Great light read. It really reminds you how much you don't know. I think it reads as if it were written by the narrator of the Hitchhiker's Guide movie. ( )

I seem to be on a bit of a trivia book kick, which is at least partially motivated by getting through all my Christmas presents so I can pack them into a box and move to a different country. This book was written as part of the production of the very excellent BBC quiz show Quite Interesting and is quite a contrast from the extremely average Why Do Men Have Nipples that I just finished reading. This book feels well researched, and is on par with Why Don't Penguin's Feet Freeze, although the style is quite different (the New Scientist book offers multiple answers for each question, and is written by real scientists in the fields discussed, this book flows as one manuscript). I suspect it helps here to have seen the quiz show, because many of the other reviews I have seen online complain about the style of the book, which reads in much the same manner as Stephen Fry's commentary during the program. If you're familiar with the format, then the book flows quite nicely (whereas if you haven't, you might end up why the book jumps around so much). I really liked this book.

http://www.stillhq.com/book/John_Lloy... ( )

John Lloyd, one of the co-authors of this book seems to specialise in slightly frothy, snippet based books which can be read in tiny bite sized pieces (I refer the reader to The Meaning of Liff with Douglas Adams). In this case the book is a series of questions, many of which you probably think you know the answer to, but which you are then disavowed of.For instance, what is the 'Ring a-ring a-Roses' about.I, like most people thought it was about the Black Death (Bubonic Plague). But it dates back much further than that and its genesis has been lost in the mists of time. ( )

John Lloyd, one of the co-authors of this book seems to specialise in slightly frothy, snippet based books which can be read in tiny bite sized pieces (I refer the reader to The Meaning of Liff with Douglas Adams). In this case the book is a series of questions, many of which you probably think you know the answer to, but which you are then disavowed of.For instance, what is the 'Ring a-ring a-Roses' about.I, like most people thought it was about the Black Death (Bubonic Plague). But it dates back much further than that and its genesis has been lost in the mists of time. ( )

My book review:
http://ganimede.dreamwidth.org/16069.... ( )

This book is brilliant if you like being pointless facts. I do. It is a literal treasure trove of useless information and proves everything you think you know, wrong. ( )

I find this book hard to review. I like all of the bits of it, but not the overall impression.

There are hundreds of little facts, presented in a QI style, funny, gentle, interesting and well-researched. This is all good. Except there are hundreds of little facts and they're too bitty to be really engaging.

If you have a job that has moments of quiet and moments of being busy, then it's probably great for you, but I found sitting down to read it like I'd read a normal book an oddly unsatisfying experience overall. ( )

Fact-finding websites such as Snopes help us sort out heresay, folk lore, and plain fiction from the truth. The Book of General Ignorance weaves a path through myths, some well-known, others not, sometimes with tenuous segues. It's a short, but fun and interesting. ( )

Another 'general knowledge' work of the sort I find so entertaining. Very effective in proving most of what you 'know' is in fact wrong. ( )

Slightly better than some of these "isn't it curious"-type books but not a lot. Facts are often stretched to make an interesting story and it reads like something written by journalists. Amusing as a bedtime book in very small doses. ( )

A wonderful collection of little known facts, or correcting "general ignorance" or just plain wrong information people have about a very wide range of subjects. ( )

Ah, The Book of General Ignorance, also known as the companion volume for the hysterical and informative British quiz show QI. A gold mine for trivia buffs, in which you can learn that everything you think you know is wrong.

For instance: chameleons do not change color to match their surroundings. Sea captains cannot perform weddings. You can't slide down a bannister. And the earth does not, by several rational measures, have one moon.

The book will explain why not, but really the best reason to read it is to discover the hilarious story of the time Napoleon ran in terror from a battallion of...bunnies. Oh yes, it's true.

One of the best typeset books I have ever seen.

Definitely the best typeset book I was ever given by the person who did the actual typesetting. Thanks Paula.

If you like the tv series you will probably like the book - they are pretty much identical.

The main advantage of the book over the tv series is that you don't have to wait until late at night for your fix of the strange and interesting.

Think you know how many nostrils you have? Think again.

A good laugh. ( )

http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.co... ( )

Something for everyone; learn something new. ( )

IN THE past year there have been a plethora of books which ask and answer those niggling little questions: Why don't penguins’ feet freeze? Can cows walk down stairs? And the origins of everyday things.

These excellent works give answers to a host of issues that might have perplexed you, as well as a host of others that never occurred to you, but are intriguing nonetheless.

The Book of General Ignorance is somewhat different: it corrects the answers to questions you thought you already knew. For example, how many wives did King Henry VIII have? No, not six — two, because he had four of his marriages annulled.

James Bond's preferred drink? Not a vodka martini but whisky. And the good news for him and everyone else who enjoys a tipple is that there is no scientific evidence that alcohol destroys brain cells. That was a story put about by 19th-century temperance propagandists, though booze does cause new cells to grow more slowly.

In fact, much that we believe implicitly today originates in the imaginations of devious Victorians; the idea of a flat earth was not really posited until the 19th century, “since around the 4th century BC almost no-one, anywhere, has believed that the earth is flat".

The Victorians also invented the myth of the Noble Lord Nelson’s eye patch — but on which eye did he wear that patch? Neither. Nelson never wore an eye patch because, although his right eye was damaged, it was not blind.

His lordship was vain, cruel and ruthless, and 19 admirals of the British Navy refused to attend his funeral.

And what about the Duke of Wellington, revered as one of England's greatest generals? Actually, he was Irish, serving in the Irish Parliament in 1790 and playing for the all-Ireland team in the first recorded game of cricket played in Ireland in 1792.

Then we have indoor sanitation: Thomas Crapper was happy to accept acclaim for the invention of the WC in the mid-19th century, but actually the first flush lavatory we know of dates back to 206 BC, and was found in China.

In an age when prostitution and paedophilia flourished on a grand scale, the Victorians are notorious for their strange attitude to sex, and more or less reinvented the chastity belt, which was used not to protect maidenly virtue but to prevent boys “defiling” themselves, since everybody knew indulgence in the “solitary vice” caused blindness and lunacy.

While there are many devices claiming to be medieval chastity belts (and/or instruments of torture), the majority have been removed from museums after being discovered to be of 19th- century manufacture.

The mass suicide of Lemmings? The theory originated in the sloppy observations of 19th-century naturalists. The clan tartans of Scotland? A romantic myth of the 19th century. And St Bernards never, ever carried a cask of brandy around their necks: in 1831 Landseer painted a scene featuring two St Bernards, one of whom he adorned with a cask “for interest”, and so the legend began.

The 20th century has spawned myths of its own: Hitler was a vegetarian — no, he wasn't. Concentration camps were invented by the British — no they weren't, those laurels belong to the Spanish in their 1895 struggle to retain Cuba. And Teflon was not a by-product of the space programme, but discovered back in 1938.

We know now, in the 21st century, that “work is a bigger killer than drink, drugs or war. About two million people die every year from work-related accidents or diseases", yet stomach ulcers are caused not by stress or diet but bacteria. Other interesting tit-bits include the fact that the Universe is beige, Nero invented ice cream, the Number of the Beast is 616, baseball was invented in England, and that George Washington's ill-fitting dentures were made not of wood but of hippopotamus and elephant ivory.

In his foreword the delightful British playwright and novelist Stephen Fry warns: “It's the ones who think they know what there is to be known that we have to look out for."

If your answer to “who said ‘let them eat cake'" is Marie Antoinette, if you didn't know the first man-made invention to break the sound barrier was the whip, if you thought the guillotine was invented in 1789 by Dr Joseph Guillotine, or that the French were the first to make champagne, I'm afraid you might be one of those people Fry is referring to.

John Lloyd observes in his introduction: “Biologists say our primal drives are food, sex and shelter, no different from the animals. We say there is a fourth drive that makes us uniquely human — curiosity."

As an unashamed devotee of that fourth drive in all its many forms, I urge everyone with an inquiring mind and all fans of trivia to read this book . ( )

http://www.shvoong.com/books/humor/17... ( )

A book to dip in and out of for funny snippets, interesting stories and making yourself feel dumb. ( )