Review: The Science Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

I said that I would be reading more of DK Publishing’s Big Ideas Simply Explained series and I have. The Science Book took a bit longer for me to get through than either The Literature Book or The Art Book did because of my unfamiliarity with much of the subject matter. My scientific interest lies mostly in the natural sciences – Biology, Zoology, and Geology – but I found the book to lean heavily on physics and related subjects. I was hoping that this accessible series would shed some light on those areas for me but I got lost in the statistics and descriptions of experiments especially after Einstein and his contemporaries took the quantum leap in the 20th century leaving behind Newton and his laws of motion.

What I found truly fascinating was the evolution of science and how the discoveries were made and applied. The other two books in the series that I’ve read showed how history shaped the worlds of art and literature. However, the relationship between history and science seems to be the other way around with science having a major impact on history. What was interesting was how the human approach to science has changed going from curiosity to application (particularly in the 20th century) to the more egotistical approach we see today where work is being done just because it can. This frightening last approach brings to mind one of my favorite prescient quotes from Jurassic Park (the movie, of course) where the wise and witty Dr. Malcolm says “…Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Just wow.

There are still several books from this series on my TBR list including The History Book, The Mythology Book, The Movie Book, The Classical Music Book, and The Biology Book so stay tuned for those.

Review: Inferno (Robert Langdon #4)

Inferno by Dan Brown

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Would you kill half the population today in order to save our species from extinction?

With that central question, this was a difficult book to read amid a pandemic that has already taken at least 4.5 million lives but in the end, I felt like this is the Robert Langdon book that should have caused a global sensation. Langdon wakes in a hospital room in Florence, Italy with no recollection of traveling there. Not knowing who to trust and being pursued by an unknown organization, Langdon goes on the run with Dr. Sienna Brooks. Together they search for answers to Langdon’s many questions following a trail of clues that ends in a race against the clock to find a potential plague set to be released the next day.
If you’ve read my reviews for Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, and The Lost Symbol you might be asking why does she keep reading this series? Despite those past disappointments with this series, I had higher hopes for this one simply because it is set in Florence. Well, Italy, anyway. Well, Europe. Unlike in the previous books, which each took place mainly in a single iconic city, Langdon and his pursuers travel from Florence, where he finds the first clue, to Venice and eventually to Istanbul. I would have preferred to stay in Florence and learn more about the places I’ve actually visited – something I enjoyed about Angels & Demons but that is just a personal preference. I found the usual shortcomings in this book that I’ve found in the previous three books of the series. For one, it is overly long. Even at just 462 pages, it could’ve been cut down quite a bit more, especially the last 50 pages. Langdon was not as dense this time around even with the amnesia but there was too much running and trying to figure out what to do next compared to finding clues in art and literature.
Inferno is more than just a fast-paced (not really) adventure/thriller. It is thought-provoking in a way that none of the previous books have really been. Even if times were different, this should be a conversation starter. The world is over-populated. It is a fact, not an opinion. The question here is what should we as humans do about it and what would be going too far. The ‘antagonist’, Bertrand Zobrist, though dead during the action of the novel is far superior to his predecessor in The Lost Symbol. His motivations, while tinged with egoism shown by his flair for the dramatic, are at least partially altruistic while the ‘good guys’ fall into as much of a gray area as he does with their unwillingness to face reality or at least to address it. I will be thinking about this one for a while. And I think Dan Brown himself had trouble with it leading to an unsatisfying climax. It seemed as if he had two options on how to end the story – one would’ve felt like a cop-out and the other would’ve been a step too far (especially for the sake of the series!) so he chose option three which was essentially no resolution at all as far as the story goes. It might leave the reader thinking but also wondering what happens after the story ends.

I don’t have any reading recommendations to go along with Inferno. I started reading Dante’s Divine Comedy which is so central to the plot of this book and I’m currently reading The Science Book: Big Ideas, Simply Explained, which turned out to be a good companion on the subject of genetics but I’ll be following this with something light and joyful I assure you.

View all my reviews

Review: Half Life

Half Life by Jillian Cantor
My rating: 4.25 of 5 stars


A heartfelt thank you to Goodreads for the chance to read an ARC of Half Life by Jillian Cantor. What better way to celebrate Women’s History Month (albeit a little late) than by reading this extraordinary novel ab out Marie Curie? Curie is someone we revere for what she accomplished and mourn for the suffering she endured because of her research, but beyond radium and Nobel prizes, I admit that I didn’t know much about her. This thought-provoking and often heartbreaking novel not only examines the professional and personal life of the famous female physicist but asks what would have been if young Marya Sklodowska (Curie’s birth name) had chosen her beloved Poland and the love of a man over Paris and the educational freedom that was illegal for women in her homeland.
Jillian Cantor’s choice to look at Curie’s life through both lenses allows the reader to see not only the gender inequalities of the time (many of which still exist today!) but also the results of the gap between the wealthy and the poor. Particularly interesting to ponder was not only the repercussions Marie/Marya’s choices had on her life and the lives of those she loved, but how the world itself would have differed if the discoverer of radium and the inventor of the Petites Curie (mobile x-ray units first used on the fronts of WWI) had chosen a different path.
Sometimes the mirroring accounts of Marie and Marya’s lives are unbearably painful to read as the women endure loss upon loss and frustrating as the reader watches them make far-reaching and questionable choices. There is however a lot of love to be found in Half Life – romantic love, family love, friendship, parental love, and the love of science. And it is filled with uplifting messages about the power of the mind, never giving up on one’s dreams, sisterhood, and, of course, some serious girl power.

If you enjoy Half Life and want to read more about real women who pushed the boundaries of their time and advanced the cause of women, I recommend, of course, the delightful Kopp Sisters series by Amy Stewart and also Daisy Goodwin’s Victoria about the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign.

View all my reviews