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astrocourt's review
4.0
The book: Tweeting the Universe: Very Short Courses on Very Big Ideas
The author: Marcus Chown and Govert Schilling
The subject: 140 chapters, each dedicated to a scientific topic, explaining the topic in tweet-length bites.
Why I chose it: I like science and Twitter, and also think that trying to write something as briefly and succinctly as possible can help you to see if you truly understand it.
The rating: Four out of five stars
What I thought of it: First of all, this isn't quite as impressive as shrinking an entire topic down into one tweet; instead, each topic is covered by a series of tweets, with no sentences spread over multiple tweets. This helps strike a good balance between being too brief and missing all the details and just writing prose. The authors don't use too many shortcuts either (such as writing words as letters or abbreviating words), which helps make it more readable.
In fact, I found this book incredibly clear despite its novel style. I think it would be a good read for anyone who needs to learn how to be concise when writing about science, in conjunction with lots of practice. Some people may find the choppy writing difficult to get along with, but since I'm used to how Twitter works I had no problem with it. There were a lot of interesting tidbits of information that I bookmarked for later investigation and reference. I think my favourite chapter was number 98, "Where did the Big Bang happen?". I really liked the analogy used for the expansion of the universe: raisins in an infinite cake!
This was a fun book and definitely a unique contribution to the world of popular science. It does cover mainly astronomy topics, so further books with the same style but covering different topics would be great. It could even be spread out into a series.
Just one more thing: Here are the authors' Twitter accounts: Marcus Chown's account (his tweets are repetitive, but interesting if you follow him for a short time), and Govert Schilling's Dutch and English accounts.
The author: Marcus Chown and Govert Schilling
The subject: 140 chapters, each dedicated to a scientific topic, explaining the topic in tweet-length bites.
Why I chose it: I like science and Twitter, and also think that trying to write something as briefly and succinctly as possible can help you to see if you truly understand it.
The rating: Four out of five stars
What I thought of it: First of all, this isn't quite as impressive as shrinking an entire topic down into one tweet; instead, each topic is covered by a series of tweets, with no sentences spread over multiple tweets. This helps strike a good balance between being too brief and missing all the details and just writing prose. The authors don't use too many shortcuts either (such as writing words as letters or abbreviating words), which helps make it more readable.
In fact, I found this book incredibly clear despite its novel style. I think it would be a good read for anyone who needs to learn how to be concise when writing about science, in conjunction with lots of practice. Some people may find the choppy writing difficult to get along with, but since I'm used to how Twitter works I had no problem with it. There were a lot of interesting tidbits of information that I bookmarked for later investigation and reference. I think my favourite chapter was number 98, "Where did the Big Bang happen?". I really liked the analogy used for the expansion of the universe: raisins in an infinite cake!
This was a fun book and definitely a unique contribution to the world of popular science. It does cover mainly astronomy topics, so further books with the same style but covering different topics would be great. It could even be spread out into a series.
Just one more thing: Here are the authors' Twitter accounts: Marcus Chown's account (his tweets are repetitive, but interesting if you follow him for a short time), and Govert Schilling's Dutch and English accounts.
chrisafiskon's review
2.0
It may have worked as a Twitter account but it doesn't work as a book. Informative but boring and the broken English in order to remain under 140 characters were distracting and annoying.
svarnyp's review against another edition
3.0
EN/CZ
I was surprised how tweeted science managed to be crammed with information. However, I sometimes the tweets were a little short. Today, with the 280 characters, they could be sufficiently verbose for a more convenient reading experience. In general, it was a great form of acquiring scientific knowledge with sufficient context. I could pick up this book basically in any spot and enjoy an exciting fact about the universe. I did not like the repetition of some information bits, and also I would prefer to have the list of the questions that start the tweet feed and not just the general topics.
CZ: Kniha je výtečná pro libovolné dávkování úžasných znalostí o vesmíru. Avšak, i když obdivuji překladatele omezeného rozsahem tweetů, tak občas je krátká forma dost na úkor čitelnosti (ale ne srozumitelnosti obsahu). Je výtečné, že člověk najde mnoho zajímavých fakt na jednom místě a bez zbytečné omáčky, avšak s dostatečným kontextem. Jako odpočinkové či inspirující čtení mohu doporučit. Pro lepší využití by však kniha měla mít nejen seznam témat, ale i seznam položených otázek, které uvozují seznam tweetů.
I was surprised how tweeted science managed to be crammed with information. However, I sometimes the tweets were a little short. Today, with the 280 characters, they could be sufficiently verbose for a more convenient reading experience. In general, it was a great form of acquiring scientific knowledge with sufficient context. I could pick up this book basically in any spot and enjoy an exciting fact about the universe. I did not like the repetition of some information bits, and also I would prefer to have the list of the questions that start the tweet feed and not just the general topics.
CZ: Kniha je výtečná pro libovolné dávkování úžasných znalostí o vesmíru. Avšak, i když obdivuji překladatele omezeného rozsahem tweetů, tak občas je krátká forma dost na úkor čitelnosti (ale ne srozumitelnosti obsahu). Je výtečné, že člověk najde mnoho zajímavých fakt na jednom místě a bez zbytečné omáčky, avšak s dostatečným kontextem. Jako odpočinkové či inspirující čtení mohu doporučit. Pro lepší využití by však kniha měla mít nejen seznam témat, ale i seznam položených otázek, které uvozují seznam tweetů.
chrisafiskon's review against another edition
2.0
It may have worked as a Twitter account but it doesn't work as a book. Informative but boring and the broken English in order to remain under 140 characters were distracting and annoying.