First of all, it's been some time I haven't posted anything but believe me I am incredibly busy reading and writing. I am preparing for my Ph.D. qualifying exam and there are tons of requirements such as writing a research progress (hopefully will be my first paper), research proposal (I wrote 5 of them) and answering some general inorganic chemistry questions in addition to a specific topic that I am given.
To brush up some of the fundamental knowledge in inorganic chemistry, I skimmed through the book that is mentioned in the title and I realized that I've never said anything about this book. I think this book is by far the best inorganic chemistry textbook. I was taught by Miessler and Tarr's book (actually several times) and while it's a good book too, I think it's not appealing to an undergraduate student. There are already few of us who are interested in inorganic chemistry and that book doesn't help much to the ones that needed to be converted:)
Housecroft's book is an excellent source in terms of giving background and relevant information and explaining the topics in detail. You usually don't get lost and there are literally tons of recent articles cited in the book so that you can find really good journal references. Moreover, there are these extra articles in the end of each chapter and almost all of them urges you to do more research on the subject. They are really well written and almost always about really interesting topic. Colors and nicely produced crystal structures also help you to see some molecules on the paper rather than reading a long and boring name.
I don't really know what else I can say or how I can explain how much I like this book, but if I ever teach IC (hopefully never), I am definitely making this book the textbook. If I ever meet one of the authors, I am going to thank them personally.
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