Author: A. J. Jacobs
Genre: Non-fiction Humor
Pages (words): 400 (138,244)
Readability: 8.1
Rating (out of 5 stars): ****
Reviewed by: Ben
Description: A.J. Jacobs, an editor for Esquire, feels like he's on top of the world as far as pop-culture knowledge goes, but in all other areas he's in the shallow end of the knowledge pool. So, he takes it upon himself to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The whole thing. That's 33,000 pages and 44 million words of pure facts. As he works his way from A to Z, he chronicles some of the more interesting things that he comes across, and relates how reading the Encyclopaedia is changing his everyday life, for better or for worse.
Thoughts: Tyler Squire reviewed this book a while ago, and since then it's been on my to-read bookshelf. It definitely didn't disappoint. There's something in me that loves acquiring useless facts, but I don't love it enough to read the whole Encyclopaedia. Luckily, Jacobs did, and he does a great job of relating some of the more interesting stuff, intertwined with his own life and funny anecdotes about how he uses his new-found knowledge. Much of the book was laugh-out-loud funny, and by the end you could even say there was a bit of a moral to the book. But mostly, I just loved the oddball trivia, because that's the kind of nerd that I am. For instance, did you know that according to the scientific classification, bananas and pumpkins are berries, but strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries aren't? Or that the largest bell ever built was made in Russia in 1733, but was never rung? Or that opossums have 13 nipples? Page after page was full of these little tidbits, but not so many that it was boring. Overall, a great read. Thanks to Tyler for finding it!
Disclaimer: Jacobs uses his fair share of foul language, including one beginning with F.
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