Category: Nonfiction

Elementary: The Periodic Table Explained by James M. Russell

Nonfiction

This is another book store browse find. It was in the discount section, and I ultimately decided to buy it because a friend of mine mentioned that she was taking some courses to learn more about her job, which deals with chemicals. Basically, she inspired me to learn more about what everything is made of.

The book is broken into pleasant sections. The first section is elements 1-56, where you get the name of the element, its symbol, atomic weight, atomic number, color, melting and boiling point, and when it was first identified. You are also given a brief history, additional facts, and sometimes an interesting anecdote. The next section is elements 57-71, the lanthanides. They all have the same number of electrons in the outer shell, and they have a lot of similarities so these elements aren’t given as much detail in their individual sections. They appear as the top row of that separate section you see in the periodic table. The third section is elements 73-94. The format of this section is like that of the first section, each element is discussed in greater detail. Lab created elements, those that do not exist in nature and only exist for short periods of time in a lab setting, are explained in section four. Two of these elements were only just added to the periodic table in 2011, and no new elements have been discovered or added to it since. The book concludes with a very brief section mentioning how we would go about finding additional elements. 

I learned a lot from this book. I would recommend it, but if you really need to acquire a great deal of knowledge, I would suggest getting a textbook. This is more for someone who wants to read for fun. Additionally, I am glad that I picked this because it reminded me about a book on my shelf that I haven’t read in a really long time that I now want to go back to. It might be coming soon to this blog.

Off The Clock by Laura Vanderkam

Nonfiction

I was at the mall book store having a casual browse, which is incredibly dangerous, and I saw this in the discount section. I am so happy that I bought it, because I love this book. I did not have a hard time finding a block of time in the day to fit in my daily read because I always looked forward to it. This book is very well written, well organized, and it is full of helpful tips.

Off The Clock is divided into seven sections, each describing a different way to go about making the most out of your time. I found something useful or inspiring in every chapter and I even had a few moments where I was like, wow, that is a great way to go about thinking and why have I never considered it that way before. 

The first chapter, Tend Your Garden, is about dedicating time, you don’t need to schedule every minute to make sure you have enough time to do everything you want or need to do. Chapter two, Make Life Memorable, discusses the idea that we don’t really want more time, we just want our time to be filled with moments that we remember. The third chapter, Don’t Fill Time, deals with not over scheduling yourself. Chapter four, Linger, is about enjoying the moment and not thinking about what you have to do next. The fifth chapter is titled Invest In Your Happiness, which is all about doing the important things or things that really matter first, so that you have more time in which to do things that make you happy. Chapter six, Let It Go, tries to help you in letting go of unrealistic expectations. There was a really great sentence on page 177 about relationships that I particularly liked, and I won’t even try to summarize it because it was written perfectly. The last chapter, People Are A Good Use Of Time, gives advice on how to choose who to spend your time with and why it is good to invest in people. 

I can’t wait to try implementing some of these concepts into my own life, I’m optimistic that they will be helpful. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is looking for a self help read regarding how to better manage your time. It reads like a novel rather than a self help book, which makes it a much more pleasant read than your typical guide book.

Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

Nonfiction

One of my favorite authors is Augusten Burroughs. I was fairly young the first time I read his memoir, Running with Scissors, and after finishing it I knew I had to read more of his books. I have a small collection of them, and a few more that I still need to add. It has been a long time since I read one of his books, so I thought it was time to re-read and write about his first autobiographical work.

The chapters aren’t numbered, they all have unique titles. Being a child was very different when Augusten grew up, that being the late 1960s into the 1970s. You were only required to go to school until the age of 16, it was easy to skip class, and everything seemed to be a lot less strict than it is now. Today, you absolutely would not see a 13 year old boy on a public transport bus by himself and think, oh, that’s normal, and this is probably the least concerning thing about Augustens childhood. It is incredible that child services or the police were never called on behalf of the author, because so many unusual and alarming things happened to Augusten that I find it hard to believe that no one ever noticed. 

This memoir is full of strange and distrubed characters, from the author’s alcoholic father, to his mothers mad psychiatrist. If you enjoy a crude writing style, he’s a very honest writer; nothing is sugar coated, and don’t mind if things get a little gross, definitely read this. After finishing it, you will absolutely be interested in reading the rest of Burroughs novels.

Missing 411: A Sobering Coincidence by David Paulides

Nonfiction

Missing 411: A Sobering Coincidence, isn’t a book so much as it is an accumulation of briefly summarized missing persons reports. The victims outlined in this book, the fifth in a ten part collection, are young men that disappear without a trace and are found in or near bodies of water. The author delivers the name, location, and date last seen of each victim, then gives a brief overview of the details of the case, in which you will notice some other common factors. As you read, you will note frequent mentions of missing clothes, bodies being found in areas that had been previously searched, and interviews from family and friends saying that what happened was completely out of character for the person. Oftentimes, the young men are excellent students, have good jobs, and are involved in their communities, they are not the sort of people that would have a reason to vanish. 

I don’t have much more to say about this book. If you love mysteries, you might like this book. I love mysteries, but I didn’t like this so much. I had a certain expectation before I started reading this book which was hyped up due to having watched two documentaries, Missing 411 (2017) and Missing 411: The Hunted (2019), which were adaptations of the authors other books. I highly recommend either of the documentaries over this one book, I believe you can watch them for free on YouTube. They are spooky, well made, and leave you wondering. I was looking forward to reading all of the books in the Missing 411 series, but having been so disappointed in A Sobering Coincidence, I don’t think I’m going to bother unless the books are given to me. The details of the cases themselves are interesting, but the structure of the book makes it feel like you’re reading a textbook rather than a novel.

The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food by Dan Barber – Part 4 and final thoughts

Nonfiction

The final section of this book is titled Seed. 

In the first chapter of this part we find out how Klaas, the organic farmer we met at the very beginning of the book, met his wife. It’s actually really cute and the circumstances are very fitting. I also learned about the lake effect, in which precipitation is greater near lakes and the body of water has an effect on the surrounding air. 

The majority of the rest of the section named Seed is about: seeds. Most of it is lengthy discussions about different types of grain (wheat, rice, barley). The grains that we eat now are vastly different than the grains our grandparents grew up on, and this has a lot to do with crops being grown in order to harvest the greatest amount rather than grown to create grains that have great flavor. One man mentioned that whenever growers come to him and ask for grains, they ask him what they can grow that will yield the most, not, what can I grow that will taste incredibly good?

Planting seeds that produce more product has led to not only a loss of flavor, but a lack of seed saving and landrace farming. Seed saving is the practice of saving seeds after the harvest to use for planting next season. Farmers aren’t saving seeds anymore, they buy genetically engineered seeds that promise to produce. This has led to a loss of many varieties of seeds and gives no chances for variations. Variation is important, because if you allow the seeds to grow the way they want to, a dormant gene or a new gene could pop up one day, and it might actually be better than what currently exists. Landrace farming is one way in which dormant or recessive genes have a chance to turn up. If the growing season isn’t what is expected, or it is bad, a variant could pop up that has the ability to survive in not so ideal conditions. Letting nature do this naturally is better than anything that can be created in a lab.

There is a lot of good information in this section, too much for me to go over. I feel like I learned more from reading this section, and the book in its entirety, than I did in history class. And I feel like what I learned here is more valuable than trying to learn about the presidents of the United States. 

This is a book that I am going to keep on my bookshelf. I know that there is going to be a point in the future when I have my own little garden, and I’m going to want to get it set up right. I know that there is going to be a piece of information in this book that will be helpful that I will want to review before I get started planting. I also want to go back to the Finger Lakes, where I just recently vacationed with a friend, because a lot of the places mentioned in the book happen to be right where I was. I need to go back and see the things I read about. Overall, an illuminating read. And, I only found one grammatical error, it was in the second paragraph in the very first chapter, so I’m very impressed.