Stacking the Shelves

Posted June 24, 2017 by Nicky in General / 13 Comments

Good morning, folks! I’ve spent this week away at a residential school learning lab skills, which was awesome but means I’ve hardly had any time for blog stuff. However, look at the bacteria I made! They’re antibiotic resistant and fluorescent under UV light.

Photo of a petri dish with fluorescing bacterial cultures.

Note: for the concerned, which seems to happen more than I expected, it’s a proper lab with disposal procedures and so on. All the samples have been autoclaved by now, my lab coats have both been washed hot enough to denature anything from the lab, and the antibiotic resistance conferred on these bacteria is common outside the lab already; even if these were introduced into the wild, they wouldn’t do any harm.

In case that didn’t move you, here’s the now-traditional picture of my bunnies, as I’m still away from them:

Photo of Hulk and Breakfast, my bunnies; Hulk is grooming Breakfast.

But I’m not away for much longer! I’ll be back with them on Tuesday. Anyway, back to the books!

Received to review:

Cover of Killing Is My Business by Adam Christopher

Yay, a new Adam Christopher book! I’d say gimme, but they have!

Bought:

Cover of A Crack in Creation by Jennifer Doudna

This is about the gene editing tool, CRISPR, that I would maybe one day like to work with. Jennifer Doudna is one of the two authors of the paper that first talked about using CRISPR for gene editing, so this is going to be fascinating.

Read this week:

Cover of The Making of the Fittest by Sean B. Carroll Cover of Incognito by David Eagleman Cover of 15 Million Degrees by Lucie Green Cover of The Vaccine Race by Meredith Wadman Cover of The Emperor's Railroad by Guy Haley

Sneak peek at ratings:

Four stars to: The Vaccine Race and The Emperor’s Railroad.
Three stars to: The Making of the Fittest, Incognito and 15 Million Degrees.

Reviews posted this week:

Cold-Forged Flame, by Marie Brennan. I think I’d have enjoyed this more if the first book had been fresher in my mind. I love the world, and Ree, but the characters didn’t always click with me in this one. 3/5 stars
Pavlov’s Dogs and Schrodinger’s Cat, by Rom Harré. Dodges the ethical issues which would’ve made the book more interesting to me. 2/5 stars
The Shambling Guide to New York City, by Mur Lafferty. So much fun! And not gimmicky in the way I’d feared. 4/5 stars
Death Before Wicket, by Kerry Greenwood. Fun as ever, but definitely missable. 3/5 stars
Saturn’s Children, by Charles Stross. Way oversexualised and rapey. Consciously so, and not in a way that celebrates the rapiness, but that doesn’t mean I liked it. 2/5 stars
The Ghost Train to New Orleans, by Mur Lafferty. A fun follow-up. Zoe can be a bit annoying at times in this one, but it’s a solid story for my money. 4/5 stars
In Search of the Multiverse, by John Gribbin. Actually made more aspects of quantum physics and string theory make sense to me! 3/5 stars

Other posts:

Top Ten Tuesday: Series I’ve Been Meaning to Read.

Worth noting:

I’m very conscious that most people are not here for non-fic reviews and that I’ve been posting a lot of them. I suspect that’s why some followers have already unsubscribed. That’s cool if you want to; I’ve never made a secret of being a rather eclectic reader and prone to going through stages, but if you jumped on during a different stage it could be pretty annoying to find me switching gears. I get it. But at the moment I’m going to try and mitigate it a bit by spreading out my non-fic reviews more. For the next couple of weeks at least, that’ll probably mean no new reviews on days when other posts are going up, i.e. Saturdays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

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13 responses to “Stacking the Shelves

  1. So, basically, you are working on antibiotica resistant bacteria in order to see if there is any other way to cure people? Or just to see how the process of the mutation works? I think it’s fascinating, even if I’m not very knowledgable when it comes to science, myself 😀
    Killing is My Business looks fairly creepy! I hope you’ll enjoy it, Nikki.
    Have a great weekend and happy reading.
    Lexxie @ (un)Conventional Bookviews recently posted…Weekend Wrap-up #192 – SummerMy Profile

    • I got into doing it a couple of years ago, and I’ve been reading more and more non-fic as time goes on! I just love finding out new stuff…

  2. So you’re the one who is going to cause the apocalypse with your bacteria pet things?! *grins* As for your reading tastes, you have to read what you enjoy and feel in the mood for. Heck, my blog has zombie phases that certainly don’t appeal to everyone! I’m cool with visiting you whatever you are reading!
    chucklesthescot recently posted…Chuckles Weekend RoundupMy Profile

    • Well, if my bacteria cause a problem, at least I know off the bat which antibiotics definitely won’t work!

      Thanks. <3 It's been a bit discouraging watching the numbers drop. but some people are here for reviews and some people are here because they like me, and the former are totally right to go off if I'm no longer useful!

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