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handahbear 's review for:
Lab Girl
by Hope Jahren
I wanted to like this book. I'm trying to get more into non-fiction, but this just did not do it for me.
First and foremost, I struggled with the tone of the book. Jahren can come off as condescending in the sections she narrates about her own life, and her writing about nature is incredibly dry, making those pieces all too easy to skim.
I found a few moments in the book that put Jahren in a very unlikable light, most notably when she describes seeing the patients in the psychiatric ward. It's very off-putting, made worse by the revelation that Jahren herself deals with some mental health issues of her own. She displays a real lack of compassion in that section, which we see again when she describes her teaching style.
It's fairly obvious to the reader that Jahren does not want to be a teacher, or at least, she doesn't enjoy it. She displays some alarming behaviors towards her students, ranging the gamut from mild disdain to outright recklessness, as seen when she puts her students in danger during an ill-planned trip.
This book wanted to be both a memoir and a popular science book. By trying to do both, I think it stretched itself a little thin. You can tell that Jahren is very intelligent and knowledgable about the material she's presenting, and if you're into lab science, I think you'd probably really enjoy this one, but I wasn't drawn in enough by Jahren's life or her nature writing to love the book.
First and foremost, I struggled with the tone of the book. Jahren can come off as condescending in the sections she narrates about her own life, and her writing about nature is incredibly dry, making those pieces all too easy to skim.
I found a few moments in the book that put Jahren in a very unlikable light, most notably when she describes seeing the patients in the psychiatric ward. It's very off-putting, made worse by the revelation that Jahren herself deals with some mental health issues of her own. She displays a real lack of compassion in that section, which we see again when she describes her teaching style.
It's fairly obvious to the reader that Jahren does not want to be a teacher, or at least, she doesn't enjoy it. She displays some alarming behaviors towards her students, ranging the gamut from mild disdain to outright recklessness, as seen when she puts her students in danger during an ill-planned trip.
This book wanted to be both a memoir and a popular science book. By trying to do both, I think it stretched itself a little thin. You can tell that Jahren is very intelligent and knowledgable about the material she's presenting, and if you're into lab science, I think you'd probably really enjoy this one, but I wasn't drawn in enough by Jahren's life or her nature writing to love the book.