Awesome book! Beautiful and inspirational! I really enjoyed this book.

 

The artwork was phenomenal and is a great place to start to get young readers interesting in empowering woman.

 

I liked that Chin-Lee used the women's first names/given names rather than their family names for each letter. This helped put the focus on the actual woman being recognized.

 

There was a good variety of women from different backgrounds and occupations. The women were from all of the world, some very famous and some not as well known, but no less inspiring.

 

Truly an amazing work, great for young readers. Each entry is fairly lengthy, but uses simple language to explain the women's lives and their contributions. There are also quotes from the women themselves (or about them), which added more depth to the entries. A pleasure to read.

The author offers nothing towards answering the title "What is Life" and offers nothing but the most simplistic presentation for addressing the subtitle "How Chemistry Becomes Biology".

When he does address the title, he forces the presentation into his preferred world view of teleonomy (just a fancy way of saying animate objects are teleological and inanimate objects are not, whatever).

He's going to equate maximum efficiency with DKS (dynamic kinetic systems) and explain that life arises from that process.

I did get irritated at the author. He makes the statement along the lines "to understand the what of life, one first needs to know the how it came about, and then take the particular to the general and then make the universal principals before proceeding". I fault that formulation in order for understanding and explaining of nature. (It's a very Kantian formulation of science, and I saw it just as an excuse for the author to not address the title of the book).

The author really added nothing new whatsoever to my understanding of what is life and where did it come from. There was nothing new or novel in this book. Books like this one are why I slowed down reading science books. They need to teach me something new, something I did not already know, and be so good that I want to re-listen to them again for their novel presentations and the new insights they showed me. This book did none of those things.

I wasted my time with this book. I would recommend Hazen's Great Course Lecture, "Origins of Life", Wagner's "Arrival of the Fittest" which considers the topology of the possible maximum efficiency paths which "What is Life" tries to explain from time to time but not adequately, and I would recommend, Rutherford's "Creations: How Science is Reinventing Life Itself", a book which is not too simple and not too complex but explains the things presented in this book as they should have been (and regretfully which seems to have been completely ignored by the reading (and listening) public).

Heir to the Crown (Book Three in the Doyle Hawthorne Series)- Ember Shane 

 

Addy, again, will not listen to reason. I love this story, but very much keep hoping that I will begin to like. I really just want to wrap my fingers around her throat and squeeze, hard. Still a 4 star book so far.

 

 

This is the first Amish story I've ever read.  I'll read lots of different things, but I mostly stick to erotic and paranormal romance, so this was a bit a departure for me.  It's completely clean.  The most they do is hand holding and feather-light kissing.  But, they fell for each other slowly and it was sweet.

 

Overlooking the way Addy's parents control her, I found Addy very relatable.  She wants to please her parents, but she's not a doormat.  She's also very direct and a bit harsh sometimes.  And I liked Gideon.  I guess he's the Amish version of a playboy.  He likes women and is not ready to settle down, although his parents want him to marry.

 

There really isn't much conflict.  Addy is attracted to Gideon on first meeting, but he places her in the friend category immediately and so she begins to look at him as a friend and begins to consider the other eligible men around her that show interest.  Gideon then begins to realize that his feelings for Addy aren't the same as for other women and that he loves her.  The conflict is that Gideon is a hired hand and Addy's parents are insistent that she make a wealthier match so that they'll be cared for in their old age.

 

The end was a bit predictable, but still enjoyable.

This book was a bit difficult for me, since I have only high school science training. But it's an interesting topic so I stuck with it. And actually, I think the author did a pretty good job of making it intelligible for the layperson. I believe I understand his general theories. That biology is really just complex chemistry, which is just complex physics ... okay, I can buy that. That the biology of how life started can be better understood if we examine it in terms of chemical processes ... okay. A lot of what he does is redefinition in simpler terms, and it was helpful to me. I don't know how his theories hold up when reviewed by other scientists, but it doesn't matter that much to me. I feel like I understand the issues much better now.