Adventures in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird

Posted on March 25, 2013 by pagesofjulia

adventuresI have a friend named Fil who won’t stop bringing me books. I’ve told him how badly my reading is backlogged, but still we can’t have dinner or a drink without bringing me a book, or several. There are worse problems to have. He certainly does a fine job of selecting them, there’s no question about that; I just worry about finding time for them all. This one, however, fit perfectly into a hole in my reading at the time it arrived: I was a little behind and needed a quick read to review for you all here when he brought me this small, slim paperback of 119 pages. Perhaps it’s wrong to choose one’s reading based on length! but sometimes it does go that way. So, enter Isabella Bird.

From a brief bio in the opening pages, I learned that she was born in 1831 in England, and was sickly and in poor health for the first 40 years of her life, until she traveled to Hawaii and climbed a volcano. From there, she realized that outdoor activity was much more her style than were British sickrooms, and she embarked on a different lifestyle. Adventures in the Rocky Mountains is a collection of letters (and excerpts from letters) she sent to a sister back home while tramping around the Rockies, then not yet a part of the United States but a frontier dominated by hard drinking, hard living, and men.

Bird’s writing is remarkable for its lovely, evocative descriptions of natural scenery, as well as its equally evocative, but less praising, descriptions of frontier life. She retains some disdain for the uncivilized dress and manners of some of her neighbors, but before we call her prudish we will note that she was “bagging 14ers” in a time and place when women were scarce, and were hardworking frontier wives rather than adventurers. In other words, despite preferring a well-dressed conversationalist as companion to a ragged and “coarse” one, she was a tough cookie. A quotation from one of her letters graces the front cover: “There’s nothing Western folk admire so much as pluck in a woman…”

Aside from the descriptions of natural beauty and frontier life, I found a third reason to recommend this book: the character of Mr Nugent or ‘Jim’ (never referred to without the ‘single quotation marks’!), and his dog ‘Ring’ (also always so designated). ‘Mountain Jim’ is a well-known ruffian and desperado with no end of violence and criminality in his past – he confides in Bird at one point such atrocities that she can’t bring herself to relate them. But he is also a perfect gentleman, apparently, in the right mood. He is a “countryman” of Bird’s, a wonderful conversationalist, and quite chivalrous as well as respectful of her abilities to be one of the guys. He is described as charmingly as are the Rocky Mountains. For that matter, the less prominent Evans (another very likeable but also alcoholic and problematic frontiersman) gets a similarly colorful character sketch; and the UNlikeable Lyman as well; so really I should add characterization of people generally to Bird’s list of literary talents.

I am going to stop telling you and show you, through a few choice passages, below.

on a sunset:

The sun was setting fast, and against his golden light green promontories, wooded with stately pines, stood out one beyond another in a medium of dark rich blue, while grey bleached summits, peaked, turreted, and snow-slashed, were piled above them, gleaming with amber light. Darker grew the blue gloom, the dew fell heavily, aromatic odours floated on the air, and still the lofty peaks glowed with living light, till in one second it died off from them, leaving them with the ashy paleness of a dead face. It was dark and cold under the mountain shadows, the frosty chill of the high altitude wrapped me round, the solitude was overwhelming, and I reluctantly turned my horse’s head towards Truckee, often looking back to the ashy summits in their unearthly fascination.

on ‘Jim’:

Heavily loaded as all our horses were, ‘Jim’ started over the half-mile of level grass at a hand-gallop, and then throwing his mare on her haunches, pulled up alongside of me, and with a grace of manner which soon made me forget his appearance, entered into a conversation which lasted for more than three hours, in spite of the manifold checks of fording streams, single file, abrupt ascents and descents, and other incidents of mountain travel.

on a sunrise, and the lightening of the world:

There were dark pines against a lemon sky, grey peaks reddening and etherealising, gorges of deep and infinite blue, floods of golden glory pouring through canyons of enormous depth, an atmosphere of absolute purity, an occasional foreground of cottonwood and aspen flaunting in red and gold to intensify the blue gloom of the pines, the trickle and murmur of streams fringed with icicles, the strange sough of gusts moving among the pine tops – sights and sounds not of the lower earth, but of the solitary, beast-haunted, frozen upper altitudes.

on a high mountain lake:

I thought how their clear cold waters, growing turbid in the affluent flats, would heat under the tropic sun, and eventually form part of that great ocean river which renders our far-off islands habitable by impinging on their shores.

on society, even where people are scarce:

…in truth, this blue hollow, lying solitary at the foot of Long’s Peak, is a miniature world of great interest, in which love, jealousy, hatred, envy, pride, unselfishness, greed, selfishness, and self-sacrifice can be studied hourly, and there is always the unpleasantly exciting risk of an open quarrel with the neighbouring desperado, whose “I’ll shoot you!” has more than once been heard in the cabin.

Isabella Bird’s story of travel through Colorado Territory in the 1870’s, told in letters to her sister, spans almost precisely three months in time; but it is a lifetime of beautiful, incisive, gorgeously told observations, and we are lucky to have them today.

Rating: 7 breaths of rarefied air.

As usual, thanks Fil!

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The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan

Posted on March 8, 2013 by pagesofjulia

An evocative view of the Manhattan Project through the eyes of the women who worked and lived in the secret city of Oak Ridge, Tenn.

atomic

Oak Ridge, Tennessee was born in the fall of 1942, but would remain unknown until August 6, 1945, when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Oak Ridge, or “Site X,” housed factories for the enrichment of uranium. The workers at those factories at their peak numbered some 75,000, living in a secret city and working on they knew not what.

Diverse young women traveled from around the country fill the jobs needed to help win a war. Denise Kiernan’s The Girls of Atomic City is a unique glimpse into their strange experience of working on a project whose nature was kept from them. Most expected to leave Oak Ridge as soon as the war was won, but many stayed on for decades. Due to the fine supply of handsome young men in uniform, a number of Kiernan’s subjects would make families and homes there.

Based on interviews with their now-elderly subjects, the stories of Jane the statistician, Virginia the chemist, Kattie the janitor and many more are vivid and human in Kiernan’s telling. The focus of the book briefly zooms out for the dropping of the bomb, visiting Truman’s White House during the decision-making process, but then plunges back into Oak Ridge, where women who tested for leaks in pipes and kept tanks clean were rocked by the revelation of what they’d contributed to. Kiernan melds hard science and history with the moving stories of women caught in events bigger than themselves, whose experiences and whose work changed the world irrevocably. The result is a compelling and unusual new perspective on the Manhattan Project and World War II.

This review originally ran in the March 5, 2013 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

While I am always constrained by the limited space available for reviews in Shelf Awareness (you know I can get wordy!), this book was especially difficult to boil down, touching as it does on women’s issues, history, science, working conditions, civil rights, war and ethics… It could be compared to Soundings or The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in its intersection of hard science with the creative, feeling portrayal of women’s lives. Additionally, Kiernan’s use of primary sources – interviews with survivors of the era – made me pause to think of my grandfather, a WWII veteran who’s over 90 years old now, whose memories will someday be lost to us. This is a fine book on an interesting subject and I just had to say a few more words to that effect.

Rating: 8 acronyms.

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Speaking Truth to Power by Anita Hill, second half review

Posted on February 22, 2013 by pagesofjulia

anitahillI am pleased to report that I had a different experience with the second half of this book, in all the right ways. You will recall (or, I will direct you to) my first half review of same: I thought it was a wonderful book but such a painful story that I had to put it down for a little while. Well, in a nutshell, the second half is: still painful, tragic, and true, but also uplifting, far more hopeful than I expected; and equally well-written and impressive. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Anita Hill continues to be thoughtful and thorough – I definitely see the mind of a lawyer at work, as she discusses the what-if’s, the precedents, the niceties of the law. She is quite cerebral in her theories on society and stereotyping; far from being a simple revelation of her experiences, this is a treatise on gender & race. She examines the relationship between issues of gender and of race, and the indivisibility of feminism from the fight for racial equality, and the relationships between race and sexism. Hill is clearly an extremely intelligent women! She is also warm and loving about her family, and always seeking privacy, not eager to be a symbol or a leader. In other words, she comes firmly across as a “just regular” person, and someone I’d like to know.

Her story is also entirely convincing. It is beautifully put together and well-written: not lyrical, but methodical, structured, can I say thorough and lawyerly again? And she preaches more hope than I felt in my first-half review. However, the battle is still not over, and I still feel upset & angry that Hill’s experience reads so familiarly more than 20 years later. On that note, I’ll refer you to Jessica Valenti’s lovely speech to my local Planned Parenthood group, here. Well said, Jessica. You give me hope, too.

Rating: 9 strong women, please.

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Speaking Truth to Power by Anita Hill, first half review

Posted on February 12, 2013 by pagesofjulia

anitahillFor reasons I’ll discuss below, I have had to put this book down at about the halfway point, through no fault of Anita Hill’s absorbing story or lovely, clear, honest writing. This first review will be more about my emotional reactions and reason for pausing in my reading; soon I will publish my second-half-review which will be more about the book itself. Briefly, for the record, it’s a great book.

Anita Hill was a young black female lawyer from the south in the early 1980’s, when she found herself employed as an assistant to Clarence Thomas, then an aspiring government official looking for an appointment under President Bush (Senior). She was largely successful in leaving behind her unpleasant experiences in his employment as she moved onto other lines of work, teaching law back in her home state of Oklahoma, where she could be closer to her family and further from the nasty environment Thomas created for her in Washington, D.C. When Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1991, however, she reconsidered her silence on his sexual harassment, and ended up traveling to D.C. to testify at his confirmation hearing as to his behavior nearly 10 years earlier. She was excoriated for her decision and her actions; every piece of her life, her morals, her “virtue” were picked apart. This book is her attempt to set the record straight.

Most Americans know the name Anita Hill, in my (limited) survey. When I mentioned this book, a coworker spoke of having horrible, vivid dreams, set in the Senate, as the hearings went on; she sympathized with Hill’s unfortunate position. I am young enough that I don’t remember these events (I was 9 in 1991 and not paying much attention to sexual harassment and Supreme Court nominations, for which I suppose I’m glad); it’s history to me. However, the name Anita Hill did mean something to me, and it means much more now.

I am reading this book because my father raved about it and felt it was important reading for me, which I easily believed. And it’s a lovely book. But it so happens that I picked it up during a time when my personal life was in upheaval in a few ways. I don’t want to share too many personal details here (I’d rather get personal when the news is good!) but it involved my loved ones being spread around the globe dealing with various trauma, and I was distracted, worried, and depressed. And unfortunately, one of the central truths of Hill’s book, based on events in 1982 and 1991 and published in 1997, holds true today: that most women will be sexually harassed; that most will choose not to accuse their harassers; and that few harassers are sanctioned. Again, without revealing too much of my personal story, I know this firsthand. And reading about Hill’s experiences, both being harassed by Thomas, and then being harassed by her national media and political representatives, was entirely too painful to me. I felt physically sick to my stomach reading it, and I had to put it down.

I still agree with my father’s statements that this is a very good book, and that it’s an important book for me to read. I look forward to picking it back up – as I write this, personal-life issues are mostly resolved, and (thank goodness!) Husband is home here with me. Hill writes like a lawyer: she makes statements of what she knows to be true, and is careful to note where she speculates, while providing evidence to support her speculations. She speaks strongly where she is sure that she is right; and (as one would expect) she has a very sure and confident grasp of legal issues in their minutia, and is capable of making those legal details understandable to her reader. I also really enjoy her gentle, loving treatment of her family history; that background adds to her story immeasurably.

I wanted to give you this first-half-review of this book where I’ve paused in my reading of it, to note the painful emotional impact it’s had on me. Make no mistake, it’s a fine book and I will finish it and tell you more very soon. But for now, know that this story is rather excruciating.

Rating: 8 brave public statements.

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Carrie by Stephen King

Posted on February 5, 2013 by pagesofjulia

carrieHere’s a book-turned-movie we’ve probably all heard at least something about! And apparently it’s being made into a 2013 movie, although maybe for the film version I should start with the 1976 version with Sissy Spacek? I had the vaguest notion that I’d seen it already; but as I read the book I realized that this was definitely new material to me.

I am really glad that I picked up this collector’s edition at my local used bookstore. The introduction by Tabitha King, the author’s wife, was a great addition. She puts in perspective the creation and success of this, King’s first published novel, written while they were scraping out a living as parents of two small children, each working full-time on opposite schedules and hardly seeing each other. When this novel did well, then, it made the change of their lives, and started Stephen King on the path to become the huge name he is today. She also reveals that her own terrible PMS was (she is sure) the inspiration for Carrie’s menstrual difficulties, and muses on the strangeness of a novel centering around menstruation and the trauma of a girl’s first period, written by a man, in the 1970’s no less. I enjoyed this introduction.

And the book itself! Carrie is really something. I can appreciate (even with my very limited experience with Stephen King) how this book fits into his oeuvre: it’s a fine example of his ability to create atmosphere, and let us into the heads of his characters. Carrie herself is both tragic and terrifying. I can’t help but sympathize: she’s been abused by her mother from birth, and her completely bizarre upbringing has crippled any chance she might have had of fitting into her world. Now, as evidenced by Sue Snell’s inner conflict about her popularity, conformity is not necessarily a good thing; but Carrie is so far outside of her society that she’s handicapped by it. And to put it simply, kids can be so cruel, can’t they? But when Carrie begins to steer her own fate, I likewise can’t help but shiver.

Carrie comes into her telekinetic own after a trauma, when she gets her first period in very public fashion and is ridiculed (violently) for it; a double trauma, then, if you will (compounded by her total ignorance, at age sixteen, of menstruation). Whether her special powers are born of puberty or trauma is unclear; probably it’s both.

The novel is fairly short: at about 150 pages, it took me just two days to read (in the course of my normal, busy life). The structure is unique, partly epistolary, partly scrapbook-style: sometimes we look out from inside Carrie’s head, sometimes from the heads of other characters; interspersed are clippings from magazines, newspapers, news releases, and books. The effect is a little jarring and disjointed, in just the right way (and, you can bet, as King intended it). The final, climactic events are foreshadowed and referred to from the very beginning; this, and the building of the action, and the careful release of new pieces of information, combine to create the atmosphere and tension King is known for. And, as important as anything else about this book, he gets his adolescent female characters just right: they really are teenaged young women, and that’s no small accomplishment for any author, perhaps let alone a man.

I found Carrie terrific. There’s no question in my mind that this is a fine novel, quick to read but exquisitely crafted, definitely cinematic (want to see the movie now!) and classic. Perhaps it’s all hindsight, but I can see Stephen King’s rising star in this early work. And I want more than ever to read more of his!

Rating: 8 mind flexes.

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On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson by William Souder

Posted on October 4, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Rachel Carson was born in 1927 and by the 1950’s was the author of several bestsellers, a national hero for her lyrical, literary, scientifically accurate books about the ocean. She also published myriad magazine and newspaper articles, both as a government employee and as a freelance writer. In 1962 she published a somewhat different kind of book. Silent Spring retained the literary style for which she was well loved, but its subject – while still the natural world – took a different tone. Carson wrote about the then-widely-used pesticide DDT and its sinister effects, not just on the insects it claimed to target, but on wildlife generally including many fish and birds (hence the title) and even human life.

The immediate reaction to her book was mixed. Critical reviews were more positive than negative, but the government (to varying degrees) and the pesticide industry (predictably and totally) offered less praise. Carson came under attack as a hysterical nature faddist and Communist sympathizer, even as Silent Spring topped bestseller lists and initiated federal investigations. Today, the ecology and environmental movements credit Rachel Carson and Silent Spring with helping to establish what is now a central issue of our times.

William Souder’s new biography of Carson, published on Silent Spring‘s 50th anniversary, begins with the conjecture that Carson’s name is now “unknown to almost anyone under the age of fifty.” There are a few of us, of course (although I confess my personal poll may not constitute a random sampling), but his point is well taken: in 2012, Carson is less on our minds. But even if DDT is no longer sprayed on kids playing at the beach and the rivers we catch our fish out of, environmental issues are among the most pressing of our day. (I am thinking of climate change, overpopulation, water tables, land use, urban sprawl, species extinction…)

That’s the argument for Carson as a biographer’s subject. Now, how did Souder do? As observed yesterday, his style is rather a traditional one. Souder himself does not enter into the story as a character; he doesn’t give us his own impressions (unless you delve into the Notes at the back of the book, on which more is coming in a later post). I am a fan of the newer style of “creative nonfiction” exemplified most recently at pagesofjulia by Soundings, but that doesn’t mean the straightforward sort of biography is necessarily dry, either.

Souder brings his subject to life. His plentiful research (again see those Notes) clearly and exhaustively outlines Carson’s background and personality, and enigmas. For instance, he notes the weekend in college when she went one two dates with a boy from another school, and then as far as we can tell, never dated again. He writes eloquently of her strange single-mindedness, for example in reading Henry Williamson for his nature writing (which she loved) while totally ignoring his frank Nazi sympathies.

I will mention one angle that I noted as absent: there is nothing in Souder’s book about Carson suffering for her sex in the field of science. This seemed like a natural obstacle for her to have faced as a science writer in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and I wonder at its absence, particularly in comparison to Soundings, where Tharp’s professional limitations as a woman are one of the central issues. Did Carson not feel that she was held back? Did Souder miss something? His work feels thorough. I am hesitant to think he missed such an important angle, but it makes me wonder. There are a few references by her contemporaries to her status as a “spinster,” but even these don’t feel particularly biting. And apparently her critics entirely missed the lesbian question. Carson had a very close female friend for the final 10-12 years of her life with whom she exchanged ardent letters. Whether they had a sexual relationship is not known, although Souder makes the case that it’s unlikely; but that’s irrelevant in looking for contemporary criticism of her for it. It seems like such an obvious way for her detractors to attack her. I just wonder.

Despite my questions about the role sexism might have played in Carson’s career, this biography feels well-researched, thoughtful, and finely wrought. It can also serve as a fairly good quick introduction to the history of ecology, environmentalism, and nature writing: Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Teddy Roosevelt all get put into context. In fact, context is one of its strengths (again, see yesterday’s post). I feel like I know Carson much better now, which is of course what I was looking for, but it was also an enjoyable read. I recommend On a Farther Shore, because Rachel Carson is every bit as relevant today as ever.

Rating: 7 birds’ eggs.

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biographies of parallel lives: Rachel Carson and Marie Tharp; and beyond

Posted on October 3, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Remember when I raved about Soundings, the biography of the woman who mapped the ocean floor? I was enchanted in part by the style in which author Hali Felt evoked her subject, Marie Tharp, as a personality as well as a historical figure. I was also fascinated by the unique persona of Tharp herself, and her role as a woman in science in the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s.

And now I’m very pleased to have picked up a new biography entitled On a Farther Shore, by William Souder, about Rachel Carson, for the 50th anniversary of the publication of her groundbreaking book. Silent Spring exposed the tragic truth, that the widely used pesticide DDT was killing not only bugs, but birds and myriad other wildlife, and even humans. Carson is credited with playing a major role in the birth of the environmentalist movement.

These two biographies employ very different styles. Felt is a visible character in the story she tells, of Tharp’s life through the lens of Felt’s research experience, while Souder’s work so far tracks like a traditional biography, with the author invisible. But their subjects share a few obvious similarities. Both were women on the margins of scientific communities that weren’t entirely prepared to let them in, and they were more or less contemporaries (Tharp was born 13 years later than Carson). Both challenged the gender barrier and accepted understandings of their fields. I recognized these parallels when I began reading On a Farther Shore.

But I wasn’t prepared for the confluences and coincidences that came fast and thick in the opening chapters. (I’m only about 50 pages in, so this is far from a final review of Souder’s work. Although I do like it so far!) For one thing, forgive my ignorance: I knew about Silent Spring (I read it when I was a kid), but had not known that prior to that most famous of her books, Carson had been a well-loved and bestselling author of literary writings about the ocean. So, number one: both women were fascinated with the sea. And then came a comparison of Silent Spring, with its unprecedented exposure of an industry that would later be legislated and regulated largely because of the book itself, to one of my all time favorites: Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Next I learned that Carson grew up scarcely an hour’s drive away from where Edward Abbey would grow up 20 years her junior. That is a hell of a coincidence.

As I joyfully made these connections (which I know will continue, because our world is all interconnected), I mused. I remember feeling, in middle school, even in high school, that certain subjects were “work,” were chores, weren’t fun, didn’t feel like they were teaching me things I’d need to know or care to know later in life. I liked English but had less use for history. And I also remember when this changed for me, and when learning for its own sake became something I felt passionately about. The light-bulb moment was related to the interconnectedness of all things. That history, biology, political science, and literature were all the same story; that nothing happens in a vacuum, just as Gertrude Stein, mentor and friend to my main man Ernest Hemingway, was a student at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts just a few decades ahead of Rachel Carson. I don’t know about the rest of you, but learning that the world is interdisciplinary and that contemporary figureheads from a variety of textbooks lived in the same world – that Einstein’s life work and philosophy was deeply influenced by his observation of German militarism culminating in Hitler’s rise to power, that the reclusive Harper Lee and the effervescent Truman Capote were buddies, that Mark Twain and the much-younger Helen Keller were close – has been the turning point for me in appreciating so much more reading and learning than I did even 10 years ago.

Recognizing these connections has led to myriad new directions in my own reading. Some of them have been in fiction (I’ve read Gertrude Stein because of her relationship with Hemingway), and many have been nonfiction. In general, I would definitely credit this larger observation with my ever-growing appreciation of nonfiction. I’m sometimes saddened to hear from people who don’t like nonfiction, because they’re missing so much. I suspect they just haven’t met the right style of nonfiction yet; but maybe, too, they haven’t had that light-bulb moment that did it for me.

Does anybody else share this feeling that everything being connected make the world a fascinating place? Has it influenced your reading habits?

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Almost Somewhere by Suzanne Roberts

Posted on September 7, 2012 by pagesofjulia

A contemplation of women relating to one another in nature, nestled within the tale of a backpacking trip.


In 1993, Suzanne Roberts was a college graduate lacking a firm plan for the future when she agreed to hike the John Muir Trail with two other women. Almost Somewhere is a travelogue of that month-long hike, but it’s also a woman’s foray into the male-dominated worlds of hiking and nature writing and a contemplation of the cattiness and competition that limits women’s attempts to connect with one another. Roberts is not gentle to herself or her companions as she describes their flaws and failures to support one another; she is frank about the bounds of their friendship. But she has a triumphant story to tell, because despite swollen joints, bugs, infighting and the doubts of fellow trail users, these three women hiked the John Muir Trail in its entirety and lived to tell about it.

Roberts writes plainly about gender issues, as the women (“we had gone through puberty a long time ago and, really, we were no longer girls”) consult a guidebook written by a man filled with language of “conquering” or “assaulting” mountains. She seeks not only meaningful relationships with other women, but also a feminine understanding of nature, having read nature writing only by men (Muir, Thoreau, Edward Abbey) up until this point. Her understanding of her experience is clear-headed and self-aware in retrospect, and she is considerate of her companions even in her criticism. Almost Somewhere is a contribution to the growing body of women’s nature writing, and a worthwhile, entertaining and occasionally funny story of the California wilderness.

This review originally ran as a *starred review* in the Sept. 4, 2012 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 6 small but important steps.

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Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor by Hali Felt

Posted on August 22, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I’m so glad I picked this book up (and bought it for the library where I work). It sounded like just the sort of thing I appreciate: a biography of a little-known historical figure who made an important contribution to the world as we know it but was herself forgotten. In this case, the “remarkable woman” of the subtitle is Marie Tharp, whose meticulous study and cartography of the ocean floor established the concept of plate tectonics that science now recognizes as fact, but was at best a blasphemous and ridiculous notion before Tharp came along. Her achievements, however, were minimized by a scientific culture in which women did not belong. This biography is additionally appealing to me for its mood: author Hali Felt takes a whimsical, dreamy, almost fanciful tone at times. She describes her own attraction to Tharp’s story (born in part of Felt’s mother’s, and her own, fascination with maps) and the relationship she felt to her subject. She dreams of Tharp coming to her to explain the mysterious and unspoken parts of her life. This book is nonfiction, but it’s honest, personally related, and warm.

There is also an enigmatic love story of sorts hiding within Soundings: Tharp’s career and life were both tied to a man named Bruce Heezen. Heezen was her coworker, then her technical superior; but they shared a partnership in work, in science, in discovery, and apparently in all things. It is known that they were a couple, although they never married and the details of this side of their relationship are very few.

Felt follows Tharp from her childhood with a science-minded father she adored, through her education in English, music, geology, and mathematics, and to her first job in the oil & gas industry (oh, how familiar to this Texas girl). But she was held back: this was the 1940’s, and women in science were mostly expected to make copies, compute numbers, and brew coffee. Eventually Tharp found her way to New York, to Columbia University and the Lamont Geological Observatory. This is where she would meet and work with Heezen and quietly make history.

The science in this book is very friendly and accessible to a general reading public; the story that Felt set out to tell is more that of a woman’s life and accomplishments despite the limitations of her society, than that of tectonic plates per se. For that matter, Felt shows that it was Marie’s combined backgrounds in art as well as science that made her perfectly suited to play the role she did in history. Her meticulous re-checkings of data and attention to detail were indispensable – but so was her interest in visually representing the data available in a way that would show the general public (not just academics) what she’d discovered. So her achievement was artistic as well as scientific. Soundings does make the science side clear, but doesn’t dwell, and is never dry. Rather, Marie Tharp comes to life: she is a precocious child; an ambitious, able, frustrated student; a dedicated scientist; a life partner; an eccentric aging woman caught up in her own past, campaigning to honor and preserve the legacy of her other half.

Hali Felt was honest about the role she plays in the story she relates. She begins in her Introduction by briefly describing her own attraction to maps, and then follows a chronological format, beginning with Tharp’s childhood and following her life, and eventually her death. And then Felt returns to the story: her discovery of Marie Tharp’s existence, her interest, her decision to follow that interest, her research, her relationships with the living descendents of Tharp and Heezen’s world (the “Tharpophiles”), and in the Acknowledgements at the end, she even hints at the process by which she came to write and publish this book. I found all of these Felt-related details interesting too.

In a word, this is a lovely biography, and the style and tone of it may be my favorite part.

Rating: 9 double-checkings of data.

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Bossypants by Tina Fey (audio)

Posted on July 11, 2012 by pagesofjulia

This book has been out for a little over a year. What took me so long? Thank you, fellow bloggers who raved about this book, for finally getting it into my ears. As others have said before, get the audiobook! It does make it slightly cumbersome to go find your pdf file to see the pictures she refers to; but it’s so worth it to hear her make her jokes herself.

Tina Fey is a funny lady. This I knew, and I looked forward to the laughs, which are there in abundance. But what I hadn’t entirely expected was the more serious handling of issues like a woman’s place in male-dominated industries – which was silly of me, because Tina Fey does address issues. She tells stories about her own upbringing, her youth, her discovery of acting and comedy, her time spent at SNL, the creation of 30 Rock, her honeymoon, motherhood, and more. She is always classy in her discussion of other celebrities or folks from the industry: any criticisms are well packaged in understanding and explanation, while she mostly praises her colleagues in glowing and meaningful terms. She doesn’t just call everyone talented and charming – she gives thought-out, complex, positive evaluations. And any time she has dirt on someone, she leaves that someone entirely cloaked in anonymity (“the letters from their names are sprinkled randomly through this chapter”). I never got the impression she was being less than honest, because she still made her criticisms, but she was always respectful of the people she has worked with, and that impressed me.

Tina analyzes the challenges that face a woman in a position like hers, breaking into a field that (in her early days especially) was thought to be men’s work, and she does so fairly. For example, she writes (narrates) a funny and wise anecdote about the moment that she realized that she was experiencing, not institutional sexism, but a sheer male ignorance of menstruation and “feminine hygiene.” And she gives good advice.

She is also hilarious, and wise, about women’s fashion and body image, and the culture of Hollywood, modeling, and television. In the chapter entitled “Amazing, Gorgeous, Not Like That,” she describes a “typical” magazine photo shoot in great detail. I found the scenes regarding hair and makeup especially exotic, weird and different. I’m pretty far from a fashion photo shoot, myself.

This book was great fun and very funny, as you might expect; but as you might not have guessed right off (I didn’t), it also makes some good, serious points. There’s some well-stated feminism to be found here amid the good times. Highly recommended, and as many others have said before me, do get the audio version.

Rating: 7 pairs of Tina Fey glasses.

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