The Browser, one of my favorite sites for gathering interesting reads I can wield in my perpetual battle on behalf of procrastination, has a great feature calledFiveBooks. From time to time, they ask a writer to select five of their favorite books on some particular topic, and then interview them about their choices. I was honored to be interviewed for today’s FiveBooks (just after Ian McEwan–yikes!). I chose the theme of “the strangeness of life” and then scanned my bookshelves for some favorite books that deal with it in one way or another. If you have any interest in good writing on natural history (including human natural history), I’ll wager you’ll like them all. Check it out.

Originally published April 28, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.

Over at the science-fiction/science web site io9, you can find an excerpt fromA Planet of Viruses. There’s a lot about viruses that seems tailor-made for science fiction fans, but I have to say the folks at io9 zeroed in on the sci-fi-est of them all: a virus that can make rabbits grow horns, turn people into trees, and make human cells outlive their owners. Check it out!

Originally published April 27, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.

My new book A Planet of Viruses is officially published on May 1. But if you’d like to get a taste of the book, pay a visit to Audubon Magazine’s web site, where they’ve got an excerpt.

The book is a linked series of essays. For each essay, I picked a single virus, but I chose ones that allowed me to explore a big idea in the world of virology. In the Audubon excerpt, for example, the virus is West Nile. As viruses go, West Nile is not all that dangerous. But its story is fascinating. West Nile’s tale is the classic American immigrant saga, from its arrival in New York City to its eventual spread across the country. Check it out.

Originally published April 25, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.

The Wall Street Journal recently asked me to review a new book called First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth. Astrobiology is a tricky subject to write about these days. It’s intensely exciting, despite the fact that its main object of study–life on other planets–has yet to be discovered.

I’ve given some thought to how we journalists should cover such a paradoxical science. We shouldn’t dismiss it outright, because astrobiologists have discovered fascinating things about life here on Earth, even if they have yet to find aliens. Yet we shouldn’t feel obligated to pump up every claim about the possibility of life elsewhere. We should be content to paint a portrait of the scientific process–including the intense debates–in all its gorey detail.

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