Poetic science

Swedish author August Strindberg wrote: "Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist."

I love that! (found it on Wikipedia).

I think our author is a naturalist who happened to become a poet.

I really liked the language in the Linnaeus story, the second one in the collection. I'll cite some examples when I have my book with me. And I love the anticipation of wondering whom the next story is going to be about.

What do you think of this intermingling of historical figures with fictional ones?

The two letters

Which letter do you think was most important to the narrator, the one by Mendel or the one by Sebastian, the visiting scientist?

Why do you think she was so disgusted by her husband's prizing of the Mendel letter and the "bad" story he would always tell about it?

The two incidents

How do you interpret the inclusion of these two scenes: the narrator as a little girl in the greenhouse with the old man who apparently has sexual designs on her, and the narrator as an older woman with the visiting foreign scientist who believes her kindness is a sexual design? She even used the same word, "Prase" or "pig," with the latter as her grandpa did with the former.

Led astray

Mendel wasted a lot of time experimenting with the hawkweeds, which he was turned onto by Nageli, but the hawkweeds "did not hybridize in rational ways." They behaved, it would later be discovered, according to parthenogenesis, or forming seeds without fertilization. This led Mendel to doubt his work with the peas, and it changed the course of his career.

The hawkweeds were a tragic distraction. Do you think the narrator's marriage was also a tragic distraction?

The Behavior of the Hawkweeds

What did you think of this story? I enjoyed reading it but am having some difficulty digesting its meaning. It seems composed of triangles: Tati, Leiniger, the narrator; Tati, Mendel, Nageli; the narrator, Richard, Sebastian.

Did you get the sense that the author was drawing parallels between the relationship of Nageli and Mendel and the narrator and her husband?

Kim's Pick

This is a collection of short stories by Andrea Barrett, a National Book Award-winning writer who studied biology and zoology. I thought it looked intriguing. Wiki says this about her: Barrett is particularly well known as a writer of historical fiction and her work reflects her lifelong interest in science as many of her characters are scientists, often nineteenth-century biologists.

Also, I fell in love with the book's cover.

Sorry for the delay in making a selection! To make up for my tardiness, maybe we could start discussing on Sept. 24, assuming everyone gets their book in the next week or so?