How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan

How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics by Michael Pollan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Really interesting book. Though it's central theme is psychedelics, it's topic is really consciousness, the experience of being, the fear of death, willpower, and mental illness. The book was well-written as Pollan never disappoints. I definitely found new information and the book definitely challenged some of my assumptions about the world.

View all my reviews

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

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

When I started reading this book I didn’t think I’d end up liking it as much as I do. It’s pretty unexpected. I enjoyed all the information about plants and plant research, and the struggle of being a research scientist, but more than that, this book is a friend-love story.

View all my reviews

Chemistry by Weike Wang

Chemistry by Weike Wang
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have an insane crush on this book. I flew through it while stopping only to text people to go read this book now. The science is beautiful. The relationships are real, and touching, and so sad. It's also hilarious. Also, clearly the author is brilliant. I am seriously considering just reading this book again immediately.

Note: I know this sounds like one of those crazy reviews that a friend of an author writes but I never even heard of Weike Wang before I picked up the book and read it.

View all my reviews

Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It by Gary Taubes

Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It by Gary Taubes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The substance of what this says is not surprising; it largely agrees with the Atkins or Paleo diet. However, the argument and scientific citations are highly persuasive, and the book is very readable.

I'd recommend reading this book along with The Every-Other-Day Diet: The Diet That Lets You Eat All You Want (Half the Time) and Keep the Weight Off by Krista Varady and The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor by Mark Schatzker.

View all my reviews

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. It's a very entertaining history of scientific discoveries in physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology, biology, oceanography, anthropology, and evolution. Bryson attempts to familiarize the reader with the actual science as well, and not just the history. Most of the new things I learned were in the weather section- or if I'd learned them before I'd long ago forgotten them. I borrowed this from the library but I enjoyed it enough that I just bought my own copy.

View all my reviews

The Relativity of Wrong by Isaac Asimov

The Relativity of Wrong by Isaac Asimov
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a collection of science essays by Asimov, so of course, it's pretty cool. He tries to make the concepts understandable to laymen but honestly I struggled with some of the essays. The book is about half chemistry and half physics, and I found most of the physics more interesting. There are numerous chapters on planets and stars and those were super interesting. Some of the essays about chemistry and nuclear reactivity were a challenge, but each essay built into the next so that at the end the reader had some of the tools to understand our place in the universe.

View all my reviews

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm of a very mixed mind about this book. I'll break it down by what I liked and what I didn't like.

What I liked:

Weisman covers the past, present and future of the planet- if in the future humans are extinct.

He gives a lot of background about how humans have damaged the planet and caused the extinction of species from our very earliest history.

Weisman does a pretty good job of highlighting how complicated and awful the things that we're doing to the planet are. These things are harming animals (and presumably us) and might ultimately lead to the extinction or aggressive evolution of many species.

In the future, our extinction, whether or not caused by this damage (probably not- our extinction is unlikely because we're basically cockroaches of survival) will not fully heal the planet. In fact, some of what we do is monitor our own damage by fighting invasive species or keeping the nuclear facilities/gas refineries/other scary factories from melting down.

He also discusses the benefits of population control.

Terrifying.

What I didn't like:

This book is super disorganized and boring. The three parts and chapter headings claim a certain organization that doesn't hold up as you read. The effect is that you feel like you're just reading a bunch of examples of awful things we've done, and how this might play out in a humanless future. I think this is because the idea for the book/title was a gimmick for sales.

His discussion of population control is very irreverent and doesn't seem very professional.

Here's an important thing he didn't discuss. What if we don't all disappear (unlikely) and in a more plausible situation a huge number of us die of a modern epidemic. How do the survivors take care of and protect all the nuclear facilities/gas refineries/other scary factories from melting down? How do we avoid some terrifying doomsday political takeover? How do we simply deal with all the bodies and trash that's left behind?

View all my reviews