Recent reading
Mar. 19th, 2017 06:28 pmLab Girl by Hope Jahren (audiobook read by the author)
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malnpudl, you were right that I would enjoy this! Thanks for the rec. : ) The reading really enhanced my enjoyment, it was just so expressive and well read. I think the autobiography gripped me more than the facts/musings about plants, actually. I found the chosen-family relationship between her and her lab partner really touching. Also, I have such respect for lab people--myself, I am fairly good at fieldwork, but lab work is something else and requires more of an affinity with machines and equipment.
Norrlandsparadoxen by Arne Müller (The Norrland Paradox, only available in Swedish)
Pretty great journalism. It looks at recent establishments of mines and other large industrial ventures in the north of Sweden and whether they actually give something back to the community in the form of jobs, taxes and population (turns out they don't actually give back much). I appreciate the well-defined focus of the book and how it digs into statistics and hard data as well as lots of interviews with people. OTOH I am curious about the ties to larger economical and political trends, which the author admits he doesn't know enough about. Which is actually kind of refreshing too. No high-flying theories without data here.
malnpudl, you were right that I would enjoy this! Thanks for the rec. : ) The reading really enhanced my enjoyment, it was just so expressive and well read. I think the autobiography gripped me more than the facts/musings about plants, actually. I found the chosen-family relationship between her and her lab partner really touching. Also, I have such respect for lab people--myself, I am fairly good at fieldwork, but lab work is something else and requires more of an affinity with machines and equipment. Norrlandsparadoxen by Arne Müller (The Norrland Paradox, only available in Swedish)
Pretty great journalism. It looks at recent establishments of mines and other large industrial ventures in the north of Sweden and whether they actually give something back to the community in the form of jobs, taxes and population (turns out they don't actually give back much). I appreciate the well-defined focus of the book and how it digs into statistics and hard data as well as lots of interviews with people. OTOH I am curious about the ties to larger economical and political trends, which the author admits he doesn't know enough about. Which is actually kind of refreshing too. No high-flying theories without data here.
