At the first BookMoochers Pilipinas party last Halloween, I couldn’t resist mooching this book from Triccie: Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader, because I am such a sucker for useless bits of information.It took me four months to finish this massive compendium of trivia, not necessarily in the bathroom, and mostly in bed before reading. That makes it Book #38 for 2009, rounding off February with 21 books, as opposed to January’s 17. I need to read around 20 books a month for the next ten months if I want to reach my goal for the year.
Like other Bathroom Readers, the Giant 10th Anniversary volume I have is a fount of useless but interesting trivia about anything and everything under the sun.
For instance, did you know that:
- “love” is the most used word in a film title, while “Paris” is the 2nd?
- the “blue moon” from “once in a blue moon” pertains to a full moon that occurs twice in one month, occuring approximately once in every 32 months?
- Joseph Stalin was so afraid of farting in public, that he kept a set of glasses and a water pitcher on his desk so he could clink them together to mask the sound of his fart.
- the officials of the Leaning Tower of Pisa get an average of two letters a week with suggestions on how to keep it upright? The weirdest suggestions include building an identical tower to lean against the firstcDon one; building a huge statue of a man who looks like he’s holding the tower up; tying helium balloons to the roof; and anchoring the top of the tower to a hillside several miles away with a steel cable.
- in the microwave, food cooks better in a round container than in a square one?
- for every cockroach you see in your house, there are not just 10 that you can’t see — the ratio is actually closer to 1000:1? (*yuck!*)
- Carolyn Keene is not a real person? (Ahh, the subject of many FFP discussions — there are three pages devoted to this topic in the book)
- The ratio of adult bookstores to McDonald’s outlets in the US is 3:1?
- The yo-yo, a prehistoric Filipino weapon, was introduced to the US by a Filipino named Pedro Flores? Donald Duncan partnered with Flores in the Flores Yo-yo Corporation, bought him out for $25,000 and renamed it as the Duncan Yo-yo Company, which created the biggest yo-yo craze in history in the 1960s?
You just never know when these little factoids will come in handy, hehe… (Riiight, I’m imagining being held at gunpoint and being quizzed on the history of the fortune cookie)
I recently saw a stack of Bathroom Readers at Fully Booked, at around P700-900 each, and I was glad I was able to mooch this one. Will be hunting down other volumes at Book Sale and BookMooch :)
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My copy: trade paperback, mooched from Triccie
My rating: 5/5 stars