Science and Inquiry discussion

For July 2013 we will be reading A Planet of Viruses.

You can use this thread to post questions, comments, and reviews, at any time.

Oh Good! I'll be interested in what others think. I'll try to skim back through it.

Interestingly I just noticed Carl post this on G+ .. the kindle version has been dropped in price (no doubt due to us reading it! :)):

"Kindle has slashed the price of my book A Planet of Viruses. Only $3.42! (In the US, at least.)"

http://www.amazon.com/A-Planet-Viruse...

Great! Picked it up on my Kindle.

Me too. Thanks for the tip. :)

$8.70 in Australia, must be the freight charges......

I'm joining in on this month's read. The topic of viruses is interesting, and it doesn't hurt that the book is actually quite short ;) So I will start as soon as possible and report back my thoughts when I'm done.

I voted for this book because I've been wanting to read it for a year or more, but also because it was short and gave me a chance of actually reading it in a reasonable time.

I really enjoyed it. It was well written and informative. My biggest objection was that it was too short. I would have liked several more chapters. Not about anything in particular; it's just that I was disappointed when it ended.

I felt a bit the same Betsy

I've read A planet of viruses, and I agree with both Betsy and Kenny - it's a short read. Too short for me, to be honest. It contained general information about a host of "most popular" viruses and while that was nice, it didn't bring anything new to the table. I guess that's just my case, given that I've had a course on viruses as a part of my Master's program, but still.

The book is well-written, though, and I would have probably enjoyed it more if I had read it when I was younger.

I've not finished it yet Martina, and while virology is new to me, I have enjoyed the books we've read previously that take us to the cutting edge of the field, as was the case for Mitochondria for example. I assume the origin of viruses has questions that push the limits of geological and biological knowledge?

This book seemed like a kind of mini-textbook, short and very fact filled. I especially enjoyed the overviews of research into various viruses, but it all left me hungry for more. After some of the longer books this group has tackled, the combination of brevity and clarity was a relief.

Here's a new article by Zimmer, expanding on the megaviruses mentioned in the book:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/sci...

Great collection of essays on Viruses. Interestingly I never paid attention to the number of pages that book has and was expecting it to be a huge science textbook. I was surprised when I went and picked up the book from the library. It was about 100 pages. The look and feel of the book was great. Just like Cosmos. Finished the book within few hours and I am still feeling a little obnoxious.

I enjoyed the book. Although brief, I would recommend it for anyone new to the world of viruses. It is a collection of essays not a medical/science book which might explain why it is so short. It added to my knowledge base.

Interesting new article by Zimmer about the possibility that "Perhaps our minds are partly the way they are today thanks to an infection our ancestors got a few millions of years ago."

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.c...

Interesting! Thanks Betsy!