Lab Girl
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Hope Jahren
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By:
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Hope Jahren
About this listen
National Book Critics Circle Award winner, Autobiography, 2016.
An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime collaboration, in work and in life; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see and think about the natural world.
Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she's studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book might have been a revelatory treatise on plant life. Lab Girl is that, but it is also so much more. Because in it, Jahren also shares with us her inspiring life story, in prose that takes your breath away.
Lab Girl is a book about work, about love, and about the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren's remarkable stories: about the things she's discovered in her lab as well as how she got there; about her childhood - hours of unfettered play in her father's laboratory; about how she found a sanctuary in science and learned to perform lab work "with both the heart and the hands"; about a brilliant and wounded man named Bill, who became her loyal colleague and best friend; about their adventurous, sometimes rogue research trips, which take them from the Midwest all across the United States and over the Atlantic, from the ever-light skies of the North Pole to tropical Hawaii; and about her constant striving to do and be the best she could, never allowing personal or professional obstacles to cloud her dedication to her work.
Jahren's probing look at plants, her astonishing tenacity of spirit, and her insights on nature enliven every minute of this book. Lab Girl allows us to see with clear eyes the beautiful, sophisticated mechanisms within every leaf, blade of grass, and flower petal and the power within ourselves to face - with bravery and conviction - life's ultimate challenge: discovering who we are.
©2016 Hope Jahren (P)2016 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Like a well-crafted stage play, Just Passin' Thru delivers one suspenseful scene after another. But in this historic setting a store on the Appalachian Trail called Mountain Crossings the characters who show up are no fictional creations. Like any good drama, there are the good guys (and gals) and the weirdos, too. Some show up once (and that’s enough), and some appear again and again. But all are united by two things: the author’s story-capturing talent, and whatever it is that lures them to attempt (or conquer) a 2,200-mile path that climbs and plummets from Georgia to Maine.
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Well Worth it!
- By Pamela M. on 11-13-14
By: Winton Porter
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I'll Be There
- By: Holly Goldberg Sloan
- Narrated by: Laura Jennings
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
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Story
Emily Bell believes in destiny. To her, being forced to sing a solo in the church choir - despite her average voice - is fate: because it's while she's singing that she first sees Sam. At first sight they are connected. Sam Border wishes he could escape, but there's nowhere for him to run. He and his little brother, Riddle, have spent their entire lives constantly uprooted by their unstable father. As Sam and Riddle are welcomed into the Bells' lives, they witness the warmth and protection of a family for the first time.
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Needs to be a film!
- By TreasureHunter on 06-25-16
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The Silent History
- By: Eli Horowitz, Matthew Derby, Kevin Moffett
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman, LJ Ganser
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It begins as a statistical oddity: a spike in children born with acute speech delays. Physically normal in every way, these children never speak and do not respond to speech; they don't learn to read, don't learn to write. As the number of cases grows to an epidemic level, theories spread. Maybe it's related to a popular antidepressant; maybe it's environmental. Or maybe these children have special skills all their own.
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A Thought-Provoking Premise
- By Doug - Audible on 03-31-15
By: Eli Horowitz, and others
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The Opposite of Loneliness
- Essays and Stories
- By: Marina Keegan
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Marina Keegan's star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash. Even though she was just 22 when she died, Marina left behind a rich, expansive trove of prose that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation.
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Probably buy the book too.
- By Soupergirl on 09-14-15
By: Marina Keegan
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Seedfolks
- By: Paul Fleischman
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 1 hr and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Thirteen lives. One garden. Set in Cleveland, Newbery-Award-winning author Paul Fleischman's poignant book is a large lesson in connectedness and community for all. When a derelict vacant lot is gradually transformed into a community garden in inner city Cleveland, the people of this community find their differences are less apparent and their isolation dissolved. Performed by thirteen multicuturally and age-authentic voices, this audiobook is designed for listeners of all ages.
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Excellent to listen
- By Rina on 10-12-09
By: Paul Fleischman
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Blind Lake
- By: Robert Charles Wilson
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Robert Charles Wilson, says The New York Times, "writes superior science fiction thrillers." His Darwinia won Canada's Aurora Award; his most recent novel, The Chronoliths, won the prestigious John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Now he tells a gripping tale of alien contact and human love in a mysterious but hopeful universe.
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DIMINISHED EXPECTATIONS
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 06-22-15
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Lassoing the Sun
- A Year in America's National Parks
- By: Mark Woods
- Narrated by: Corey M. Snow
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Many childhood summers, Mark Woods piled into a station wagon with his parents and two sisters and headed to America's national parks. Mark's most vivid childhood memories are set against a backdrop of mountains, woods, and fireflies in places like Redwood, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon national parks. On the eve of turning 50, and a little burned out, Mark decided to reconnect with the great outdoors. He'd spend a year visiting the national parks.
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great narrator, lackluster story, wonderful themes
- By MT on 08-21-18
By: Mark Woods
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The Postmortal
- A Novel
- By: Drew Magary
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In a world where an anti-aging cure is available worldwide, immortality comes with its own unique problems. John Farrell is about to get "The Cure". Old age can never kill him now. The only problem is, everything else still can.
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Interesting concept but bleak and wearing
- By Amazon Customer on 05-15-12
By: Drew Magary
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Blood Music
- By: Greg Bear
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Vergil's innovative experiment restructuring the cells of a common virus becomes a nightmare when, in order to save his research, Vergil injects the entire culture into his bloodstream.
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THOUGHT UNIVERSE
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 08-01-15
By: Greg Bear
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A Girl's Guide to Missiles
- Growing Up in America's Secret Desert
- By: Karen Piper
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The China Lake missile range is located in a huge stretch of the Mojave Desert, about the size of the state of Delaware. It was created during the Second World War, and has always been shrouded in secrecy. But people who make missiles and other weapons are regular working people, with domestic routines and everyday dilemmas, and four of them were Karen Piper's parents, her sister, and - when she needed summer jobs - herself.
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DNF on chapter 10 when Piper is 10
- By NMwritergal on 08-15-18
By: Karen Piper
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A Gift of Time
- By: Jerry Merritt
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Micajah Fenton discovers a crater in his front yard with a broken time glider in the bottom and a naked, virtual woman on his lawn, he delays his plans to kill himself. While helping repair the marooned time traveler's glider, Cager realizes it can return him to his past to correct a mistake that had haunted him his entire life. As payment for his help, the virtual creature living in the circuitry of the marooned glider, sends Cager back in time as his 10-year-old self.
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The Gift of Time is a Gift!
- By As happy as a monkey with two bananas in his hands on 12-07-17
By: Jerry Merritt
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Walking to Listen
- 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time
- By: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Narrated by: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen". He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide. In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt.
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Transcends the typical trekking story
- By barefoot rabbit on 08-07-18
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Full Body Burden
- Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats
- By: Kristen Iversen
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter, Kristen Iversen
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Kristen Iversen grew up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated "the most contaminated site in America." Full Body Burden is the story of a childhood and adolescence in the shadow of the Cold War, in a landscape at once startlingly beautiful and--unknown to those who lived there--tainted with invisible yet deadly particles of plutonium.
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A story that no one else wanted to tell.
- By Carol on 01-28-13
By: Kristen Iversen
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Author makes too much out of too little...
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All Over But the Shoutin'
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This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. It is the story of Bragg's father, a hard-drinking man with a murderous temper and the habit of running out on the people who needed him most.
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ABRIDGED
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The Underworld
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narrator ruined it
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What listeners say about Lab Girl
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Marie Snoreck
- 04-29-16
This book is precious!
This book is so special, I hardly know how to describe it. It's a book about a life well lived. It's about finding yourself, accepting who you are and thriving. If you like science and nature and trees, you'll love the little nuggets of botany and biology, strategically placed to compliment the thread of the story. It's also a book about love, friendship, family and survival. I highly recommend it.
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34 people found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 09-26-16
A very personal look into becoming a scientist
Would you consider the audio edition of Lab Girl to be better than the print version?
No
Who was your favorite character and why?
Bill, because of his constant weirdness and his stalwart friendship
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
This book made me cry when Jahren during a painful childbirth yelled out and made her yell into a visceral complaint against the "imperfections in a world of limitless potential". Just one phrase, and the author summarized all that has gone wrong in any middle-aged reader's life, you cannot deny it.
Any additional comments?
Because of its detailed reflectiveness on how it feels to struggle against a local default way of life, how it feels to struggle as a woman in a career dominated by men, how it feels to love your work, how it feels to discover a purpose to claim as your own, how it feels to have a friend, and how it feels to explore new territory in your chosen field, this book is worthy of status as a classic. Like Moby Dick, the book includes a lot of little-known technical info, but it is about trees and plants and it is more concise and it is more superbly woven into the author's personal experiences and emotions.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Bob
- 08-08-16
Rich colorful metaphors
This was a absolutely wonderful audio book. Mrs Jahren's narration was flawless! I really enjoyed the her life stories and learning about tree biology.
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- 1234
- 07-01-16
A Deeply Moving Human Experience
The remarkable Professor Hope Jahren has shared with us her stories from growing up in her father's college laboratory in the midwest to her life as a research scientist at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa. This autobiography is much deeper and much more beautiful than a "woman in science" book.
This is a profoundly human account of people growing into what they always were and were meant to be. This is an account of many imperfect people making their way in a flawed and sometimes hostile world.
This is a story of people, of love, of discovery and of science. But mostly, this is a story of the deep connections between people that are formed over the course of a life time.
I dearly loved the way Hope has woven into this book parallel stories about the evolution and biology of plants. She alternates her life's stories with accounts of how different plants grow and struggle. She touches on the majesty and wonder of living organisms that survive for centuries or millennia.
Another theme that Hope includes is the profound emotional impact of discovery. For some people, this "need to know" is a compulsion. Professor Jahren does more than explain this, by sharing her life and discoveries with us, she helps us experience these things vicariously through her.
Hope is the reader of this audio book. This is a first hand telling of wonderful stories by the chief participant. Listening to Hope is like listening to a close friend across the kitchen table. Hope's masterful narration of her own stories is outstanding!
I have many favorite books and I seldom recommend books to other people. But I recommend this book for anyone that has an open mind and open heart and an enjoyment of science and an appreciation for how this old world is the product of endless struggling.
As with all actual life, the book is bitter-sweet. There are times for laughter and smiles as well as tears both of joy and sadness.
This is a beautiful work.
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- M. A. Jones
- 01-21-18
A wondrous wordsmith
This book is a bit like marbled rye--you're unsure what kind of book (or bread) it really is. That being said, I must declare it to be definitely worth the reading. It was both scientifically interesting and deeply emotional at the same time.
If you like the characters in "The Big Bang Theory" then you'll find this interesting too. I mean, the author is not a Leslie Winkle, but she is quite definitely a wonk That's not a bad thing. It's just different. And, in this book, she opens a window into her world of science and its place in today's world. Facts are presented in a matter-of-fact way that allows you to digest them before again delving into the emotional life involved with actually BEING a scientist. Woven throughout are marvelous images of plant life, in various stages.
The author's phrasing and word choices are wonderful. The editing of this "story" is just short of miraculous--I don't know how they managed to weave it all together, but it works. The only reason I gave it four rather than five stars was because it definitely plays to a niche audience. It's not a general interest potboiler that blows it off the charts. But it's a terrific book in its own right. And I really, really liked it.
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- Robert
- 05-05-17
Excellent and insightful book
This is a very readable, er listenable book that combines very insightful observations on what it's like to be a scientist, learnings about plant life which are fascinating, and a touching personal biography. Definitely worth a read. The fact that it's read in a very personal way by the author contributes to the enjoyment.
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- Eliza
- 04-23-17
My heart melted.
Hope Jahrens memoir brought me to tears on multiple occasions, over the beauty of the science she relates, her raw honesty in describing her experience with mental illness, her loving portrayal of a true friend and the difficulties of being a woman in a male dominated field. This book lifted me out of despair over my own career in science, inspiring me to dive head first and explore to my hearts content.
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- Karen
- 01-02-17
Disappointing
Is there anything you would change about this book?
The pace of the book is much too slow. The science is interesting but not not presented in an exciting way.
Would you be willing to try another book from Hope Jahren? Why or why not?
Probably not
What didn’t you like about Hope Jahren’s performance?
No enthusiasm. Science is incredibly exciting, but the reader seemed to be totally bored with it.
What else would you have wanted to know about Hope Jahren’s life?
Nothing
Any additional comments?
I like books on science. However, I only listened to about 25 percent of this one before I lost interest in it.
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- Christine Richardson
- 04-13-17
Today I will be planting Bill, tomorrow Hope.
The narration compassionate and real. The writers words etched my brain deeply as a strong rooted tree. The story moved me like a seed sprouting in the mystery of discoveris.
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- Jane
- 08-24-16
Fascinating, intimate and poetic
Where does Lab Girl rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
very high
What was one of the most memorable moments of Lab Girl?
The very personal times when she reflects on her life and losses.
Have you listened to any of Hope Jahren’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
There were several times when she shared something that resonated strongly with me. I was moved hen her son was born and she decided she could be a "father" even if she felt she was unable to meet her own expectations for a "mother". I knew exactly what she meant.
Any additional comments?
Hope Jahren is an amazing and brilliant scientist; this becomes clear when she shares the recognition she finally started getting. She is also a brilliant writer, and an excellent teacher. I am a bit of a science geek so I loved the information she provided about plants, in a clear and unique way. I also found her use of language inspiring and many times I chuckled and admired her selection of just the right word, Also, her metaphors and humor were delightful.
I have recommended this book to many of my dearest friends.
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