Bookworm Moment

My contribution for my ongoing obsession for reading will be many 'Bookworm Moments' where I can rant or rave about books. Pretty self-explanatory.

Last week I read 'Obsessive Genius - The Inner World of Marie Curie.' by Barbara Goldsmith. I wasn't looking forward to cracking this book open because I had just finished a very dry biography about another woman. I figured Science + biography = ZZZZZZ. I was VERY pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed reading this! Of course there were some paragraphs that detailed some scientific procedures that I had no idea what they were talking about (zooom, over my head) but I learned a lot about radium and it's early discovery. It also was a pretty quick read (about 220 pages) and very well written. I would highly recommend this. Granted it is a little depressing, I don't know many people who get excited about reading about someone with depression problems, inability to show love, suffering from radiation poisoning and witnessing the same in a loved one (her husband actually got run over by a cab which probably was for the best considering he would have had a long & painful death due to the poisoning). It also was very interesting how the public reacted to radium's discovery. They pretty much put it in everything: drinking water (which caused a man to suffer a horrible death after drinking a glass every day for several years; he got cancer in the jaw and basically it disintegrated. umm scary?), makeup (look how luminous her face is! No...really) and many other things. The Curies warned all their employees and many others after seeing rats die from radiation poisoning but for some reason couldn't link their health problems to their handling of the substance (with bare hands I might add).

Long story short, if you are looking for an interesting book that will actually increase your useful knowledge I would recommend this.

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