Review:
Miodownik discusses a wide variety of liquids - their molecular structures, properties, and ways we use them - using a flight from London to San Francisco to help guide the book's organizational structure.
The first chapter, which deals heavily with kerosene, had me thinking "this is exactly what anxiety feels like." The pre-flight safety briefing had just begun, and all Miodownik could think about was the tens of thousands of gallons of kerosene on board. That topic inspired him to write about wicking, surface tension, and other topics, but, in the end, everything circled back to kerosene. It reminded me, keenly, of unsuccessful efforts I've made in the past to yank my thoughts away from whatever I was anxiously obsessing about.
Thankfully, later chapters didn't feel quite so intense. Miodownik covered a lot of topics and different sorts of liquids, but somehow it always seemed like he spent just the right amount of time on everything. Because the book used one particular flight to guide its structure, it felt more focused than it might otherwise have been, because, in the end, everything led back to the various liquids Miodownik encountered or dealt with on the plane.
All in all, this was enjoyable read, even if Miodownik's repeated mentions of Susan, the woman sitting next to him on the flight, felt a bit weird (to be fair, she wasn't quite some random person, and he did encounter her again after the flight).
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