QI: The Book of General Ignorance - The Noticeably Stouter Edition (Q1)

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

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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.

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A funny, enlightening book about facts you thought you knew but it turns out you really don't. I've only ever watched QI a few times but thought this was a much better way to get all the information. On to volume 2!

You never know what you think you know.

This book sure shows you.

If you know your "QI" books or watched any of the series, you know the basic structure of this book.

I already owned the original "QI Book of General Ignorance" before buying this and finding it was just an expanded, revised edition of the original. Still, what is new adds to the quality of the

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publication; we find that Monday the 27th is considered the unluckiest day of the month, that Wales is the home of the = sign and of course that America is named after the Welshman Richard Ameryk.

Combine al this with the fact that Stephen Fry can do no wrong and you have the ingredients of a very good book.

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I love the TV show QI. (Or, rather, I did until the guy hosting it on YouTube got his account suspended for copyright violations, leaving me with no way to view something I would happily pay to watch, if only it were possible. But that's a rant for another time.) The "QI" stands for "Quite

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Interesting," and it's one of those wonderful British quiz shows where winning doesn't matter anywhere near as much as being interesting and funny. It's hosted by Stephen Fry, who poses a series of questions with weird, obscure answers, with well-known answers that are in fact wrong, or, best of all, with well-known answers that are correct but boring and obscure answers that are also correct but much more intriguing and strange. Each question is put to a panel of four comedians, who seamlessly blend genuine attempts to answer with humorous riffs, tangents, and asides. It's both informative and utterly, utterly hilarious.

This book features a large number of those questions, along with the actual answers and various bits of related trivia. Sample question: "What's the name of the tallest mountain in the world?" No, it's not Everest. That's the highest mountain, and there's a difference. The tallest, measured from base to summit, is Mauna Kea in Hawaii, most of which is underwater.

Browsing through this volume isn't nearly as entertaining as watching the show, but it is both educational and fun. The version I have is the "noticeably stouter" edition, which features lots of extra questions and some funny quotes from the participants, which is nice. I definitely recommend it for people who are interested in, well, knowing stuff.

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