Figuring

I originally fell in love with Maria Poppova’s authorial style and her carefully-selected subject matters through her newsletter, BrainPickings, which I am sure many of you are familiar with; and I was happy to find that her voice sneakily and beneficially crept its way into my everyday thoughts and reflections. And because of my profound affection for Brainpickings, I have a adopted a fairly rigid Sunday morning routine: I wake up, prepare my coffee, slowly recline in my recliner, then pull up my email browser for a little meditation on Poppova's exposition on passages/excerpts from Kepler or Darwin or Hawking or some obscure yet beautifully articulate author on a variety of scientific and/or philosophical subjects; and I’ve found that Poppova is great in distributing a fraction of her immense inspiration and insight to her readers in this way. And because of this weekly enjoyment I’m afraid that my positive experience with her newsletter may have inflated my expectations for “Figurings”, a book that now lies among my other ‘finished texts’—despite remaining (rather unfortunately) unfinished. The last 50 pages of the novel are unread and will remain unread for three main reasons:1. First and foremost, Poppova’s diction is entirely too bombastic, far too verbose for a 500 page novel that is one part Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos”, one part “American Transcendentalism”, and five parts a splurging of random, rather dull facts. The majority of the anecdotes are long-winded and disjointed, adding minimal, if any, value to the advancement of the greater novel. And the passages themselves are overly loquacious, to the point where I would graze over half of the sentences in an attempt not to lose complete interest in the text because I wanted to like it—I really did.Additionally, I can endure the turgidity of, e.g., “Infinite Jest” because there it plays a vital syntactical role in the development of an immensely complex narrative, one that is interwoven skillfully by Foster Wallace to add a profound level of complexity that strategically accentuates the underlying intent of the novel; but here, I do not feel the same—not at all. Too frequently I found her archaic words littered within the text in a way that felt artificial, as if Poppova had a simple statement written down in front of her but, pulling out her dilapidated thesaurus, she then decided it was vital to obscure her argument with a splattering of unnecessarily discursive vocabulary. Her grandiloquence is unappreciated and entirely unnecessary; its inclusion gives off the impression that she is striving to flaunt her academic vernacular (“academese”), showcase some treasure-trove of higher-level vocabulary. This stylistic choice severely lessens the impact and enjoyment intended within the text.2. Secondly, I discovered in the later chapter that the content of the writing had less to do with the telling of the forgotten tales of successful yet mostly unappreciated women (e.g., Maria Mitchell, Rachel Carson, Emily Dickinson, Margaret Fuller), describing their ground-breaking discoveries/innovations, elaborating on their upbringings and breakthroughs; and it became more about recounting the historical (and sometimes fictitious) events and interests of their ‘uncommon’ love lives. Poppova embarked on a crusade fueled by indignation and sexual strife, literarily battling the discrimination endured by homosexual women today and by the female pioneers of the past (as it seemed to me) to justify her own distinct position as a lesbian in the intellectual community, a community that (as she would want the audience to believe) is a predominantly patriarchal freemasonry of white men in white lab coats with white hair filling white pages in their white books with white noise. She’s not interested in bestowing upon her readers the wisdom of the ages, not hoping to educate us with eloquent tales of cosmological exploration or poetic expression or biological discovery—no, that was not her primary intent; rather, it was to show how each of her biographized characters was a genius, yes, but more importantly a lesbian (like the author), as if justifying first to herself then to us that sexual orientation plays a keen role in the successfulness of feminine scholarly endeavors. Maybe I was indolent in my pre-purchase summary readings because I was perplexed when this hidden agenda sprung itself from the pages. Or, rather, maybe my own biological makeup limits my appreciation of the text. Maybe.3. The final reason for my (not entirely) negative review of this book, which is similar but distinct from my first, is that the argument she is trying to make—if there even is a central argument—unfortunately lacks any semblance of coherence and continuity. I struggled immensely with discerning what exactly the overarching message was, and the string that tied all of the characters and stories together was far too flimsy for 500+ pages of writing. I was sucked in by the opening passages and introductory passages about Kepler, for example, but my interest wavered and slowly withered as I pressed on; everything became duller and duller as the page number increased. Most of us know that she is a successful curator and ‘knowledge dispenser’ in the medium of a newsletter, a 300-word blurb about this book or that poem, but NOT in the medium of a thick novel with a page count exceeding half a thousand.Don’t get me wrong, there were parts I did like, passages I did highlight, phrases I did write down, but overall I closed her book overcome by one predominant emotion: disappointment.In sum, I would not recommend Poppova’s book. If you are not already subscribed to BrainPickings, I would advise looking into that and consider following her there; that is where she shines—not here. A Goodreads review said it best: “And this book, Figuring, will stay un-figured for me for quite some time.”

This book was a masterpiece. So many interesting lives intersecting, influencing each other, creating new emergences from some of the most critical thinkers in western history. Maria Popova has written a remarkable book that examines the forces that bring novelty, wisdom, art, and science into the world. I plan to reread this one immediately because this is one I'll read again and again.

Erudite, eloquent, lyrical, insightful, moving, inspiring, and brilliant. Popova threads many lives, eras, and areas, showing the interconnectedness of human experience and achievement. Her writing is beautiful and trenchant—a joy to read!

I am reading this book slowly. Well, yes, I am a slow reader, but also, this book is SO rich, it deserves to be savored. I've underlined at least half of it. It makes being awake with insomnia at 3 in the morning totally worth it. First of all, Maria Popova's sentences are gorgeous, sometimes jaw-droppingly so. They astonish me. Second of all there's so much history of scientific discovery and discoverers (and so many of them women!!) and literature, and social activism, and personal relationships that are every bit as entangled and rife with longing and suffering, and occasionally happy fulfillment as any going on today. The people feel very alive and real -- as if they were alive today, but also as if I had time-travelled back and could eaves-drop and witness the goings-on. Maria creates a sense of perspective regardingh historical change, especially regarding women's rights, gay rights, and scientific understandings. She deals brilliantly with the topic of "beauty". This book sent me to further investigate all kinds of people and science, and to buy several more books related to the people and topics she explores (including Rachel Carson's book "The Sea Around Us", and a book called "The Bluest of Blues" about Anna Atkins photographs of algae.It made me want to study astronomy. As the daughter, sister, and mother of photographers, and as a photographer myself, I loved the chapter on photography the most. But then, really I loved all the chapters and how beautiful she wove this amazing and huge story through the centuries and the specific lives of people. I love how she wove the relationship between science and literature, infusing both with the central element of beauty. I would have to say that "Figuring" is my favorite book EVER. I still have about 100 pages to go, but am in no hurry to finish, so I'm taking my time.

Hard to describe or categorize, but deeply engrossing. Poetic descriptions of the lives and thoughts of some fascinating historical artists, thinkers, scientists, mostly women. Lucid exposition of late 19th century and early 20th Century American intellectual history. Successfully connects the dots between a host of admirable women, their work, their legacies, including two of my secular saints, Emily Dickinson and Rachel Carson.

For the last few weeks I have been savouring Maria Popova’s Figuring — a bright comet of a book, spiralling through intersecting orbits of lives, loves, and letters. From the opening sentence — a page-long masterpiece of cosmic and personal images — I knew that I would be transformed by these pages. Popova reaches out into the eternal depths of the universe, and finds there abundant refractions of the fleeting depths of the human soul. Popova juxtaposes the lives of her subjects in a way that is at times disorienting. There is order here, but it is not the imposed order of human thought. It is rather the order of nature: her stories grow forward through time while also reaching out in tangled vines and loops, revealing the influences and connections — the fractal echoes — that we might ignore in our more traditional addictions to straight lines and oversimplified causes and effects. If there is a rainbowing motif here, it is the motif of connection — of the way that each moment is a constellation of points of light, how every self is a tree planted deep within the soil of the past, both cosmic and individual. From inspiration to genius to grief, Popova reveals the beauty inherent in humanity’s striving for meaning. Her sentences are often layered poems in themselves. She writes: “In lives like Emily Dickinson’s — lives of tessellated emotional complexity encrypted in a private lexicon, throbbing with intensity bloodlet in symbol and metaphor — the inevitable blind spots of biography become eclipses.” That sentence is a miniature model of the book as a whole: It is a self-aware exploration of the inner lives of people, filtered through the lenses of language and stars. On death, Popova gives us magnificent clarity: “On a planet orbiting one of the two hundred billion stars in [the galaxy], a thinking, feeling creature was facing the fate of all matter — the atoms that had given it life were about to retreat into stardust.” From Kepler to Dickenson to Carson, Popova guides us to see them as passionate souls, but also as atoms briefly coalescing in time and space to move the human spirit forward. Toward the end of the book, Popova presents an excerpt from a letter from Rachel Carson to her soulmate, Dorothy Freeman, in which Carson reflects on writing The Edge of the Sea: “If I’m satisfied with this [writing] now, it’s at least partly due to an evening of Beethoven last night. Some little bits of his marvellous creativeness seems to seep through into my brain cells when I listen to him.” I might say the same about Popova herself. Reading her, with her branches of interconnected stories, and her sensitive and melodious phrases, elevates our minds so that we become able to transmute the ordinary moments of life into notes in the eternal symphony. This is a book to read in the way we listen to Beethoven, or savour a sunset. It will awe you. It will inspire you. It will give you a new perspective from which to peer at the web of human achievement — and at the meaning of your own fragile time as a conscious constellation of stardust.

Beautifully written inspirational tales of Life and women.

"Figuring" is a thoughtful and contemplative exploration of the evolutionary and impermanent nature of being. It is a quest to find truth and meaning for humankind in a world guided by chance and circumstance. Maria Popova does so by profiling pioneers of science, mathematics, journalism, art and biology – their ambitions, relationships, advances, setbacks and accomplishments create an engaging pathway for her pursuit. The author elevates the existential questions she explores above the experiences of her subjects by making connections between them through similarities, differences and timeline; these are questions for us all.Maria Popova has a wonderful ability to bring her subjects to life as they navigate their choices. Like the biographer Richard Holmes, she engages the reader through her deep interest in and enthusiasm for her subjects and their artifacts that give them context and personality. Her discoveries become ours in what feels like real-time. I was compelled to keep reading, wondering what she (and we) would discover next."Figuring" is a profound and thoughtful treatise on the essence of life and the traces that remain once it is gone. I will revisit this book over the years because it has made an indelible mark on me.

I liked the blending of history and science and individuals and evolution of women’s roles and rights.This provides unique insight, and darned good learning, together with engaging storytelling and intertwining of historic figures of various pursuits. I feel I’m made smarter by having read it.

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