New Nonfiction Books 4/21/26

Which books are you looking forward to reading?

#booksky #nonfiction #diversespines #newbooks #books

Love this!!! Thanks for sharing

2010 Literacy Signing: Your Love is My Drug YouTube video by SBTBLLC

Sixteen (!!) years ago, in 2010, I made videos trying to capture the scope, the mayhem, and the fun of RWA Literacy signings.

This was my first one, filmed (poorly!) on my cell phone and edited in my hotel room that evening:

Into the woods with Chemistry. Chemists Celebrate Earth Week. April 19-25, 2026

This year, we are celebrating the theme Into the Woods with Chemistry by highlighting the essential role of trees and forests in building a sustainable world, during #ChemistsCelebrateEarthWeek, April 19–25, 2026.

#CCEW #ChemistryofTrees #chemsky 🧪

Did you really have to call me
Out like that

Don't be shy to take on a little two-week side project. These five months will be the most precious three years of your academic journey.

Ohhh I missed that. My bad.

I definitely agree. Podcasts are probably up there too.

I started making
Tiktoks three years ago for this reason but they are sooooo much work. I really only have the bandwidth for one a month or so

Omg I love this—also wondering if you’ve shared this lab anywhere?

BTW in case you were wondering, based on our spectrophotometry lab, the concentration of Brilliant Blue (aka blue dye #1) in blue Powerade is about 4 µM, or 3.1 milligrams of blue dye per 32 oz. bottle. If you get "Fierce" blue, the concentration of dye is about double.

Hard hitting science.

I realize I’m late to this piece—just finished reading it.

I’m wondering where you see science TikTokers fitting in here because many are reaching huge audiences

I’m thinking about folks like Kyne Santos.

I haven't heard of this one but the cover has me intrigued!!

Screenshot of Bad Bunny book PFKNR.

What’s everyone reading this weekend?

I just started P FKN R and it’s so good so far!

#booksky #reading #amreading

There is a very popular “hard sci fi” novel turned movie in theaters now that takes great pains to explain how selection experiments on microbes caused them to evolve the ability to travel through an airtight material, and as an evolutionary biologist it’s hilarious.

If you want a scifi novel that gets biology of crickets correct:

STRANGE LOVE by Ann Aguirre is really good!

don't mind me RTing every single one of these haha

Also the "nitrogen sensitive bacteria" or whatever. Let's make something sensitive to one of the most thermodynamically and abundant molecules in the universe. Okay.

Just use an alloy of actual real metals. Some have fun names: niobium or molybdenum or whatever! That sounds exotic enough without having to make something laughable.

To me, this is as magic as the gravity on spaceships or faster than light travel in either Star Wars or Star Trek. It's not based in any form of reality.

Xenon compounds, while "stable", are not things you'd want to touch with a bare hand and there's no reason to think they ever will be.

This is what took me out of both the book and the movie for Project Hail Mary. The choice to have xenon as the building blocks for the alien stuff just doesn't make any sense chemically in any sense.

Sure, xenon can make bonds and form (somewhat) stable complexes. But to make a space ship?

For example, I was reading a novel that takes pains to explain interstellar travel is a (more or less) realistic way, but then talks about "polymerizing water".

How would one polymerize water? That really doesn't make any sense chemically. Is it just polyoxides?

It's Friday afternoon (somewhere) so time for a take.

One of my issues with what is often called "hard sci fi" is that it mainly focuses on accuracy in physics but will neglect basic chemistry (I'm sure it also neglects other subjects like biology and the like as well, but let me stay in my lane).

I was so annoyed about wrong information on the internet that I decided to make a video about how non-trinary neutrinos move and what quantum tunneling is. Andy Weir may be more bestselling than me but I'm more expert lol 🧪⚛️

Buy my book to learn more! 💙📚
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/746817...

For the United States, absolutely not. Brains have cognitive biases about faces.

The worst.

Like maybe let’s provide folks with housing and food and a living wage and turn the outlets back on?? Just a thought

So now if you’re waiting for a train at Union station and your device is low you’re out of luck.

I hate this so much.

Someone (I’m assuming in the city of Denver) decided it would be a great idea to turn off the power to all of the outlets at Union Station since heaven forbid “the wrong people” might use the outlets there.

Can you imagine if they did that at an airport?!

Like WTAF!!!

Are any NIH grants going out the door? Has anyone received funding in 2026? #Chemsky 🧪

🥳🥳🥳

A screenshot of the linked pdf showing the hardcover bestsellers in fiction and nonfiction, with an arrow pointing to an image of my book cover

THE EDGE OF SPACE-TIME DEBUTED AT #9 ON THE INDIE BESTSELLER LIST!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHH!!!!!

What I love most about this is that it means people are supporting indie bookstores ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
www.bookweb.org/sites/defaul...

Whew!! As someone who has been lifting since 2002… it’s very much not the norm 🙃