en-US Wed, 16 Apr 2025 17:44:59 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 230200427 John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 5 John Green Panda 5 Publisher: Books on Tape (Listening Library)

John Green does an excellent job narrating his book.
The audio is flawless

What an extraordinary in depth look into Tuberculosis.

The author looks at not just the medical and scientific history, but also the social, economic, racial and sometimes racist, sometimes classist and more.

Who knew that I would learn the history and origin of the Stetson hat in a book about Tuberculosis?!?!

Way more interesting than I first imagined. So worth it whether you read it all in one go or take it in bites between other books or whenever. Not dry at all.

Recommend.]]> 4.45 2025
author: John Green
name: Panda
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: nonfiction, science, audio-is-flawed, narration-is-good
review:
Audiobook (6 hours) narrated by the author, John Green
Publisher: Books on Tape (Listening Library)

John Green does an excellent job narrating his book.
The audio is flawless

What an extraordinary in depth look into Tuberculosis.

The author looks at not just the medical and scientific history, but also the social, economic, racial and sometimes racist, sometimes classist and more.

Who knew that I would learn the history and origin of the Stetson hat in a book about Tuberculosis?!?!

Way more interesting than I first imagined. So worth it whether you read it all in one go or take it in bites between other books or whenever. Not dry at all.

Recommend.
]]> 222102980
The acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Galileo’s Daughter crafts a luminous chronicle of the life and work of the most famous woman in the history of science, and the untold story of the many young women trained in her laboratory who were launched into stellar scientific careers of their own

“Even now, nearly a century after her death, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist most people can name,� writes Dava Sobel at the opening of her shining portrait of the sole Nobel laureate decorated in two separate fields of science—Physics in 1903 with her husband Pierre and Chemistry by herself in 1911. And yet, Sobel makes clear, as brilliant and creative as she was in the laboratory, Marie Curie was equally passionate outside it. Grieving Pierre’s untimely death in 1906, she took his place as professor of physics at the Sorbonne; devotedly raised two brilliant daughters; drove a van she outfitted with x-ray equipment to the front lines of World War I; befriended Albert Einstein and other luminaries of twentieth-century physics; won support from two U.S. presidents; and inspired generations of young women the world over to pursue science as a way of life.

As Sobel did so memorably in her portrait of Galileo through the prism of his daughter, she approaches Marie Curie from a unique angle, narrating her remarkable life of discovery and fame alongside the women who became her legacy—from France’s Marguerite Perey, who discovered the element francium, and Norway’s Ellen Gleditsch, to Mme. Curie’s elder daughter, Irène, winner of the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. For decades the only woman in the room at international scientific gatherings that probed new theories about the interior of the atom, Marie Curie traveled far and wide, despite constant illness, to share the secrets of radioactivity, a term she coined. Her two triumphant tours of the United States won her admirers for her modesty even as she was mobbed at every stop; her daughters, in Ève’s later recollection, “discovered all at once what the retiring woman with whom they had always lived meant to the world.�

With the consummate skill that made bestsellers of Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter, and the appreciation for women in science at the heart of her most recent The Glass Universe, Dava Sobel has crafted a radiant biography and a masterpiece of storytelling, illuminating the life and enduring influence of one of the most consequential figures of our time.]]> 10 Dava Sobel Panda 1 Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.

I put in for the audiobook to be added to the goodreads list. In the meantime, please enjoy this video from the publishers site: Thank you goodreads librarians for adding this edition so quickly! You are appreciated!



I am going to drop this one, it's just overly dry. I keep coming back to it, reading a little at a time and as much as I like the details, the delivery shouldn't be this difficult for someone who is interesting af. Others might enjoy the delivery, and it may go different if I was able to read it myself and skim over the more lackluster areas, but as an audiobook it's not working for me.]]> 3.81 2024
author: Dava Sobel
name: Panda
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 1
read at: 2024/12/05
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: biographies, science, women, audio-is-good, narration-is-good
review:
Audiobook (10 hours) narrated by Pat Rodrigues
Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.

I put in for the audiobook to be added to the goodreads list. In the meantime, please enjoy this video from the publishers site: Thank you goodreads librarians for adding this edition so quickly! You are appreciated!



I am going to drop this one, it's just overly dry. I keep coming back to it, reading a little at a time and as much as I like the details, the delivery shouldn't be this difficult for someone who is interesting af. Others might enjoy the delivery, and it may go different if I was able to read it myself and skim over the more lackluster areas, but as an audiobook it's not working for me.
]]> 201558314 The fascinating history of women’s health as it’s never been told before.

For as long as medicine has been a practice, women's bodies have been treated like objects to be practiced on: examined and ignored, idealized and sexualized, shamed, subjugated, mutilated, and dismissed. The history of women’s healthcare is a story in which women themselves have too often been voiceless—a narrative instead written from the perspective of men who styled themselves as authorities on the female of the species, yet uninformed by women’s own voices, thoughts, fears, pain and experiences. The result is a cultural and societal legacy that continues to shape the (mis)treatment and care of women.

While the modern age has seen significant advancements in the medical field, the notion that female bodies are flawed inversions of the male ideal lingers on—as do the pervasive societal stigmas and lingering ignorance that shape women’s health and relationships with their own bodies.

Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist and medical historian Dr. Elizabeth Comen peels back the curtain on the collective medical history of women to reintroduce us to our whole bodies—how they work, the actual doctors and patients whose perspectives and experiences laid the foundation for today’s medical thought, and the many oversights that still remain unaddressed. With a physician’s knowledge and empathy, Dr. Comen follows the road map of the eleven organ systems to share unique and untold stories, drawing upon medical texts and journals, interviews with expert physicians, as well as her own experience treating thousands of women.

Empowering women to better understand ourselves and advocate for care that prioritizes healthy and joyful lives—for us and generations to come�All in Her Head is written with humor, wisdom, and deep scientific and cultural insight. Eye-opening, sometimes enraging, yet always captivating, this shared memoir of women’s medical history is an essential contribution to a holistic understanding and much-needed reclaiming of women’s history and bodies.]]> 0 Anna Caputo Panda 2 Anna Caputo

The narration and audio quality is fine. Nothing special, but no issues either.

So, the book is fine, but I thought it was going to be slanted towards giving us good and useful medical information like books by Jen Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina—Separating the Myth from the Medicine, The Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism, etc. Instead this book is more like Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.

I decided to not finish the book as funny as it was, a lot of the things that were being mentioned weren't new to me and I wasn't getting out of it what I had expected.

Some of the things that are in the first half of the book that were pretty funny, in the if I wasn't laughing I would be steaming mad at the complete disregard for women.

Women's husbands were warned against allowing their wives to ride bicycles as women would get something called bicycle face, that would make us ugly. Further the increased used of bicycles by women cause some sort of bicycle masturbation addiction where women would ride bikes for sexual gratification. They didn't mention washing machine spin cycles, so either that wasn't an issue or removing washing machines from the wives would be problematic for their housewife duties.

Ladies Home Journal was said to have published articles stating that women could safely exercise without the fear of turning into men, with the exception of weight lifting, which would make us ugly.

For some reason the medical community once believed that blood was important to men but not women, so women who had symptoms that we now know to be anemia would be treated with blood letting. Blood letting was such an important medical treatment for women to get rid of the bad, and for some reason they determined that putting leaches directly on the labia was the way to go.

So I guess the fact that we have monthly periods means that blood isn't important for our survival?

How were we not killed off?

If you are interested in hearing about a bunch of things that happened in the not too distant past, as well as current bs treatment, or mistreatment rather, of women then pick up this book. The audiobook is fine, but if you want to flip through certain sections, as the book is laid out by area of the body, like skin, blood, muscles, etc, the print version is going to give you more freedom.

If you want women's medical information, anything by Dr.. Jen Gunter, who I linked above, is going to be a good read. Go for the print version, if you are able. She has a great index making it easy to find what you are looking for to refer back to important information after you give it a read through.

For statistics, the book that I listed above, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men goes into medical issues but also into other issues and statistics that are actually helpful, with knowledge that can keep you safe, like information about how car seats and belts are unsafe. Knowing what isn't safe, can help us to know what to look for, adjustments that we might be able to make to keep us safer while we advocate for equality in our right to be able to actually live and experience the world, as freely and easily as men.]]> 4.38 2024
author: Anna Caputo
name: Panda
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/14
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves: nonfiction, science, health, audio-is-good, narration-is-good
review:
Audiobook (13 hours) narrated by Anna Caputo

The narration and audio quality is fine. Nothing special, but no issues either.

So, the book is fine, but I thought it was going to be slanted towards giving us good and useful medical information like books by Jen Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina—Separating the Myth from the Medicine, The Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism, etc. Instead this book is more like Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.

I decided to not finish the book as funny as it was, a lot of the things that were being mentioned weren't new to me and I wasn't getting out of it what I had expected.

Some of the things that are in the first half of the book that were pretty funny, in the if I wasn't laughing I would be steaming mad at the complete disregard for women.

Women's husbands were warned against allowing their wives to ride bicycles as women would get something called bicycle face, that would make us ugly. Further the increased used of bicycles by women cause some sort of bicycle masturbation addiction where women would ride bikes for sexual gratification. They didn't mention washing machine spin cycles, so either that wasn't an issue or removing washing machines from the wives would be problematic for their housewife duties.

Ladies Home Journal was said to have published articles stating that women could safely exercise without the fear of turning into men, with the exception of weight lifting, which would make us ugly.

For some reason the medical community once believed that blood was important to men but not women, so women who had symptoms that we now know to be anemia would be treated with blood letting. Blood letting was such an important medical treatment for women to get rid of the bad, and for some reason they determined that putting leaches directly on the labia was the way to go.

So I guess the fact that we have monthly periods means that blood isn't important for our survival?

How were we not killed off?

If you are interested in hearing about a bunch of things that happened in the not too distant past, as well as current bs treatment, or mistreatment rather, of women then pick up this book. The audiobook is fine, but if you want to flip through certain sections, as the book is laid out by area of the body, like skin, blood, muscles, etc, the print version is going to give you more freedom.

If you want women's medical information, anything by Dr.. Jen Gunter, who I linked above, is going to be a good read. Go for the print version, if you are able. She has a great index making it easy to find what you are looking for to refer back to important information after you give it a read through.

For statistics, the book that I listed above, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men goes into medical issues but also into other issues and statistics that are actually helpful, with knowledge that can keep you safe, like information about how car seats and belts are unsafe. Knowing what isn't safe, can help us to know what to look for, adjustments that we might be able to make to keep us safer while we advocate for equality in our right to be able to actually live and experience the world, as freely and easily as men.
]]> 48694543
If any of this sounds familiar, chances are that you're a woman.

Invisible Women shows us how, in a world largely built for and by men, we are systematically ignoring half the population. It exposes the gender data gap � a gap in our knowledge that is at the root of perpetual, systemic discrimination against women, and that has created a pervasive but invisible bias with a profound effect on women’s lives.

From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, urban planning and the media, Invisible Women reveals the biased data that excludes women.

Award-winning campaigner and writer Caroline Criado Perez brings together for the first time an impressive range of case studies, stories and new research from across the world that illustrate the hidden ways in which women are forgotten, and the impact this has on their health and well-being. In making the case for change, this powerful and provocative book will make you see the world anew]]> 10 Caroline Criado Pérez 198269937X Panda 5 Caroline Criado Pérez

The narration and audio quality are high, without distortion, erroneous noise, or obvious edits.

While I enjoyed listening to this book, I would recommend the print version or picking up both, to follow along for an immersive reading experience. With the print book you can refer to specific sections, and there are said to be meticulous footnotes and nearly 100 pages of end notes and index, which are not available in the audiobook version.

Ó˶Äï¸� ]]> 4.31 2019
author: Caroline Criado Pérez
name: Panda
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/19
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: nonfiction, science, women, audio-is-good, narration-is-good
review:
Audiobook (9 hours) narrated by the author, Caroline Criado Pérez

The narration and audio quality are high, without distortion, erroneous noise, or obvious edits.

While I enjoyed listening to this book, I would recommend the print version or picking up both, to follow along for an immersive reading experience. With the print book you can refer to specific sections, and there are said to be meticulous footnotes and nearly 100 pages of end notes and index, which are not available in the audiobook version.

Ó˶Äï¸�
]]> 210946725
As a kid, Aomawa Shields was always bumping into things, her neck craned up at the sky, dreaming of becoming an astronaut. A year into an astrophysics PhD program, plagued by self-doubt and discouraged by a white male professor who suggested that she—a young Black woman who also loved fashion, makeup, and the arts—didn’t belong, she left astronomy and pursued acting professionally for a decade, before a day job working for NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope drew her back to the stars. She was the oldest and the only Black student in her PhD cohort. This time, no professor, and no voice in her own head, would stop her. Now an astronomer and astrobiologist at the top of her field, Dr. Shields studies the universe outside our Solar System, researching and uncovering the planets circling distant stars with just the right conditions that could support life—while also using her theater education to communicate the wonder and magic of the universe with those of us here on Earth. But it’s been a journey as winding and complex as the physics she has mastered.

Life on Other Planets is a journey of discovery on this world and on others, a story of creating a life that makes space for joy, love, and wonder while being driven by one of our biggest Is anybody else out there? It is about the possibility of living between multiple worlds and not choosing—but instead charting a new path entirely.]]> 11 Aomawa Shields Panda 0 3.50
author: Aomawa Shields
name: Panda
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/24
shelves: to-read, biographies, memoir, space, science, women
review:

]]> 780687 480 Jürgen Neffe 0374146640 Panda 0 to-read, biographies, science 4.04 2005
author: Jürgen Neffe
name: Panda
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/23
shelves: to-read, biographies, science
review:

]]> 27278007
Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women. Originally math teachers in the South's segregated public schools, these gifted professionals answered Uncle Sam's call during the labour shortages of World War II. With new jobs at the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia, they finally had a shot at jobs that would push their skills to the limits.

Even as Virginia's Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley's all-black "West Computing" group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Societ Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens.

Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden - four African American women who participated in some of NASA's greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades as they faced challenges, forged alliances, and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country's future.]]> 11 Margot Lee Shetterly 0062472070 Panda 1 Robin Miles

Robin Miles is one of, if not my very favorite narrator. She just kills it, with a specialty in accents. She narrates a few books by Octavia E. Butler, with unique accents that make the characters come to a whole other level of realism. Seriously, I have read books just because she is the narrator and I felt like it had been a while.
This book is told completely in the third person. Robin does a great read of it, with fantastic pacing and volume. The audio quality is high with no distortions or erroneous noise.
Due to the clarity of the narrator and the audio, it's possible to listen from 1x to 3x speed, if you wish to speed it up. It reads like a text book, so listen at a speed where it feels comfortable for you to listen and understand without straining.

The actual history, the story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose work should be known be every American, as well as every person on earth interested in space travel, especially out earliest space travel and the space race after WWII.

Margot Lee Shetterly took on the task of getting the story out there. As noble and awesome as it was that she got the information into peoples minds, the book she wrote is so dry that it's as hard to cross without dying of boredom as it is to hike across Arizona in July without water, at noon, alone, barefoot.

My rating is for the book, not the story.

The women get all the stars.

The book gets one because zero isn't an option.

If you don't know the story, and want to listen, go for 3x speed at times where you won't fall asleep and cause a traffic accident or injure someone with power tools. Or see the movie.

My disappointment is real.

Blah.

/sadface

]]> 3.74 2016
author: Margot Lee Shetterly
name: Panda
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2016
rating: 1
read at: 2024/04/09
date added: 2024/04/09
shelves: best-audiobooks-list, book-club, nonfiction, biographies, history, space, science
review:
Audiobook (11 hours) narrated by Robin Miles

Robin Miles is one of, if not my very favorite narrator. She just kills it, with a specialty in accents. She narrates a few books by Octavia E. Butler, with unique accents that make the characters come to a whole other level of realism. Seriously, I have read books just because she is the narrator and I felt like it had been a while.
This book is told completely in the third person. Robin does a great read of it, with fantastic pacing and volume. The audio quality is high with no distortions or erroneous noise.
Due to the clarity of the narrator and the audio, it's possible to listen from 1x to 3x speed, if you wish to speed it up. It reads like a text book, so listen at a speed where it feels comfortable for you to listen and understand without straining.

The actual history, the story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose work should be known be every American, as well as every person on earth interested in space travel, especially out earliest space travel and the space race after WWII.

Margot Lee Shetterly took on the task of getting the story out there. As noble and awesome as it was that she got the information into peoples minds, the book she wrote is so dry that it's as hard to cross without dying of boredom as it is to hike across Arizona in July without water, at noon, alone, barefoot.

My rating is for the book, not the story.

The women get all the stars.

The book gets one because zero isn't an option.

If you don't know the story, and want to listen, go for 3x speed at times where you won't fall asleep and cause a traffic accident or injure someone with power tools. Or see the movie.

My disappointment is real.

Blah.

/sadface


]]> 63221207 New York Times bestseller that goes far beyond its riveting medical mystery, Brain on Fire is the powerful account of one woman’s struggle to recapture her identity.

When twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she’d gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?

In a swift and breathtaking narrative, Cahalan tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn’t happen.]]> 300 Susannah Cahalan 1451621396 Panda 0 4.19 2012
author: Susannah Cahalan
name: Panda
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/11
shelves: to-read, memoir, nonfiction, science, mental-health
review:

]]> 59575939 A grand tour through the hidden realms of animal senses that will transform the way you perceive the world --from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of I Contain Multitudes.

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world. This book welcomes us into a previously unfathomable dimension--the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.

We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and humans that wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries which lie unsolved.

In An Immense World, author and acclaimed science journalist Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. Because in order to understand our world we don't need to travel to other places; we need to see through other eyes.]]> 464 Ed Yong Panda 1 psychology, science, slog
Over the last couple of weeks I have picked up and put down this book several times. As much as the synopsis and top reviews make An Immense World sound like a fascinating experience, I was bored af. Every time I tried to listen, all I heard was blahblahblah.

DNF]]> 4.46 2022
author: Ed Yong
name: Panda
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 1
read at: 2023/11/26
date added: 2023/11/26
shelves: psychology, science, slog
review:
Audiobook (14 hours) narrated by Ed Yong, the author.

Over the last couple of weeks I have picked up and put down this book several times. As much as the synopsis and top reviews make An Immense World sound like a fascinating experience, I was bored af. Every time I tried to listen, all I heard was blahblahblah.

DNF
]]>