Will Pearson

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: The bathroom read to end all bathroom reads!

What does Greece (the country) have to do with Grease (the movie)? And what does Grease (the movie) have to do with greasy food? Plenty, if you ask the folks at mental_floss.

Based on the magazine's "Scatterbrained" section, the mental_floss gang has taken on the Mount Everest of trivia challenges: connecting the entire world through the juiciest facts they could find. How do you get from Puppies to Stalin; from show more Humpty Dumpty to Elizabeth Taylor; from the Hundred Years' War to 8 Minute Abs; or even from Schoolhouse Rock to Abstract Expressionism? You'll just have to open up the book to find out.

My Review: This was the perfect book to read while in the throes of this bloody cold. Perfect amounts of information, useless, and ideal amounts of stupid humor.

For example, St. Fiacre (an Irish dude) is the patron saint of de-hemorrhoiding one's self. Did you ever, even one time in your entire life, stop to ponder the existence of, or need for, such a saintly specialty? Apparently Fiacre (how on earth does one say this collection of letters?) healed the sick (men only!) by laying on of hands. Give that a minute to sink in.

The old perv.

I'd vaguely heard tell of the existence of a shadowy Dowager Empress with a lot of power in Chinese history. Didn't know she was called Cixi (suppose that rhymes with Trixie?) and didn't realize that, within months of her death in 1908, the Imperial part of Chinese history was history. She dies, the Emperor loses the throne, and China starts on the path to being our banker via a horrible stint under Mao (an engineered population-reducing famine, his INSANE edict to kill all dogs! The Rotten Shitheel!) (BTW these facts came from this weird little book, too).

Bite-sized morsels of interesting factlets (does anyone besides me remember a rice-paper-wrapped candy called Aplets, or Cotlets? I loved those things), many of which make me curious to go in search of context and depth (Cixi being a good example) for the stories. Perfect for a restless-brain day.

On the other hand, really not much use in the thing. I got it as a sale book. I wouldn't pay $12.95 for it! show less

The Good Stuff

A trivia buffs wet dream - this is full of tons of little tidbits that fellow trivia nerds will enjoy
Quirky humour goes well with the subject matter
Well researched
Quick and easy to read
Learned tons of interesting facts
Truly fascinating historical tidbits
Loved the list Seven Shameless Abuses of Diplomatic Immunity
Nicely organized (Hello I am a nerdy Librarian, these things matter)
Awesome section: Lists You can share with your kids (or your inner child)
Also enjoyed show more Lists to Lighten the Mood at the E.R. (Hey reading it out loud would help pass the time and make everybody feel better, which in turn may empty out some of the ER)
I am sooo going to kick butt at trivia games thanks to this book - I mean its filled wit h fun facts at the bottom of each page like "Fredric Baur invented the Pringles can. When he died in 2008, his ashes were buried in one."
Tons of fun pop culture references and lists

The Not So Good Stuff

Some of the pages are a little too busy for this scatterbrained mom
the lines on left hand side of each page really bother my eyes

Favorite Quotes/Passages

"If you remember one thing from the first Bush administration, it's probably not the 1992 state dinner during which President George H. W. Bush, ill with the flu, lost his lunch in the lap of the Japanese prime minister.. Well, a lot of Japanese remember that incident a little better. Turns out, Bush's faux pas coined a Japanese slang word, bushusure, which translates as "to the Bush thing," meaning "to vomit".



"In 1943 Philip Morris ran an ad acknowledging "Smokers cough" They claimed it was caused by smoking brands other than Philip Morris."



"At the chain Fatburger, you can order a "Hypocrite" a veggie burger topped with crispy strips of bacon."

Who Should/Shouldn't Read

A Must have for Trivia Nerds
Would be a fun housewarming gift - perfect for the coffee table

4.5 Dewey's

I received this from HarperCollins in exchange for an honest review show less

A fun little bathroom reader, which is exactly what I used it for, lol. Fun little tidbits of trivia supposedly linked throughout the book, if not a bit tenuously at times, combined with humor, also strained at times. All in all it was fun and killed some time, maybe even learned a few things…

Este libro me lo compré gracias al magnífico (grr) sistema de publicidad de Amazon. Cuando te compras un libro, te pone cuatro o cinco enlaces diciendo "Los consumidores que compraron el libro este que se acaba de comprar usted, también compraron..." y te pone unos cuantos libros de la misma temática que el tuyo. Y claro, es difícil resistirse; de ahí mi gruñido al decir que el sistema es bueno.
El libro en sí no rompe moldes. Se trata de una colección de miniartículos, en clave show more humorística, sobre los más diversos temas. Para que los lectores se hagan una idea, pongo los contenidos de la sección "ciencia":
4 Revelaciones extrañas sobre el sexo
6 estudios científicos inútiles (al estilo IgNobel)
4 hechos científicos que nunca habrías imaginado (es un decir, son muy conocidos para los freaks de lo CPI como yo)
6 científicos poco conocidos y que hicieron contribuciones a la ciencia comparables a las de Einstein
5 errores que hicieron avanzar la ciencia (esto es claramente serendípico, pero ellos no hablan de esta palabra)
6 errores que se convirtieron en productos comerciales (más serendipia, esta vez industrial, como las notas Post-it, y por ahí).
Además de hablar de ciencia, hablan de economía, historia, historia del arte, literatura, filosofía, teatro, biología... El libro es muy entretenido y seguro, seguro que cualquiera que lo lea acaba aprendiendo algo. Es, no quiero pecar de inmodestia, un libro claramente CPI. Mi nota: Recomendable. show less