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tannat

Tannat

Not so much a blog; just lots of books

Currently reading

The Grace Year
Kim Liggett
The New Voices of Science Fiction
Jamie Wahls, Sarah Pinkser, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Rebecca Roanhorse, S. Qiouyi Lu, Darcie Little Badger, Kelly Robson, Nino Cipri, Amal El-Mohtar, Sam J. Miller, E. Lily Yu, Alice Sola Kim, Suzanne Palmer, Alexander Weinstein, Rich Larson
Progress: 13%
Engineering Animals: How Life Works
Alan Mcfadzean, Mark Denny
Progress: 125/314pages
The Rise of Yeast: How the Sugar Fungus Shaped Civilization
Nicholas P. Money
Conservation of Shadows
Yoon Ha Lee
Progress: 22%
Le premier jour
Marc Levy
Progress: 180/496pages
Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Penguin Classics)
Herman Melville
Manifold: Time
Stephen Baxter, Chris Schluep
Progress: 99/480pages
The Long War
Stephen Baxter, Terry Pratchett
Progress: 68/501pages

Reading progress update: I've read 90 out of 226 pages.

The Last Alchemist in Paris: & Other Curious Tales from Chemistry - Lars Ohrstrom

Here is an example from the middle of the chapter on aluminum that may help explain why I've been calling this book "scattered":

The story of how Charles Hall in Ohio, US, and Paul Héroult in Normandy, France, independently transformed the metal that was once used for the cutlery of the most important guests at the court of Napoléon III to the metal we use for soft-drink cans today is fascinating, at least for a chemist, but has been told many times.

 

We will, however, dwell a little on the method itself, as it demonstrates some important principles of chemistry, and it explains such disparate facts as why there are aluminium plants on Iceland but no bauxite mines, and why a B17 Flying Fortress ended up in a bog in western Sweden on 24 July 1943.

See?