Review: Goldilocks and the Water Bears: The Search for Life in the Universe

Goldilocks and the Water Bears: The Search for Life in the Universe by Louisa Preston
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"It was ok" is maybe the most positive I feel towards this book. I'm not exactly sure what audience Dr. Preston is aiming for, but I definitely felt like the prose was intended for a teenager or younger. Science communication often tackles with how to inform your audience without necessarily being condescending; Goldilocks and the Water Bears introduces lots of concepts and helpfully italicizes them when first mentioned, giving off the feel of a textbook. Some of these chapters, like the one describing what defines life and conditions life might need, definitely felt textbook-ish, especially with several italicized vocabulary words per paragraph.

One of my earlier criticisms as I was reading was that I'm finding pop culture references walk a fine line between potentially dated and cool enough to draw the reader in. The first chapter of this book discusses science fiction and how our space fantasies may inspire us to develop similar technologies or look for life in various ways. While not the focus of the book, the short explanations for some pieces of media (like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) were very general- I initially dismissed this as "Well, it is a tangent so best not to linger on it..."

I read a library copy, and an earlier reader had penciled in corrections in a few places (slashing through a comma at one point, correcting numbers elsewhere, and in a later chapter, crossing out "carnivorous" and writing in "allotrophic" in the margins).

I also take issue with the use roughly once a chapter of "Fun fact: [fact here]." If it's a fun fact, shouldn't the fact speak for itself?

Perhaps her TED talk is more engaging, but the prose is very eh. I'd maybe recommend this to a middle or high school reader.

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Review: Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing

Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing by Jamie Holmes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In a "post-fact" society, does it matter whether we know something or not? Although Nonsense was published before even primary season took place, this was an unintentionally timely read. I personally tend to prefer knowing versus the unknown, so learning the uses of and embracing (or at least feeling comfortable with) not knowing seems relevant, too.

In general, Nonsense is a very readable book, perfect for the popular science reader but well-cited with extensive end notes (on a stylistic note, I liked that they weren't numbered in the text because that can be distracting, and reading linearly made them a bit of a reminder of what earlier chapters covered. While some were simple citations, others were longer descriptions of context around quotations or events).

In the first part, Mr. Holmes prompts us to notice how we respond to ambiguity, and how the need for closure catches our attention, makes us assume, and potentially distresses us when the situation is particularly unexpected. The middle section highlights examples of reactions to unexpected or ambiguous situations from natural disasters and hostage crises to the unpredictable world of fashion trends and whether or not more medical tests will really clear up an unclear diagnosis (spoiler alert: it may be more costly for the patient, but for that see The Empowered Patient: How to Get the Right Diagnosis, Buy the Cheapest Drugs, Beat Your Insurance Company, and Get the Best Medical Care Every Time). The final part covers how embracing the unknown is useful: where failure is often the stepping stone to scientific progress and taking away constraints of preconceived notions on your perspective may lead to new insights.

I've seen the phrased tossed around re: graduate school "The more you learn, you realize how little you actually know." This is a lesson I need to be reminded of, and Nonsense reminded me that it's okay if I don't know the answers.

Obtained via Blogging for Books in exchange for an unbiased review- took me longer to get around this than intended, but better late than never.

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Review: The Dim Sum Field Guide: A Taxonomy of Dumplings, Buns, Meats, Sweets, and Other Specialties of the Chinese Teahouse

The Dim Sum Field Guide: A Taxonomy of Dumplings, Buns, Meats, Sweets, and Other Specialties of the Chinese Teahouse by Carolyn Phillips
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received a copy from Blogging for Books in exchange for a review, although this had been on my to-read list way earlier after reading the Lucky Peach Beginner's Guide to Dim Sum. While this blog was intended to be primarily science (with more than the occasional tangent into politics), this book still fits as science communication by taking the language of field guides and applying them to food (which some people consider edible chemistry)!

If you're not familiar with the Cantonese cuisine of dim sum, this is a neatly organized introduction. Dishes are organized by cooking method (steamed savory, baked savory, extras, desserts, etc.) and both Mandarin and Cantonese pronunciations are given. Illustrations and cross-sections are helpful, but as with field guides, some users may find pictures more handy (though that's nothing a Google search couldn't solve). Where this guide shines is in the thorough, sensual descriptions of food from the sheen of a glaze or the crackling of a lightly pan fried wrapper under your teeth.


I've read various 'field guides' over the years, both actual for-the-field and books in the style (consider The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep by Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe, though they might actually intend it to be used to identify cryptids). The parts of The Dim Sum Field Guide that tickled my biological fancy were identifying each type as a genus with variations listed as species (and if there weren't any, Sui generis or a class of their own). "Nesting Habits" describes how the dish is usually plated, though dumplings may be "nestled together", etc. I can see how this was intended for use in the food field, but as with a birding trip, do your homework. Rather than taking this guide to dim sum with you, I suggest reading beforehand and making a list of what you're interested in trying if it makes you feel comfortable. In my experience, though, you can often just point at what looks good on carts passing by!

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Review: Voyage of the Basilisk

Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was delightful. I haven't read Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin yet, so I'm not sure if I missed references (and I imagine actual Victorian travelogues are more verbally dense, but then again it might be analogous to her in-world book, Around the World in Search of Dragons).

I'm a fan of natural history, so combining natural history and fantasy means I adore this series. And in the third installment of the memoirs of Lady Trent, we go seaborne: first towards the arctic in search of sea serpents, then to not!South America where we meet our new archaeologist friend who happens to own a diving bell, and then through a bit of sailing and political strife end up in not!Hawaii. All the while, Isabella struggles over how dragon taxonomy should work: do the classical bins fit, or are there more subtle gradients, especially given sea serpents and fire lizards have some features but not all? I cannot recall other fiction books that consider their zoology like this and if anyone knows of any, please mention them in the comments!

As in The Tropic of Serpents, analogues to real world cultures are done well, with shades of historical attitudes but without making our heroine either a historically accurate but not fun jerk or out-of-place with modern sensibilities. Gender and roles in not!Hawaii in particular are handled gracefully- (view spoiler)[a third gender/transgender category exists in the story and is plot relevant, but not dwelled on like a afterschool Very Special Episode and is treated as normal by the not!Hawaiians. (hide spoiler)]

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Review: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I first came across this work when an excerpt of the Target customer habit tracking was posted online somewhere in 2012, and it was relevant, interesting, yet terrifying.

A repost of Duhigg breaking his afternoon cookie habit came across my twitter feed earlier this year.

When I saw this at the library a month ago, it seemed like a sign that I should finally get around to reading this, and like reading anything on TVTropes, once you see patterns, you can't unsee them.

The thesis of The Power of Habit lies in our habit circle: a cue happens, we're compelled to perform our habit, and then get rewarded. Sometimes only a hint of a cue is required for us to automatically apply the habit, expecting reward. Duhigg demonstrates this again and again through anecdotes on an individual level, a company's level, and at a national level (the power of weak ties in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, for example).

The notes section is quite extensive should you wish to continue reading on a particular topic, and it's also fascinating to see what various entities had to say (or didn't say) when asked for fact-checking comments.

I can only hope that awareness of the cycle can be harnessed to change some of my own fidgety actions.

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Review: House of Lost Worlds: Dinosaurs, Dynasties, and the Story of Life on Earth

House of Lost Worlds: Dinosaurs, Dynasties, and the Story of Life on Earth by Richard Conniff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Like The Rarest of the Rare: Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History and Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums, this examines the natural history of a natural history museum. Unlike RotR, House goes beyond collections and recalls the history of the Peabody Museum itself, from how it initially began as collections in search of home, eventually given by George Peabody, uncle to O.C. Marsh of the Bone Wars. Marsh takes up over half the chapters of this book, as he should given his large personality.

I enjoyed how Conniff takes the story of the museum all the way into modern day, with the age of DNA and discoveries still being made from collection store rooms (deciphering fossilized ink, for example, came from one of Marsh's long forgotten invertebrate fossils). There are plenty of sidebars throughout chapters of other interesting stories of Peabody Museum curators and researchers who could easily have had their own chapters.

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Review: The Society of Genes

The Society of Genes by Itai Yanai
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In the intro, the authors say that while The Selfish Gene was important, it didn't answer the question of how said selfish genes interacted, and this, a more "holistic perspective" builds on that. In ten chapters, Yanai and Lercher cover topics from the last couple decades of research, starting with the mutations required for cancer, green beard genes, how different is the .5% difference between individual humans (still millions of base pairs), positive feedback loops, and endosymbiosis theory, among other things.

Aimed at a general audience with illustrated metaphors, this is a great introduction to current genetic knowledge (or a refresher if it's been a while since undergrad genetics). I still haven't read The Selfish Gene, so I can't judge how well this works as a successor in describing ideas on how genes interact and function (I assume TSG is also aimed at a general audience, but I also think it might be deeper? Won't know until I've read it).

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Review: The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature's Salvation

The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature's Salvation by Fred Pearce
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I seem to have unintentionally gotten into a "how should humanity address current ecological concerns" kick this year, as The New Wild continues on themes previously touched on in Resurrection Science: Conservation, De-extinction and the Precarious Future of Wild Things and The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. The New Wild doesn't tread the exact same paths as the other books, as Sixth Extinction depicted a rather morose view of the anthropocene and Resurrection Science examined ways we try to mitigate what we've caused. Instead, The New Wild considers the ecosystems we have now: a mix of native and non-native species in a constantly changing environment.

Fred Pearce is rather pointed about challenging the orthodoxy of typical conservation- he posits there are no 'pristine' ecosystems and what we often think of as pristine have still been shaped by humanity for thousands of years, so why try to preserve a fixed point in time when nature is constantly changing? Various examples of invasives filling in niches of native plants that were wiped out because of people are placed in context as providing habitat/food/etc. for endangered species native to the area, or how something that can be endangered in one place is considered invasive in another. Pearce bolsters his argument by pointing out how shaky some of the statistics and numbers used to vilify invasives are.

It's a persuasive argument. I'm not convinced it should be taken whole cloth (as it could easily slide to "Oh, well, nature will recover so let's go ahead and build this new farm or whatever"), but nuances are certainly needed for conservation efforts.

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Review: Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of the Birds of America

Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of the Birds of America by William Souder
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A pleasure to read. Previously I was dimly aware of Audubon's background beyond the acclaimed naturalist who painted life-size birds (if you ever get to see the original size of the folios, they are *massive). Who knew that he was a bastard son of a sea captain (inb4 "Hey should this be shoved at Lin-Manuel Miranda?") and self-trained naturalist could go toe-to-toe with European zoologists and then some, yet at the same time build up his persona as a roguish American frontiersmen with embellishments and some outright zoological fabrications (the description of rattlesnakes as tree-dwellers, for example)?

I would have liked to see some of the prints referenced (especially those in the chapters' epigraphs), but there are plenty of other books for that.

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Goodreads review: Resurrection Science: Conservation, De-extinction and the Precarious Future of Wild Things by M.R. O'Connor

Resurrection Science: Conservation, De-extinction and the Precarious Future of Wild Things by M.R. O'Connor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Resurrection Science: Conservation, De-extinction and the Precarious Future of Wild Things feels like a companion/response to The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History because the touch on similar themes: what have we humans done to our ecosystems? Unlike Sixth Extinction, though, Resurrection Science examines some of the efforts in response to what seems to be one of the biggest massive die-offs we've seen.

Or is it? The intro muses over how we define the numbers of species going extinct and how we calculate it. It seems as the rates have been overestimated so that's somewhat cheering, but habitats are still being lost at a rapid rate. When we make efforts to conserve a species, just what are we conserving- the species itself, as many amphibian species such as the spray toads of Kihansi in Tanzania have their largest populations in captivity, or habitat restoration? What about the Frozen Arks-we preserve the DNA, the blueprints for many organisms, but does that save behaviors and interactions between species? (If we continue the blueprint analogy, it's like using Anasazi blueprints for a kiva but not really knowing what to use it for or how the ceremonies were performed)

Technology can be used for good (Ben Novak's passenger pigeon project is nothing short of ambitious, but also amazing considering he was able to extract over 60% passenger pigeon DNA from museum specimens- a huge win for studying old DNA). But, it shouldn't be considered a substitute for a more comprehensive view of our world, and while we can rescue species, does it matter if their habitats and their interactions are gone?

As my last couple updates indicate, I really enjoyed the coda where O'Connor considers why we feel this drive to save endangered/revive extinct species- what exactly is "nature" and "natural" in an age where Homo sapiens have touched every part of the globe in the last thousands of years? Pupfish populations are isolated and scattered- if one originated because a fish biologist moved them to a non-military site location, is it natural, or does that even matter because pupfish are so rare? The intangibility of 'nature' doesn't mean we shouldn't try to atone for our actions as a species, but consideration should be made on why we feel the need to do so.


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Goodreads review: Lab Girl by Hope Jahren.

Goodreads now has an option to port reviews over to blogs, so because I need to get back in the habit of blogging, you might see some of the science ones here!

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'd heard some buzz about this, and saw it on the 14 day limit shelf at my local library but didn't get around to it until the day before it was due. I wish I had started earlier though, because much of Hope Jahren's writing is clear, moving, and ever so quotable. Part memoir, part paleobiology facts (from a biochemical perspective), part reflections on what it is to be a female scientist in today's world, this book is easily my favorite so far this year.

Jahren is also unapologetic when describing having mental health issues while trying to be a functional scientist, let alone person, which is something I can really identify with currently. Less identifiable is finishing a PhD in four years then going straight from that to a professor position at age 26...! But I think that speaks more to how academia's landscape has changed in the last twenty years rather than any kind of science precociousness.


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