A great book to dip in and out of, with tons of interesting facts.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

A great book with all sorts of information, it was (and is) a great dip-in books filled with fascinating facts and many that kids will want to hear about. Also, how good is this title? Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC.

Unfortunately, I was unable to download this book before it was archived and so am leaving this as a review/explanation as I didn't know what else to do after finding a few books I had managed to miss in a section of my account entitled Not Active: Archived, Not Downloaded; so I thought it best to clear it up. I have already bought a copy and will leave a review on places like Amazon, Goodreads, Waterstones, etc, once I've completed it and formed my thoughts on it. Apologies for any inconvenience and thank you for the opportunity.

If you love trivia and obscure facts then this is the book for you, Journalist Mick O’ Hare takes great delight in busting some myths that over the years have come to be accepted as gospel – such as that chewing celery consumes more kilojoules than actually eating the vegetable or that sharks need to keep swimming to stay alive so can never sleep.
The book is divided into sections including science, history, sport, food, maths and space exploration and there’s also a very entertaining one about flatulence. Read all the chapters and you’ll be able to hold your own in any conversation, dazzling strangers and friends alike with your astonishing general knowledge.

Reading this book is a lot like babysitting your 8 year old nephew who has learned some cool things and proceeds to info dump on you with fact after fact after fact, and similarly, quite a lot of the facts are things that you will already know unless you are actually eight, but there are some interesting trivia items in there too. There isn't much detail, though, and no opportunity given for further reading to explore any snippets any further - it really is just an explosion of trivia. Also some of the mythbuster sections are a bit pedantic - the one that sticks in my mind is the one about bouncing bombs not bouncing off water but instead "skimming or richocheting" - I'm sorry but bounce is a synonym of richochet, it's not exactly busting the myth so much as mildly tweaking the semantics.

A very good and fun book, but an easy one. How many people really turn to these gallimaufries of trivia without knowing the 100 Years War was a bit longer-lasting than the name suggests, that 38 minutes was the shortest 'war' ever, or such common-or-garden stuff about Jupiter's Big Red Spot, the Viking helmets' lack of horns, double-landlocked countries and how we should make sure we win a goat (alright, it's normally a motor car but I didn't read Ian Stewart for nothing).

That's not to say this is not without merits – I don't really want to quote all the good stuff, as that should be for you to discover. But here is a tree that makes sheep go bald, the fact that dogs poo on a north-south axis, and the allegation that a quarter of the world's hazelnuts end up as Nutella.

Yes, I started this the day before the stated factoid about the world's hottest pepper had its record taken from it, but that's a given with such a book, that it might go slightly out of date. It does seem very ancient in calling things Centigrade when they've been Celsius for some time now, I thought. Oh, and I don’t think any ‘proper’ Monopoly board has featured New York – it’s New Jersey’s Atlantic City, by renown – although apologies to all if this is a goof from the proof and not the real thing.

What I saw then was a book that front-loads the scat, with the talk about farting and stools and so on, before settling into what almost counts, as a connoisseur of such volumes, as a “My First Trivia” book. This is built of factoids that many browsers will know, from those mentioned above to how and when the Olympic Marathon distance was enhanced. Many people will have one of these books hanging around somewhere, just in case they need something to start a pub argument (they could always join those who nick the Guinness Book of Records from a public library, if really needed) and many will therefore join me in feeling a great sense of deja vu – but also a kind of naive-like nostalgia – for the contents here. I enjoyed it, and would recommend it – but anybody with any recall or shelf-space for such things will raise their eyebrows at how unfresh a lot of this seems. Four stars – but be prepared to see it as less, depending on your knowledge of what generally goes into such volumes.

An enjoyable read about fact and figures. Expect to read about farts, sports, humans, cars, and many other topics. It is entertaining and written in a way that you can read it in smaller bits, and soak in the information. It also debunks many myths. Very easy to spot it was written by a British author.

Absolutely enthralling! This is jam packed full of fascinating facts and dispels many urban myths to boot. The information is well organised into categories and the individual facts are explained in a shot and punchy style, ‘just right’ in terms of length and the way they’re pitched to be accessible to all.
I honestly feel like I’ve learned a lot and I’m hoping some of the information will stick so I can be ‘that person’ in pub quizzes and dinner parties (can’t say I attend many of those) to amaze my peers. I had lots of fun being educated on a wide variety of subject matter including areas I’d never have considered of interest previously. I’m really hoping this has the success it deserves so there’s a follow up. Highly recommended.

This book is a great coffee table book as it’s perfect for picking up and putting down with the facts being only a paragraph long at the longest. I did enjoy this books, and my only reason for not full rating it is that one comment in the book about whether brexit benefiting people was a myth made me wonder how much author bias was in the facts, and thus could they be trusted. It’s a shame as I did enjoy it otherwise, but his one “fact” there did wreck the integrity of the whole book

I enjoyed reading this book, it made me laugh and it was full of very interesting facts. Some things I had to double check as I couldn't believe what I had believed all my life wasn't true! I did know that men definitely fart more than women tho lol. Thank you for allowing me to read this book