{"id":3523,"date":"2023-04-03T14:18:16","date_gmt":"2023-04-03T05:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/?p=3523"},"modified":"2023-04-03T14:18:16","modified_gmt":"2023-04-03T05:18:16","slug":"books-figuring-by-maria-popova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/?p=3523","title":{"rendered":"Books: Figuring by Maria Popova"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I had heard good things about this book that takes a broad look at influential people over history, especially but not limited to women and their roles in overcoming a male-centered society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a long book, and one of the things that made it worth reading was the writer\u2019s beautiful writing, a sort of poetic prose that made every sentence worth considering and savoring. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She describes her work as a \u201cproject\u201d, and I can understand given the huge amount of information and research that went into this. One of the key features of this book is the author\u2019s ability to tie together people from across history, and see how they influenced each other\u2019s thinking. For the most part I found these connections interesting, but some felt a little forced or vague or unsubstantiated &#8211; more like wishful theories than fact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The scale of this project is huge, and for me sometimes it was a little overwhelming. Within some chapters points of view changed abruptly, and stories are completed in a non-linear way that had a discussion of Darwin\u2019s feelings on hydrotherapy suddenly appearing in the middle of someone else\u2019s history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are many key figures examined here, including Maria Mitchell, Johannes Kepler, Margaret Fuller and Emily Dickinson. But I found the section on Rachel Carson the most interesting, and I\u2019m looking forward to  reading some of her work in the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was a long read &#8211; but overall I thought it was worth the time. If you are a big fan of more of the people I mentioned above, then I\u2019d strongly recommend the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Next I am reading The Great Escape by Saket Soni. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had heard good things about this book that takes a broad look at influential people over history, especially but not limited to women and their roles in overcoming a male-centered society. This is a long book, and one of the things that made it worth reading was the writer\u2019s beautiful writing, a sort of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-3523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-UP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}