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mollysticks's review
5.0
Excellent read about the struggles of academia and also the plants that could save our lives. My one tiny critique is that at the beginning she kinda lumps fungi in with plants, and they are no the same at all. She doesn't out and out say that, but she doesn't make enough of a distinction for me. But again, that is small and others probs won't care.
ms_reads_a_lot's review
4.0
Wonderful memoir! I hope the author does continue to explore to find plants that can be used medicinally. Well done.
I received this book for free from the author/publisher from a Goodreads Giveaway. Thank you for the opportunity.
I received this book for free from the author/publisher from a Goodreads Giveaway. Thank you for the opportunity.
miguelf's review against another edition
4.0
Generally not a huge fan of works where the author makes their scientific topic more autobiographical than subject oriented, but this one did a pretty decent job of balancing the author's personal life (travels and marriage and family) with that of her research pretty well. Though it would have been nice if it had built up to a eureka moment of discovery, it just shows that science is often more of a journey of accumulated knowledge rather than flash-bang breakthroughs. Lots of interesting tid bits of knowledge here and would not have guessed that migrant groups in southern Italy would have been such a rich source of this type of plant wisdom to draw upon.
_ilizarbe's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.5
ava23's review
3.0
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book via giveaway on Goodreads.
2.5 stars
When I read a synopsis of this book, I thought the book would go in depth about using plants as medicine and the current process of discovering new medicines from nature. What I got was something very different.
This book was mainly a memoir of the author. In my opinion, the synopsis poorly illustrates the main focus of the novel. I was eager to learn about what the author does in her day-to-day job in the lab, in the field, completing research, or teaching and what she has to show for all of her dedication to this field. While Dr. Quave talked a little about this, I feel that she barely scratched the surface.
I left the book knowing too much about Quave and curious to learn more about the correlation of plants and medicine.
The reader is told of how Quave chose her career, struggles of losing part of her leg at a young age, issues of being a female scientist, etc. This would be okay to read about if it was mixed in with a healthy dose of ethnobotany research.
At times, it felt that I was just reading complaint after complaint from the author. I understand that she has had her fair share of struggles, but sections of this book just came across as whiny and unprofessional. She's upset that she doesn't have a tenure-track job. She's upset that she can't get enough funding for the lab. She's upset that a colleague thought she looked too young to be a professor (which most women would take as a compliment).
Quave came across as pretentious when talking about how many hours she makes her students work in the lab. I understand that if a student is planning to go to graduate school and advance in this field, he/she must be prepared to commit a lot of time to research. However, I know a lot of people who have to work full-time jobs in order to support themselves through college. How would those individuals have time to commit to 20+ hours in a lab during school semesters and then commit even more time during the summers? A lot of students work more than one job during the summer to save up for expenses during the school year. It just seemed to me that Quave thinks too much of herself and implied that getting the chance to work in her lab was a privilege that students have to dedicate too much to.
I was not expecting to hear so little about medicines made of plants. She does talk about collecting plants in Italy for her research in grad school. She mentions using plants to find solutions to COVID-19 and staph. There were no conclusions. I felt that I was left waiting to hear more about successes of her research, and she did not deliver.
I'm not a fan of reading memoirs of people I don't know, so most of this wasn't very entertaining to me. I was able to complete the book, which says that it wasn't completely horrible for a reader who doesn't know who Quave was before this book. I would recommend completely revamping the synopsis of this book.
2.5 stars
When I read a synopsis of this book, I thought the book would go in depth about using plants as medicine and the current process of discovering new medicines from nature. What I got was something very different.
This book was mainly a memoir of the author. In my opinion, the synopsis poorly illustrates the main focus of the novel. I was eager to learn about what the author does in her day-to-day job in the lab, in the field, completing research, or teaching and what she has to show for all of her dedication to this field. While Dr. Quave talked a little about this, I feel that she barely scratched the surface.
I left the book knowing too much about Quave and curious to learn more about the correlation of plants and medicine.
The reader is told of how Quave chose her career, struggles of losing part of her leg at a young age, issues of being a female scientist, etc. This would be okay to read about if it was mixed in with a healthy dose of ethnobotany research.
At times, it felt that I was just reading complaint after complaint from the author. I understand that she has had her fair share of struggles, but sections of this book just came across as whiny and unprofessional. She's upset that she doesn't have a tenure-track job. She's upset that she can't get enough funding for the lab. She's upset that a colleague thought she looked too young to be a professor (which most women would take as a compliment).
Quave came across as pretentious when talking about how many hours she makes her students work in the lab. I understand that if a student is planning to go to graduate school and advance in this field, he/she must be prepared to commit a lot of time to research. However, I know a lot of people who have to work full-time jobs in order to support themselves through college. How would those individuals have time to commit to 20+ hours in a lab during school semesters and then commit even more time during the summers? A lot of students work more than one job during the summer to save up for expenses during the school year. It just seemed to me that Quave thinks too much of herself and implied that getting the chance to work in her lab was a privilege that students have to dedicate too much to.
I was not expecting to hear so little about medicines made of plants. She does talk about collecting plants in Italy for her research in grad school. She mentions using plants to find solutions to COVID-19 and staph. There were no conclusions. I felt that I was left waiting to hear more about successes of her research, and she did not deliver.
I'm not a fan of reading memoirs of people I don't know, so most of this wasn't very entertaining to me. I was able to complete the book, which says that it wasn't completely horrible for a reader who doesn't know who Quave was before this book. I would recommend completely revamping the synopsis of this book.
neilsb's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
plantgal_jill's review
5.0
I really didn't think I would be researching plant chemistry and ethnobotany graduate programs, but this book made me do just that