Trivia
Puzzled by David Astle
Words are wonderful enough when they’re just telling you things straight up, but who can resist them when they’re really being playful? Not David Astle, the author of this new title that blows the lid on it all with what he calls 'secrets and clues from a life in words'. Full review...
The Story of English by Joseph Piercy
The Story of English sets out to be a potted history of the influences that have shaped our language, from the Lindisfarne Gospels to LOLcats.com. Starting with the pre-Roman Celts and their Ogham alphabet, it goes crashing through fifteen hundred years of linguistic history at a terrific pace to end with an almost audible sigh of relief at the internet age. Full review...
Write. by Phil Daoust (editor)
The Guardian newspaper has for some years now been publishing articles and interviews on how to write. Successful authors, agents and publishers have offered pearls of wisdom in the Guardian Masterclasses for genres as wide-ranging as travel writing, picture books and screenplays. Now their wisdom and their insights have been collected together in this slim volume which will intrigue both the readers and the writers among us. Full review...
Cliches: Avoid Them Like the Plague by Nigel Fountain
Cliché is such an awful word with all its connotations of the trite, the hackneyed and the overused. It's a word you'd hate to have associated with your writing, even if you produce nothing more public than a shopping list but for the benefit of the discerning reader Nigel Fountain has compiled a list in alphabetical order of these dreaded phrases. I began reading, confident that I couldn't be caught out and then blushed when I realised that I'd just pointed out to someone that avoiding clichés wasn't rocket science. They agreed that it isn't brain surgery either. Full review...
Bright Young Things by Alison Maloney
According to the summary I read of Bright Young Things before choosing the book to read, it 'takes a sweeping look at the changing world of the Jazz Age'. I was expecting it to be something of a narrative account of the Roaring Twenties – in actual fact, it's set out as a collection of trivia about the decade. Similarly, the 'first person accounts' mentioned on the inside front cover are limited to two or three sentence quotes. Full review...
Homework for Grown Ups by E Foley and B Coates
School days can sometimes seem like a very long time ago. You most likely spent 12 to 14 years of early life learning in a classroom, but how much can you remember? Sure, you can count, and you know your alphabet, but all those other lessons you had, how much can you really remember of those? If you want or need to remember back to your school lessons (to help your own children with their homework, to win pub quizzes, whatever the reason) then this book can help. Covering ten subjects from English and Maths to Science, Home Ec and History, it’s a crash course to refresh your knowledge – all those things you kinda know deep down, but at the same time have forgotten at least a little bit. Full review...
The Question Book by Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschappeler
Most of us have probably made at least one of those end-of-the-year lists of the best books, albums and parties we have been to in the previous twelve months. But can you, with some effort, locate the one you made in 1987? Have you ever constructed a graph of your ups and downs in a given period, and then decided to expand it by separating emotional, intellectual, sexual and financial aspects and colour coding them? Have you made a list of all your lovers, bosses or friends and then rated them from 1 to 10 on several dimensions each? Do you have one of the books that list 100 things to do before you die or 500 books to read in your life (and ticked off the ones you have done)? Did you ever spend a whole evening and half of a night filling in dubious 'personality' questionnaires on the Internet? Have you ever doodled something, decided that it beautifully expresses the deepest essence of your personality and then proceeded to draw such icons for all your friends? Full review...
Horrid Henry's A - Z of Everything Horrid by Francesca Simon
Francesca Simon's Horrid Henry is a very popular little boy, although you might have a different opinion if you actually had to put up with his antics yourself. A slightly modernised embodiment of 'slugs and snails and puppy dogs' tails' concept of boyhood, Henry is naughtiness personified, combining irreverence for authority with a huge dose of gross-out crude humour that really appeals to the target readership of early primary school children. Add a somewhat nostalgic, timeless feel, trademark alliterations, subtle (and not so subtle) digs at family dynamics, sibling rivalry and particularly at modern middle-class manners and sensibilities and you have a winning character and a base for a very successful edutainment franchise. Full review...
The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth
I like words. Words are awesome. End of. But I also like trivia. I like knowing things that perhaps other people don’t, and helpfully passing on this knowledge to them. So a book about word-related trivia is just a win-win, and this one is so good I think we’ll have to call it a win-win-win. Full review...
Philip Ardagh's Book of Kings, Queens, Emperors and Rotten Wart-Nosed Commoners by Philip Ardagh
If you deem a good children's historical trivia book to be one that tells you, the adult, something they didn't know about historical trivia, then this is a good example. I didn't know George V broke his pelvis when his horse fell on him, startled by some post-WWI huzzahs. I didn't know Charles VI of France nearly got torched in some drunken bacchanal. The length of time Charlemagne sat on a throne (over 400 whole years (even if he wasn't wholly whole all that time)) was news to me, as was the raffle that was held (more or less) for being the unknown soldier. Therefore this is a good book for children and the adults willing to instill some historical trivia into them. Full review...
It Could Have Been Yours: The enlightened person's guide to the year's most desirable things by Jolyon Fenwick and Marcus Husselby
In a world of diamond-encrusted skulls, gold-leafed iPhones and luxury yachts ten a penny, of blingy shit (or should that be shitty bling?) it's a relief to know people are still spending money on unique one-offs that are more worthwhile. The records for costliest photo, artwork, musical instrument and manuscript have all been broken in the twenty four months leading up to this book's release. Our collators have scoured the press for those and other, similarly noteworthy auctions, and found what other people paid for what you didn't know you would have wanted given the money. Full review...
Farmer Buckley's Exploding Trousers by Stephanie Pain
The history of science is filled with many miraculous discoveries. ...It's also filled with exploding trousers, self-experimentation, a coachman's leg that becomes a museum piece and gas-powered radios. Farmer Buckley's Exploding Trousers regales us with fifty odd events on the way to scientific discovery. Part popular science book, part trivia, each article is a treat to read, either as a fun-sized nugget, or when reading from cover to cover. Full review...
42 - Douglas Adams' Amazingly Accurate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything by Peter Gill
A common question about Douglas Adams’ famous Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is just why Adams chose the number 42 as the answer to life, the universe and everything. In a charming trivia book, author Peter Gill takes 50 pages or so to look into the story of the book and the author and another 250 to find occurrences of 42 in the worlds of sport, crime, science and a wide range of other fields. Full review...
I Never Knew That About the River Thames by Christopher Winn
Here are the remains of the building that could be said to have sired two important British royal dynasties. Here is the place of ill-repute, where 'Rule Britannia' was premiered, and which also bizarrely saw a death by cricket ball that inspired the most famous gardens in the world. Here too is the largest lion in the world. To where am I referring? Well the answer is either the Thames valley, or this very book. Full review...
Why Can't Elephants Jump? by Mick O'Hare
Well? Why can't elephants jump? And while you're pondering that, think about why James Bond wanted his martini shaken, not stirred. Why is frozen milk yellow? Does eating bogeys do you any harm? What's the hole for in a ballpoint pen? How long a line could you draw with a single pencil? For answers to all these questions, and so many more, then do yourself a favour and pick up the latest collection from the New Scientist's Last Word column.
Mick O'Hare was also kind enough to be interviewed by Bookbag. Full review...
Wordcatcher: An Odyssey into the World of Weird and Wonderful Words by Phil Cousineau
I formed a new, close friendship recently, and one of the first things I subtly dropped into things was the fact that I might use a different dictionary to other people. Probably there was a subconscious thought forming that it would be better to make it known, in case I trod on any toes, said anything that didn't go down quite as well as I had planned. But that's nothing compared to what Phil Cousineau has done here, for he has written his own dictionary, and got it published in a very nice, glossy, browsable form. Alright, it's nothing like a complete dictionary, but everything is here in his own personal style - 250 main words, definitions, derivations and examples of use. Oh, and some modern-ish artworks as well. Full review...
The Economist Book of Isms by John Andrews
I'm assuming all readers of this book, and this review, will know the meanings of the words racism, atheism and Communism. But how about Orphism? Nestorianism? Vorticism? Or the exact difference between egoism, egotism, and egocentrism? I'll confess to ignorance on all of that second trio of words before reading this book, but was fascinated to find out what they were. (Orphism is a religion originating in 6th or 7th century BC Greece based on the poems of Orpheus, who returned from Hades. I'll leave you to find out the definitions of the other two yourself!) Similarly, I was aware of all three of that final trilogy, but am not sure I even knew there was a difference, let alone that I'd have come close to being able to actually define them all as this volume does. Full review...
How to Talk Like a Local: From Cockney to Geordie, a National Companion by Susie Dent
Meeting a grammersow in a netty is more common than you might think - I'd put my revits on it. Having a neb around these pages I can find many different ways of saying the above, as well - or should that be boco ways. But before this review comes out as complete cag-mag, I'd better say this book is just as you'd expect - an amenable, approachable but intelligent look at regional idiom and slang, in A-Z dictionary form. Full review...
Number Freak: A Mathematical Compendium from 1 to 200 by Derrick Niederman
This is a book that definitely does what it says on the tin. Our author has the capacity to grab each number between one and two hundred, and wring it for all its worth - all the special status it might have in our culture (more easy with seven than, say, 187), all the special properties it might possess (perfect, triangular, prime), and as many other things mathematicians and so on would find of interest. Luckily there is enough here to make the book well worth a browse for us who would not deem themselves number buffs. Full review...
More Brilliant Answers by AQA 63336
If you've got a question you can text those nice people at AQA 63336 and they'll do their best to provide you with a prompt and accurate answer. Over the last five years they've answered some twenty million questions and each autumn they publish a book with the best and most interesting of the year's answers. There's some fun to be had in this year's book. Full review...
A Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases by Tad Tuleja
Take a look at the cover design of this book, and you'd be mistaken for thinking this was a trivia compendium for all those foreign words that have taken part in our English language since whenever they crossed over from their original homes. But the title is definitely honest, for this is a dictionary book first, for reference, and a browser for the trivia buff second. Full review...
Don't Swallow Your Gum by Dr Aaron Carroll and Dr Rachel Vreeman
BANG. That's the sound of copious urban myths being shot down. BANG. That's the sound of the old wives slamming the door, as their tales get revealed as baseless. CLICK. That's the noise lots of ill-informed websites make as they get closed down. All noises come due to this brilliant book. Full review...
Eye Spy: Uncovering the Secrets of the World Around You by Justin Scroggie
Signs are everywhere. I wasn't really one of those who thought our roads were littered with too many traffic signs until the day I was driven past a pair of speed regulation signs, positioned at the exit end of a one-way street but facing the illegal way up it. Not all signs, of course, are quite as unnecessary, or indeed as blatantly visible, which is where this pictorial guide to countless coded messages, signifiers and other similar factoids comes in. Full review...
Where Are They Now? - Rediscovering Over 100 Football Stars of the 70s and 80s by Matt Allen
This looks like some people's worst idea of a book, ever. Trivia, nostalgia, football, and lists - does it get more masculine? There's not a female in sight, either, as we get 101 portraits of footballers from times past, and most importantly, a summary of their career since hanging up the boots in the professional game. Full review...
Philip Ardagh's Book of Howlers, Blunders and Random Mistakery by Philip Ardagh
There's nought so queer as folk. From the idiot who broke into a car without realising his name and date of birth were clearly seen on his tattoo on CCTV, to the people who ordered someone to paint clothes on all the people in the Sistine Chapel - before others came along who decided the original had been better, and the people who dismissed The Beatles as never likely to make a name for themselves. We have long been a race of idiots. Full review...
Once Again to Zelda: Fifty Great Dedications and Their Stories by Marlene Wagman-Geller
Once you've done all the hard work (written a book, found a publisher, decided on a design for the cover and all those things), one of the remaining difficulties must be deciding who you should dedicate the tome to. Assuming it's no Oscar speech, and you can't thank the world and his dog, you have to narrow it down somewhat and select that special person whose name wins pride of place on the first page. Do you then go with something cryptic and intriguing, or apparently banal and blatantly obvious? I'm sure most readers don't even look at the dedications in most books, but if you did, would you understand the significance of them? Would something saying To my wife make you look twice, or would that seem like a reasonably common way to dedicate a book? In Once Again, To Zelda you can discover the stories you don't know behind the stories you may well, as the author delves into the detail behind Fifty Great Dedications. Full review...
How To Make A Tornado by Mick O'Hare
Another year, another must-read book from the New Scientist. We've been here before with polar bears, penguins and hamsters. Now it's time to turn our attention to how to make a tornado, and all the other crazy experiments that scientists have done over the years. Full review...
100 Facts About Pandas by David O'Doherty, Claudia O'Doherty and Mike Ahern
Sometimes the title says it all - this is a book with 100 facts about pandas. Sometimes you need to note the author too - David O'Doherty won an Edinburgh Comedy Award, so this is a book of a 100 silly and untrue facts about pandas. Full review...
It's All in a Word by Vivian Cook
Ah, the English language. That sine qua non, the prima facie lingua franca of the world. Prima inter pares when it comes to taking influence and words from other tongues, and responding in kind, to the chagrin of the French. We all use it, and in this day and age we can update an internet dictionary overnight to absorb all the neologisms, like "iPhone"; we can put the entire output of an author into a computer and it will count every word use up so we can find a fingerprint of a writer's style. It's a never-ending, fluid, changing entity, for better or worse. Full review...
The Average Life of the Average Person by Tadg Farrington
Back in school, we would often bemoan the idea of 'average', saying that like being 'normal', if there were such a thing, who would even want to be it? There could be nothing worse, we thought, than being average. Except...there is by definition a whole lot worse than 'average' – the exact same amount that is better than average, in fact. And that was the problem. Full review...
Just What I Always Wanted: Unwrapping the World's Most Curious Birthday Presents by Robin Laurance
Is there anything more suited to a trivia book, yet so much thought over, and serious, than the birthday present? It might be something completely throw-away, but mean a lot to the receiver. It might have cost the giver an awful amount of money, and be disregarded by the person expected to accept it. And if you think the givings and takings of the rich and famous are sheer trivia, just think about the number of sociologists and historians who would jump at the chance to explore, say, Hitler's given gifts. Full review...
Brilliant Answers by AQA 63336
Do you need an answer to a question? Have you got your mobile handy? Right – text that question to 63336, the Home of Any Question Answered, and for £1 you'll have the answer within minutes. It might seem like magic but it's actually the result of a lot of people being on hand to research your problem and give you the solution. Over the years 1.7 million people have asked over fifteen million questions and as a special treat at the end of each year AQA lets us have a look at some of the most interesting questions and answers that they've seen in the course of the year. Full review...
The Book of Big Excuses by Tracey Turner
Ah, we've all made excuses at one time or another. We've all done things we shouldn't have done, then when caught out given a reason for it. Perhaps we've even given excuses as stylish as Zambian tennis player Lighton Ndefwayl, who said of his opponent: "[He] is a stupid man and a hopeless player. He has a huge nose and is cross-eyed. Girls hate him. He beat me because my jockstrap was too tight and because when he serves he farts, and that made me lose my concentration, for which I am famous throughout Zambia." Tracey Tuner has collated some of the best excuses ever given into a handy collection. Full review...
Will Work for Nuts by Matthew Cole
The intrepid adventurer faces a most daunting challenge. Girding his loins in anticipation of achieving his goal, he leaps into action, hell-bent only on success, never fearing the inherent danger. With death-defying stunts and leaps aplenty, he needs to use any vehicles he finds in his path, untold balancing skills, nerve-racking whippy plastic stick things, and an awful lot more. Finally his lithe, muscular frame lands near his target, and he sits back and eats his nuts. Full review...
The Optimist's/pessimist's Handbook by Niall Edworthy and Petra Cramsie
With a publication date in early November, the passing Christmas shopper is clearly the target for this book. The Optimist's/ Pessimist's Handbook isn't a self-help book, but a compendium of enlightening snippets. Off the shelf, I think you'd know immediately which relative or friend might enjoy receiving it. So I suggest eschewing Amazon in favour of a real-life bookshop, not least because there will be a shelf full of similar books for a surreptitious and delightful half-hour's browse before choosing. Full review...
The Thingummy by Danny Danziger
Oh look, a trivia book. I don't think even I realised quite how many were published in the run up to every Christmas, but there are a lot. There is probably a name for the phenomenon.
There is a name for that bit between your nose and your lips – below your nasal septum comes the philtrum. There's a correct scientific name for the tummy-grumbling noises we make when things leave our stomach for lower down. Heck, there's even a scientific name for those circular grooves on top of a Frisbee. Full review...
Tic-tac Teddy Bears and Teardrop Tattoos by Justin Scroggie
Signs are everywhere. I wasn't really one of those who thought our roads were littered with too many traffic signs until the day I was driven past a pair of speed regulation signs, positioned at the exit end of a one-way street but facing the illegal way up it. Not all signs, of course, are quite as unnecessary, or indeed as blatantly visible, which is where this pictorial guide to countless coded messages, signifiers and other similar factoids comes in. Full review...
Hang the DJ: An Alternative Book of Music Lists by Angus Cargill (Editor)
Ah, the music list... balm to pop obsessives (see Nick Hornby's High Fidelity), makeweight of copy-starved magazine editors, and staple of self-indulgent writers (see 31 Songs, also by Nick Hornby). The contributors to this volume fall mainly into the latter category. No fewer than thirty five of them supply their musical top tens, ranging from the fanatical to the frivolous, via the frankly frightening. Full review...
Sod That!: 103 Things Not To Do Before You Die by Sam Jordison
Without sounding like a braggart, I have done some pleasant things in life. I've caught the first bus up to Machu Picchu, and shared the sunrise with only the llamas. I've eaten strange things while on a full fortnight tour of Iceland. But closer to home, were I to have a list, there would be many things left on it – I've been nowhere near Bath, or York; I've never seen the film ET, which for a man of my age is something of a claim to fame. Full review...
History Without the Boring Bits by Ian Crofton
I was never one for history, and in fact left the dregs of a history teacher in tatters when I scraped through with a D. Still, history is an odd thing – written by the winners of course, and annoyingly biased in my mind towards the plain. There's no real reason to remember the order of Henry VIII's six wives, but we can only relish the one credited with polydactylism, a third nipple and whatnot (the second one, in fact – whoever that was). Full review...
Is This Bottle Corked? The Secret Life of Wine by Kathleen Burk and Michael Bywater
Now, I'm the first person to admit I am not a wine buff. I know a lot more now than I did before my current relationship, but she is right to say I have a very masculine (ie dead weak) sense of smell. Added to that a blunt sense of taste and I'm left saying I know what I like when I drink it, and that's it. Full review...
Joined-up Thinking: How to Connect Everything to Everything Else by Stevyn Colgan
I am in this book. And so therefore are you. So why don't I like it quite as much as I should?
To be more honest, neither of us are in this book, although we could well be. It is a trivia collection based on attesting the feeling that everything is linked to everything and everyone else, if only you know how. Thus the chapters introduce us to item A, which is linked to item B, which relates to C, whose story is incomplete without D, and so on and lo and behold, before you know it you're back at A, having had no idea where we were going. Full review...
Uglier Than A Monkey's Armpit by Dr Robert Vanderplank
Now I've always been one for delivering a nice meaty insult. And if you think otherwise then you're just a #####ing ******** of a !!!!!!!!!!, with a &%&%&% for a $$$$$$. But I've been brought up with the usual British malaise when it comes to learning foreign languages, and so beyond knowing that Leche! is a bit meaty in Spanish, I could not help to cuss and swear like whatever other languages might have for trooper. Full review...
The Book of Idle Pleasures by Tom Hodgkinson
We've all heard the clichés about modern life. You know – technology was meant to free us from drudgery. Instead we've become its slaves and work longer hours than ever. We're overloaded with means of communication but few of us know our neighbours, etc, etc. On hearing these, most of us shrug and carry on with our busy, busy lives. But now and then, something reminds us of who and what we are. This delightful, unassuming book is one of those things. Full review...
Ouch! Extreme Feats of Human Endurance by Georgina Phillips
Everything from Shackleton to Ellen MacArthur, by way of the Japanese word for fried rice-field grasshopper, and 32 hour long after dinner speeches. Ouch! contains fascinating trivia on every page that children will love to repeat back to you at length. Full review...
Any Question Answered by AQA 63336
Did you know that if you have a question, any question, you can text AQA on 63336 and their team of dedicated researchers will find the answer and text it back to you? It will cost you just £1 and AQA have now answered over nine million questions. That's a lot of questions and the answers didn't just disappear into the ether. AQA have them all stored away. Full review...