WITMonth Day 9 | 4 WITty science books

Those of you who have followed this blog for many years know that I'm a scientist as well as being an avid book lover. So it should come as no surprise that one of my very favorite WITMonth activities is reading science nonfiction by women scientists from around the world! While I eagerly await new volumes and books to hit my shelves, here are four great (if rather geographically limited...) books by women scientists in translation!

Extraordinary Insects (aka Buzz, Sting, Bite: Why We Need Insects) was a rather astonishing discovery for me as a reader. I'm not particularly fond of insects (in fact, I'm rather notoriously terrified of one type...), but Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson's excellent treatise on them (translated from Norwegian by Lucy Moffatt) completely swept me away. It's heartfelt and detailed and passionate in the very best ways, without forgetting to be informative and interesting. It's one of those books I've been gushing about since the moment I read it, and suffice to say that I was extremely excited when I learned that a new followup was being released! (Tapestries of Life)

Diving For Seahorses (aka Adventures in Memory), meanwhile, seems to plead a slightly better "popular science" case for itself. Cowritten by writer and scientist sisters Hilde and Ylva Østby (respectively, translated from Norwegian by Marianne Lindvall), the book is a smooth, literary-feeling scientific exploration of the brain and memory. While more anecdotal than heavily research-based, something about Diving for Seahorses nonetheless manages to tickle that scientific urge... particularly to learn more!

The Way Through the Woods by Long Litt Woon is, interestingly, yet another Norwegian popular science book! (Goodness, what is it with Norwegian popular science and where can I get more?) (This translation is by Barbara Haveland.) Here, the rather weird and wondrous world of mushrooms is merged with a culture of mushrooming and a larger story of grief. The book does a lovely job in balancing these three threads, but never sacrificing any one; you come out with a feeling that yes, you did just learn an awful lot about the lives of mushrooms and their different species and their growth and their prevalence and their biology. You just also learned a lot about humans. Isn't that cool?

Finally, Finding Our Place in the Universe is the (non-Norwegian!) astrophysical response to the world of popular science literature. Hélène Courtois's book (translated from French by Nikki Kopelman) may be relatively slim, but it's no lightweight, giving a surprisingly detailed background to the universe in its short span. This is a book that gives you a taste of what astrophysics (or rather cosmology!) is really like, in discussing both the observational aspects alongside the modeling/computational parts that are extrapolated from those observations. If you (like me) are a tiny bit obsessed with cosmology, you are bound to adore what this book does, as well as how it does it. There are lovely personal touches to the book that make it a fascinating read overall.

These are just a taste, of course, and I continue to seek out more scientific WIT titles! I look forward to the day when my list might comprise of titles from more countries and regions of the world (...sorry Norway...), but continue to delight in the science I have been exposed to for now.

WITMonth Day 9 | Diving for Seahorses by Hilde Østby and Ylva Østby | Review

I am frequently surprised by how often people mistake me for a truly literary person. Bloggers and Twitter folk have often assumed I'm either a literature major or a translator; I've had people ask me what "genre" I'm researching for my PhD. But the truth is that I'm a scientist, a biochemist who just happens to adore books and writing about them. And though I typically read fiction, I also love reading nonfiction, particularly about scientific fields. As I've delved deeper into the women in translation project, this love has mostly been sidelined. After all, there just aren't that many science books by women writers that have been translated across languages.

Imagine my surprise as I browsed books at the Sydney airport bookstore, ahead of 35 hours of traveling. My hand hovered over the spine and I removed the book from the shelf. My usual search for translator name was actually quite long (unfortunately, NewSouth Publishing don't advertise the translator name anywhere obvious, instead relegating it to the small print of the publication information page), but once I found it, I was stunned. Diving for Seahorses by Norwegian sisters Hilde Østby and Ylva Østby, translated by Marianne Lindvall. Yes, this really was a nonfiction, scientific book written by non-Anglo women writers! Sisters, no less!

I had to read this.

Luckily, it turns out that Diving for Seahorses is more than just a combination of my personal niche delights, but a genuinely good book. As the publisher blurb points out, the sisters are uniquely qualified to write a good science book - Hilde is a writer, while Ylva is a neuroscientist. Their combined efforts creates a remarkably well-written (and translated!) popular science book that tracks multiple approaches to the study of human memory. This is not a dense, comprehensive scientific study, nor does it commit to giving any answers. In fact, Diving for Seahorses frequently points out that humans do not as of yet understand memory well enough to make any grand claims. Instead, the book charts different aspects of memory chapter by chapter, covering both anecdotes and scientific studies. It's a book that is on the one hand deeply scientific in its approach, but written smoothly and with a narrative cohesiveness that not all similarly structured science books have.

I enjoyed reading Diving for Seahorses from just about every perspective, whether in terms of learning about a scientific field that I'm not well versed in (confession: I have hated just about reference to neuroscience that I have ever had to study) or in terms of the reading process itself. While not especially comprehensive and occasionally reliant on anecdotes or studies that are tenuously defined (see previous confession), it's a fun, educational experience. Warmly recommended.