero hour. It causes a jolt of terror to run through him, this absence of official time. Nobody nowhere knows what time it is.”

Published in 2003, Oryx and Crake came out before the current round of dystopian novels. And unlike many of them, we don’t have a hopeful subplot to distract us from the grim reality of what our future as a species could hold if we go down a certain path of genetic engineering. There are relationships, including romantic and sexual relationships, but the unrelenting narrative about how the world was destroyed is not much lightened by those relationships.

Gated compounds and economic divides. Genetic engineering. Too powerful corporations. Every depravity imaginable available on the internet. Climate change. Of all the dystopian novels I've read over the years (at least 20 in the last four years according to my Goodreads list), this is the scariest because it feels the most possible.

The book is filled with statements and passages that made me stop and think, like this one: “Watch out for the leaders, Crake used to say. First the leaders and the led, then the tyrants and the slaves, then the massacres. That’s how it’s always gone.” (p. 155)

At this point I am not sure whether or not I will read the sequels - not because the first isn't good, it is – but because the series depicts such a depressing future. At the very least I'll need a little break first and something lighthearted to read before tackling The Year of the Flood.

If you enjoy beautifully written realistic dystopian fiction that carries true warnings for our species, Oryx and Crake is for you. The Galesburg Public Library has the three books in the series in both print and ebook versions.