Hi I have decided to give chemistry another shot (it didn't take so well way back in high school). My main interest is for reading up on brain chemistry and pharmacology.
I currently have a textbook on inorganic chemistry [Introduction to Organic Chemistry 3rd edition: William Brown.Thomas Poon] that I picked up and am working my way through - well I have made it through chapter 1 at least [Covalent Bonding and Shapes of Molecules]. And am also making use of The UC Davis (Organic) ChemWiki.
So after finishing the chapter today I decided to take a break and play around with an experiment I sore on youtube to make copper nanoparticles using copper sulphate and ascorbic acid. In the video he was pretty lenient with the measurements [1g sulphate, 5g ascorbic, 200ml water] and I wanted to scale the reaction up a bit so I had a go at trying to figure what the reaction was so I could get the true ratio... Obviously that duck wouldn't fly (I am only just starting on chapter 2 after all) so I just went ahead and multiplied his recipe by a factor of 5.
So where I was going with that last paragraph is that even after I finish reading the organic chem textbook I'm not seeing how that's going to help me with something like $CuSO_4.5H_2O$ since i'ts got nothing to do with carbon. Should I put the organic book to the side and start of with something like the (Inorganic) ChemWiki? Is it necessary to go through both of them or would it be enough to learn one subject and fill the gaps as there encountered [this exercise is a personal mission - I don't envision any possible future where I become a full fledged working chemist]? Better yet are there any broader texts that teaches a unified chemistry that doesn't make artificial distinctions? Or should I go ahead and invent my own syllabus?
Any short-cuts would be greatly appreciated - I basically just want to get to a point where I can read a wikipedia page on neurotransmitter X, psychoactive Y, or food ingredient Z and be able to comprehend fully what is going on.