Lab Girl Book Review: Hope Jahren Made Me Feel Bad About My Garden

Where to Get It

Available in multiple formats, depending on how you like to read (or listen).

🎧 Audiobook (Indie Option): Listen on Libro.fm
🎧 Audiobook (Amazon Option): Listen on Audible
📚 Support Local Bookstores: Buy from Bookshop.org
📦 Amazon (Paperback/Kindle): View on Amazon

Book Summary

Lab Girl is a 2016 memoir by Hope Jahren. Jahren is a geobiologist who has spent her career studying trees, seeds, soil, and the quiet stubbornness of plants. The book bounces between two things: chapters about her own life building a career in science, and chapters that read almost like love letters to the plant world. The plant science is used as a mirror for whatever she’s going through at that moment in her life. (Plant metaphors!)

Jahren grew up in rural Minnesota (basically my neighbor — hello, fellow Midwest person.) She found her way into science through her father’s college lab. The book follows her from childhood through her PhD at UC Berkeley, then across university positions at Georgia Tech, Johns Hopkins, and eventually the University of Hawaii. Her wonderfully weird lab partner, Bill, follows her every step of the way. (Bill becomes as central to the story as Jahren herself.)

The book is also honest about the brutal realities of being a woman in science (not that I would know.) She struggles with funding, skepticism, and constantly having to prove herself. She also writes about struggles with mental health.

It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. Barack Obama called it terrific.

If you want more reads like this one, check out my list of personal growth books. Lab Girl fits right in with books that make you see the world a little differently.

Who Is Hope Jahren?

🌱 Geobiologist and geochemist. Studies how plants and ecosystems tell the story of Earth’s history
🎓 PhD from UC Berkeley; has held professor positions at Georgia Tech, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Hawaii
🏆 Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; named a NYT Notable Book; AAAS prize for Excellence in Science Books
✍️ Also wrote The Story of More (2020), about climate change and human consumption
🌾 Grew up in rural Minnesota (bonus points for being a Midwest neighbor to the east of me)

Scott’s Rating for Lab Girl

My innovative system for rating humor books is explained here

Overall Awesomeness: 5/5

Beautiful writing about a subject I never expected to care about. A book about plants? No thanks. But Lab Girl came recommended from my aunt, who is a trustworthy book nerd. I’m glad I picked it up. Hope Jahren moves beautifully between science and memoir. She weaves plant facts with stories from her life building labs, building a career in science, and eventually building a family.

Things I Liked

The plant-as-metaphor idea is awesome. Jahren describes what a seed does in the dark before it sprouts and somehow you realize she’s also describing herself.
The writing is vulnerable. She’s honest about her mental health struggles and the grind of being a woman in science.
She’s from Minnesota. I’m from South Dakota. We’re practically the same person.
Bill, her lab manager is funny and bizarre in the best way. He sleeps in the lab. He eats weird things. He’s fiercely loyal. Every good story needs a Bill.
The plant science chapters are fascinating. I work around biology and chemistry people, so the weird lab-persona hits close.

Things I Didn’t Like

I now feel genuinely bad about every plant I’ve ever killed. And I’ve killed a lot of them. Turns out plants are resilient, miraculous little organisms doing their best against impossible odds. Sorry, plants.

Conclusion

I don’t work in a lab. I didn’t understand a bunch of what Jahren was explaining. And yet Lab Girl is one of the best books I’ve read this year. It was vulnerable, enlightening, and occasionally funny.

Thanks to my aunt for the loan. Read this one. Then go water your plants. They’ve been through enough.