Entertaining reading for budding apiarists and armchair nature enthusiasts.
An intimate look at one woman’s experience with beekeeping.
After helping a friend of a friend with his bees, British writer Jukes decided to get a colony of her own even though she knew little about them. “I hadn’t even realized…that honeybees are different from bumblebees,” she writes, “that there are over twenty thousand species of bee in the world, and only a fraction of them make honey.” The author had a woodworker build her a special hive so she could establish her colony in a wind-protected section of her back garden. While she waited for the appropriate time to begin her new hobby, she plunged headlong into the complex history of bees and beekeeping through the centuries, and she shares her extensive research with readers. Though informative, these elements are occasionally dry. Fortunately, Jukes juxtaposes this history with her ongoing interactions with her hive, which brings her tale back to life. Readers share in her concerns about cold weather and how the new colony is adjusting to their nontraditional hive, rejoice in the abundance of new bees, and worry as the hive moves closer and closer to the swarming phase. The author clearly conveys the necessity of dedication, focus, and calm when handling bees, and she palpably portrays the moment when she was able to fully let go of her day-to-day anxieties and concentrate solely on her charges. She also interweaves a late-blooming romance into her story, which further sweetens the narrative. Throughout the book, Jukes portrays her experiences with vivid imagination and a spirit that encourages readers to think deeper about a creature that is vital to all life on this planet. “The honeybees opened me out,” she writes, “led me into a new understanding of the world and my place in it….Flowers, bees, weather, people—they’re all connected, all part of a larger ecosystem.”
Entertaining reading for budding apiarists and armchair nature enthusiasts.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4786-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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