Jennifer Stearns

DNF: 40%

I kept trying, but a Dummies book is not for me on this subject. I think it works best for people that learn with the bare bones, memorize the terminology and a few relations, and move on. I can't stomach spending long periods on one page because there's five new terms to memorize and if I don't then I get lost a few pages later.

This book is vocabulary heavy, context light. I remember the usual textbooks that go for paragraphs before the one sentence that actually means anything, but it turns out the opposite--at least for microbiology--doesn't work either. This book trimmed out deeper explanations and left itself content that's best carefully memorized than read qualitatively.

I need to be able to see the big picture first and work my way down. That's opposite of traditional instruction, yet I think a traditional textbook will give me the option of skipping around, reading different aspects, and have enough word bulk to give me context. I skip around in Microbiology for Dummies and I'm facing a large share of jargon.

Essentially, this book would work best if the reader is prepared to pull out some note cards and study vocabulary for a whilefirst and read in short spurts. I couldn't keep that pace. It's more efficient for me to do what I did for cell biology and read sections and converse with myself or even write my reflections on the section so I can understand theory first. Vocabulary means nothing to me without that.… (more)