I’m done with my exam in this course and finally have enough spare time to write a review. I basically learned all of the curriculum from this book because our main lecturers were so useless, but it was not an easy task. The book is informative, of course, but the layout was very messy and it was difficult to «see the big picture» from how the chapters were structured. Every week, it felt like we kept returning to the same topics («didn’t I just read about this?») except that I was just as confused each time because of the lack of clear, direct links between the chapters and because everything was presented as something brand new. So, it was a combination of feeling overwhelmed by novelty and exhausted from being «stuck» with the same topics.

Additionally, this book (and the colloquium questions produced by the authors) had a bunch of vague formulations/poorly structured paragraphs that were very prone to misunderstanding and confusion. I could’ve listed some specific examples (for there were many), but that would be boring for the both of us, and I’m not willing to pick the book up again and start looking.

Overall, I did like learning a ton of stuff about microbes (who are so metabolically diverse that it’s actually painful), and this book was alright at relating that information, but I’d have a more pleasant learning experience if either the book or the lectures were top-notch. Sadly, life isn’t that easy.