Customer Reviews

Mental Floss: Scatterbrained

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This book is an immense collection of trivia, loosely related by tangential connecting facts. For example, a story about famous downfalls which recounts Oscar Wilde's end says: "But it's not like Wilde was angry enough to start a hunger strike or anything...." And then we're off into "The Greatest Hunger Strikers Ever." Scatterbrained is much like "The Areas of My Expertise" (John Hodgman), except not made-up. And with fewer hobo facts.

The Scatterbrained approach to trivia is very readable, like a talkative dinner guest who goes on endless factual tangents. It's amusing and fun, and offers you plenty of chances to bail out when you've had enough (for example, when you've completed your business in the, uh, bathroom). This would also make a nice (albeit small) coffee-table book, as it's the sort of thing your guests can leaf through and call out interesting, often bizarre anecdotes.

Nerdy note: this book was co-edited by noted Young Adult author John Green. Fans of "Looking for Alaska" will appreciate "Fond Farewells: The Best and Worst of Famous People's Last Words" on page 125, and fans of "An Abundance of Katherines" will enjoy "Math Nerds Gone Wild (And by Wild, We Mean Nuts)" on page 132.

Chock-full of funny factoids to make you look smart at cocktail parties. An easy-reading smorgasboard of truisms both bizarre and interesting, all linked together. Bathroom reading for the MENSA set.

Marcus Chown's recent book, "The Quantum Zoo: A Tourist's Guide to a Never-Ending Universe" deals with quantum physics in a way that effectively uses popular culture references as a means toward understanding the world around us through scientific theory. Surprisingly, this book covers similar ground but from a completely non-scientific perspective by interconnecting seemingly unrelated trivia facts toward another view of the world. As you can assess, both books provide value to their respective audiences.

"Scatterbrained" is another slim volume from the editors of Mental Floss Magazine, a bimonthly launched in 2001 and targeted to aspiring Trivial Pursuit masters. This one takes nine isolated threads of facts to show how you could possibly make sense of the world. Granted, the connections can be rather tenuous, sometimes like an unending broken record on the turntable, but they are fun simply to track just to see where the lines of thought will go. It's a bit like playing a more expansive version of the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game except anything, no matter how trivial, is up for grabs.

A prototypical example is Chapter 4, "Humpty Dumpty to Having a Great Fall to Getting Put Back Together Again" You see the links between the fairy tale character, hunger strikes, celebrity trials, disasters that occur in autumn, diamonds, pseudonyms, the periodic table, trivia about the Web, the history of tattoos, and historic reunions. It's definitely a meandering journey for a less receptive mind but one that makes sense for any world-class trivia expert who can connect anything with anything. And for them, it's quite a fun read.

An excellent compendium of oddball factoids, sharply designed and smartly written, c/o the fine folks at Mental_floss. I don't know how long it must have taken to compile all this stuff, but you can easily spend a weekend or more tearing through it. Good stuff -- I couldn't have enjoyed it more had I co-written it myself.

Another humorous trivia book from Mental Floss, and one I highly enjoyed reading. I'd say I had two nitpicks about it:

1. If you already have most of their other books, you'll notice some of the factoids start to repeat. Not all of them, but enough to make it slightly noticeable.
2. The theme of this book is to match all the odd bits together (like going from Greece the country to Grease the musical) and sometimes they REALLY have to stretch for it, which, to me, makes the humor of it fall a bit flatter than it does in other books.

Still, it had plenty of new content, and the humor is very good, and the layout of the book is easy to follow. All in all, a good release by them, but not one of my favorites.

I agree with the last review about almost everything, so it's hard to come up with a new review that says anything different! Well, the only downside is that it's so short. I think this makes a great bathroom book - chock-full of trivia tidbits that any audience could enjoy for a few minutes. It might make you feel a little scatterbrained after you read it, but that might be the point, and overall, your trivia repertoire will be greatly improved. :)

If you love interesting and somewhat useless knowledge this is for you! It is a fun book to read and you say "Oh yeah" alot.....I would recommend it!