What Are You Reading - Science Edition

“Now it is clear that anyone working with rocket fuels is outstandingly mad. I don’t mean garden-variety crazy or a merely raving lunatic. I mean a record-shattering exponent of far-out insanity.”

I read Ignition!: An information history of liquid rocket propellants a couple months ago. It's about the history of the development of liquid rocket fuels in the 1940s-50s. If you're interested in the chemistry behind how rockets work, I highly recommend it. It's informative, while managing to stay readable to anyone who's taken a High School chemistry class. Some sections get more technical, but anything you can't infer from context clues can be easily googled. He has a very laid-back writing style, and there's funny anecdotes peppered throughout the entire book.

An example, and one of my favorite passages, describes a chemical that is particularly dangerous:

”It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”

I just finished The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality by Julie Sondra Decker. It's not an explicitly scientific text and is instead written to be a layperson's introductory guide to asexuality. It's the ideal book for someone like myself who was interested but not well-versed in the identity. I understood it only in the most cursory way prior to reading the book, and the book's explanations helped me understand the richness and nuance that can go into identifying as asexual--from differing romantic orientations to "gray" aces. The book also boldly affirms what any minority individual wants: to be treated as themselves and not pathologized, patronized, or put under a microscope.

One book I like to come back from time to time is Time Reborn by Lee Smolin

Smolin argues for what he calls a revolutionary view that time is real, in contrast to existing scientific orthodoxy which holds that time is merely a "stubbornly persistent illusion" (Einstein's words). Smolin hypothesizes that the very laws of physics are not fixed, but that they actually evolve over time

Even if you end up disagreeing with the author the book is very well written, easy to follow, and with a lot of interesting thoughts.

Not really one book, but the "Essential Knowledge" series by MIT Press is really recommendable. There are books about a variety of topics and for me it strikes a great balance between being understandable for someone without any knowledge in the area, but still not simplifying too much.
PS: I got a bunch of them really cheap on humble bundle, so look out for deals!

I'm reading The Soul of a New Machine. It's surprisingly good.

It gives some valuable insight in the early computer days and the teams that built those computers. You get to see the human side. I get more and more respect for them as I progress through the book.

Uncle Tungsten by the late and great Oliver Sachs. A memoir of his life as a boy in WWII Britain threaded into a chemistry-oriented tour of the elements. This goes well with Asimov's excellent The Search for the Elements.

I've been talking a lot about Linguistics books that I've read/am reading on ~books threads, so I'll mention one that I'm planning to read: Construction Grammar and its Application to English by Martin Hilpert. I recall reading positive feedback on this, and Hilpert's youtube channel is full of great informative content, so I trust this book's authority.