鈥淩ather chemical鈥� is how Mary Archer describes her current reading list. She
sounds surprised when she says this, even though she鈥檚 a chemist at Imperial
College, London. Archer has just finished reading The Eighth Day of Creation by
Horace Judson (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1996). She says it鈥檚 a
鈥済ossipy masterpiece鈥� about the history of molecular biology, first published
three decades ago. She鈥檚 now into Dean Overman鈥檚 A Case Against Accident and
Self-Organization (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), which argues for evolution
by design, and Good Benito (Sceptre, 1996), a novel written by Alan Lightman
about the emotional troubles of a young physicist.
One favourite is Marcel Proust鈥檚 A La Recherche du Temps Perdu
(Remembrance
of Things Past, Faber, 2000) which she found a 鈥渞evelation鈥�, though it took her
three years to get through. She would reread it if life were long enough. Does
she read novels by her husband, Lord Jeffrey Archer? 鈥淎lways, and always before
publication,鈥� she says. Is she allowed to be critical? 鈥淢ost of the commas are
尘颈苍别.鈥�