La folle histoire des virus – Tania Louis

Thoughts: La folle histoire des virus outlines what we know about viruses, and how we came to know it. Near the end of the book, there’s a nice discussion about the question of whether viruses are alive or not, which I appreciated. I read it as part of my effort to improve my French comprehension, and I feel that, more than with any of the other French-language books I’ve read, I came away from La folle histoire des virus with a handful of useful words and expressions that I can use in other situations (i.e., not only vocabulary related to viruses!).

Louis, Tania. 2020. La folle histoire des virus. HumenSciences.

Some vocabulary highlights:

• désormais: currently, as of now - something wasn’t the case in the past, but it is the case at the moment and will be indefinitely into the future.
• auparavant: earlier, before then - something was the case in the past, but at a certain specified moment, it ceased to be the case, and is expected to continue not to be the case indefinitely.
• au fur et à mesure: describes an assembly-line sort of situation - if you take some action au fur et à mesure, it means that, as items become ready/available for you to act upon them, you do so, one by one.
• vraisemblablement: likely, probably. Vraisemblable (seeming to be true) is to vraisemblablement as lent (slow) is to lentement (slowly) in appearance, but not quite in meaning.