Friday, April 29, 2011

STIRring up religion and science: Charles and Emma

STIR moves to May with Charles and Emma: The Darwin's Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman. Charles and Emma is a well-researched biography of the Darwins' marriage, written at the "Young Adult" level. As I am looking things up about it, I am becoming ever more anxious to go home and read it.
The proximate reasons that Molly selected Charles and Emma was that she and I both foresee hectic months (she's moving, among other things), and, among the many thought-provoking books on her shelves, Charles and Emma, with its YA size, seemed the one we would most likely delve into and quickly finish.
I can only speculate on the ultimate reasons that Molly had C&E on her shelf and thought we'd both like to read it in the first place, but imagine these are some of the reasons: the book is a love story about a couple who brought very different ideas, but lots of respect, to their marriage; the book treats science, religion and family life as compatible pursuits; the book has been critically very well received, winning many awards and making lists of "best YA for adults" and the like; and the book starts out with an actual image of Charles Darwin's marriage pro and con list.
I imagine that C&E would be interesting to many of my readers (Beth, Jenny, Prairie Quilter, Chateau, all the bio profs, perhaps even SalSis) and it widely available at libraries (okay, I base this on the fact that it is the first STIR book that I have been able to check out in my town). Let me know if you'd like to join the discussion.

By the way, Jenny and I are starting to discuss April's My Stroke of Insight. If you read it, let me know and I'll loop you into the discussions. Janet is working on the June selection and Tracy has picked Juno's Daughters by Lise Saffran for September.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I just finished C & E, as I caught a cold and was in bed a lot today. I realize that you probably won't read it for a while as it sounds like the previous month's book's discussion is just getting underway...
Thinking of you and hoping that you are feeling well, physically and emotionally.

Sparkling Squirrel said...

Just finished it yesterday. I'll be happy to discuss it with you, although I'll wait for more general discussion as I think we'll have other readers joining us.

Beth said...

I finished C & E as well. And only read Fingersmith last month...