Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World

Author: Mark Miodownik

Genre: Non-fiction, Science

Rating: 4/5

Verdict: Very awe-inspiring book on the science behind the common things and materials without which we cannot imagine our daily life. 

After reading an array of self help and personal development books, I was very bored and my mind was overloaded with information from those books and I wanted to switch tracks and listen to something interesting and fun to learn about. This book was a perfect antidote to that and I simply loved it. 

It if a very well written book that keeps the reader so engaged with stories around each material we use in daily life and it is like having a conversation with the author. The stories shared by the author were very entertaining and even though this is a science book, the author kept it at just the right level of information without going too deep into the internals which made it very interesting to read and easy to understand. My favorite chapters were about chocolate and graphite. I look at paper around me and the plate that I eat in very differently now. 

I am glad I chose to read this book. It was a fascinating read and I can't wait to read other books by this author. 

Book Review: THE GENE: An Intimate History

Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Genre: Science, NonFiction
Rating: 4/5
Verdict: An incredibly well-written book with a comprehensive history on genetics.

This book was Genetics 101 for me. I knew very little about genes, heredity and genetic engineering before I picked up this book. The author takes us through the history of genes starting from Mendel and Darwin through Watson and finally right up to China announcing the first genetically modified human embryo. It was fascinating to read how much we have advanced in genetics in the last 40 years. It is a really well researched book and takes a good amount of refreshing of high school biology to absorb all the facts but it was a real page turner overall. Mukherjee also gets us thinking about the moral dilemmas we face today about genetic testing and gene therapy. I paused for a few minutes when I read about the perils that scientific advancements can and are causing today. It is quite a challenge writing about science for all kinds of audience but this was an amazingly clearly written book. It was a real slog to finish it due to the sheer volume of the book, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading about life itself. The quotes at the beginning of each chapter and the diagrams and pictures are a treasure. I now look forward to reading his Pulitzer prize winning book on the biography of cancer.