Nicholas Harberd

Sadly, this promising-sounding title was a bust. The book consists of extremely technical details of how particular genetic expressions and proteins affect plant growth, interspersed with stream-of-consciousness meanderings about the author's day-to-day experiences with plants. The contrast between the two was not interesting or insightful, and despite Halberd's efforts did not give me a sense of science and everyday life existing side-by-side; it gave me a sense that he took a personal journal and a lab notebook, threw the sentences from each into the air, and put them back together in an entirely arbitrary order.… (mere)