Get me a cute praying mantis robot who can also kick ass STAT | Dead Space by Kali Wallace

I finally moved! Feat. my new couch and blanket, which was handknitted by yours truly.

Amazon

Hester Marley used to have a plan for her life. But when a catastrophic attack left her injured, indebted, and stranded far from home, she was forced to take a dead-end security job with a powerful mining company in the asteroid belt. Now she spends her days investigating petty crimes to help her employer maximize its profits. She’s surprised to hear from an old friend and fellow victim of the terrorist attack that ruined her life—and that surprise quickly turns to suspicion when he claims to have discovered something shocking about their shared history and the tragedy that neither of them can leave behind.

Before Hester can learn more, her friend is violently murdered at a remote asteroid mine. Hester joins the investigation to find the truth, both about her friend’s death and the information he believed he had uncovered. But catching a killer is only the beginning of Hester’s worries, and she soon realizes that everything she learns about her friend, his fellow miners, and the outpost they call home brings her closer to revealing secrets that very powerful and very dangerous people would rather keep hidden in the depths of space. – Goodreads

TL;DR: A solid and accessible foray into hard science fiction with a likeable main character and innovative technological concepts.

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

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

Title: Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World
Author: Mark Miodownik
Genre: science, nonfiction
Release: 2014
Blurb (Goodreads): An adventure deep inside the everyday materials that surround us, packed with surprising stories and fascinating science. Why is glass see-through? What makes elastic stretchy? Why does a paper clip bend? Why does any material look and behave the way it does? These are the sorts of questions that Mark Miodownik a globally-renowned materials scientist has spent his life exploring In this book he examines the materials he encounters in a typical morning, from the steel in his razor and the graphite in his pencil to the foam in his sneakers and the concrete in a nearby skyscraper.

5 out of 5 topazes

One of my New Year’s reading resolutions is to read more nonfiction. I actually love nonfiction, but I just don’t read enough of it. I got this book around, oh, 2015, maybe even 2014 – not for myself, but for my sister. She never read it, and I haven’t either…until now as part of my regimen to read more broadly this year.

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