Customer Reviews

The Ultimate Book of Useless Information: A Few Thousand More Things You Might Need to Know ( But ProbablyDon't)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I love this kind of book, but this one contains far too many errors. If there are errors I know, I have to wonder how many other mistakes there are.
It could be a great book but the editor should have carried out a lot more fact checking

My husband purchased this book for our 11 year old son. My first thought was "what a waste of money". Little did I know the daily entertainment and education factor that would result from the purchase. Maybe I'm just amazed that my son's memory retains all those useless facts, but the end result is that I'm learning something new every day and my son is the teacher. It has boosted his self esteem since he knows things no one else does. We did have to censure the adults only section.

You could live without this book. But, why would you want to? Why not possess more than 200 pages of useless information at your fingertips that are guaranteed to amaze, amuse and confuse your friends and family.

Documentation of the highest quality here enables you to name the fear of haircuts, define a dilemma with a third alternative, ask yourself why you probably enjoy on a daily basis a tasty treat that contains the ingredient usually found in car wax, etc.

Yes, clearly, this is a book that you cannot live without.

This is a delightful book of trivia and would make a great resource for anyone planning to be a quiz master. It made me laugh out loud but it is not without some mistakes. e.g. Scotland is not listed among European countries bordered by only one country. But I love it.

I picked this up somewhere as a suitable addition to the reading matter in the smallest room. Unfortunately it turns out that it belongs there in more ways than one. Full of errors and typos. I'm surprised that it is published by Penguin: they used to be a reputable house.

Samples: "a baby robin eats fourteen feet of worms a day" - come on! (It seems to be actually 14 feet during the two-week nesting period before it becomes independent. That is at least conceivable.)

The Arctic tern is described as "swimming" from north to south of the planet on its migration.
New Zealand is referred to as "an island."

New Guinea's more than 700 languages are said to be "a third" of the world's known languages. More like 10%.

The longest creature in the world is a kind of jellyfish - no it's not, it's an amazing, skinny "ribbon worm."

Plenty of English errors: "a roller-skating ring" for "rink." Making Tabasco sauce involves a lot of salt that is "defused" through a barrel. Good job it didn't explode! (Of course "defused" vs. "diffused" is a common error both ways.") They have the usual American total illiteracy when it comes to accented letters: "Thèrése" for "Thérèse."

I just can't bring myself to start checking the section on British royalty - who knows what lurks in there.

Still...I do give it two stars, largely for the wonderful quotes in the "Words of Wisdom" section. Quite a lot are recognisable and others sound all too plausible! Wonderful what comes out of people's mouths when they aren't careful- or even when they think they are!

This is an intresting book that just has random facts like "a pig always sleeps on its right side" very intresting stuff that could be a million dolar question somewhere, lol A+++

When the book includes the fact that the last man walked on the moon in 1979, you have to doubt the rest.

Great book for casual reading. I bought this for my dad but I read a lot of it before I even gave it to him. Very funny and interesting. Good to sit on the coffee table for conversation piece.

Just as entertaining, hilarious, informative, and useless as the original. Great to read in short snippets (say, maybe in the bathroom, but that's just me).

I got this book for a friend who has quite the knowledge base of little known facts. He loved it, says he's gotten quite a kick out of reading it.