Finished reading: Figuring by Maria Popova 📚

The funny thing about all of Popova’s writings such as BrainPickings is that you want to take notes. Lots of notes. She works from a wealth of sources, although she obviously has favorites, and you want to see just how all this stuff is connected. This holds true for this book as well. I didn’t avoid that temptation at first, and it made the book slow-going. After I gave up trying to tie everything together and just read the damn book, it became much more interesting.

If you are interested in finding out about the influences of several historical figures (mostly women) in literature, art, and science then you’ll find this fascinating. Major figures include Maria Mitchell, Harriet Hosmer, Margaret Fuller, Emily Dickinson, Caroline Herschel, and Rachel Carson. Appearances by a host of others including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Johannes Kepler, Herman Melville, etc.

I plan in re-reading this at some point.