There seems to be a theme here: viruses

So, as I mentioned before, I brought about 30 books with me when I returned to Buenos Aires from my short visit to Los Angeles in June. I had become painfully aware of the lack of quality English language books here and really wanted something to take me away from the tv and the computer.

What's funny is that of all the books I borrowed from friends (my stash of books is buried deep in my sister's garage, I didn't want to go excavating), I ended up with a large number who's main topic includes viruses.

In my last post about books, Book Reports, I talked about The Hot Zone which was about horrible viruses like Ebola, and about Blindness which wasn't actually about a virus, but about an unexplainable (fictional) bout or blindness that spread like a virus. Anyhow, here are two more:

Flu, by Gina Kolata: This was a great medical history book (thanks Ed, source of all these virus books). It is about the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918, a horrible worldwide tragedy that is weirdly absent from most of our history books. Did you, dear blog reader, know about it? I sure didn't. Why should we, you ask? Well, it was a strain of the "common" flu and worldwide it killed an estimated 40 million people in the span of a few months! It killed half a million people in the US alone, and 25% of the US population was sick. I found the history of the pandemic the most interesting part of the book. The rest of the book is about the long and ongoing efforts to understand the 1918 flu and prevent a similar outbreak. There were some parts that went way too much (for me at least) into telling the life stories of the some of the characters involved in these scientific endeavors, but it was still pretty interesting overall.

Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson:Despite my geeky reputation, I don't really read science fiction. I think it has a lot to do with a cheap book design that seems to be part and parcel of the genre—if Ed hadn't lent me this one, I would have never considered reading it due to the cover design that screams, "I am book number 54 of a long series being cranked out by a hack sci-fi writer." But, you know, don't judge a book by it's cover and all that.

This book was really fun and interesting. Yes, viruses were on order again, but this time starting with a computer virus and then branching into a really broad discussion of biological/linguistic viruses that dealt a lot with the aquisition and development of languages. All that deep shit was mixed in with a wild, near future, sort of cyberpunk world where nation states had pretty much broken down. Actually, it isn't so much that they had broken down, but more that multinational corporations had risen to equal or superior status, both monetarily and legally. It was all comical but still making dark commentary on the rise of corporations.

The book was originally conceived of as a graphic novel, but somehow that all broke down and it ended up as just a novel. It's easy to imagine this book illustrated, in fact lots of the scenes and "inventions" make you want to see this book as a movie. It was a fun read.