The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World -- A.J. Jacobs

A.J. Jacobs decides to go through the daunting task of reading all 32 volumes (32,900 pages) of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and does! The result - this book, a compilation of strange, very interesting facts associated with each word he reads, augmented by his own sarcastic humor about the fact and intertwined with funny events in his life, mostly around his quest for knowledge.

Excerpts:-
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oyster
Oysters can change sex according to the termperature of the water. I always knew there was something emasculating about warm baths.
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punctuation

The Greek interrogation mark became the English semicolon. Bizarre, no;

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katydid

This member of the grasshopper family is named for its unique mating call, which sounds like a psychotic witness: "Katy did, Katy didn't, Katy did, Katy didn't."

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death
A Russian nobleman patented a coffin that allowed the corpse-if he regained consciousness after burial-to summon help by ringing a bell. A good idea. Because that could really screw up your week-to wake up and fine yourself in an airless coffin. I guess nowadays they could put cell phones in there.
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An encyclopedia with fun oddball facts. Would make for a nice coffee table book too, given you can turn to any page and spend just a couple minutes to be entertained and informed.

Tidbit: Some other people who have read the entire Britannica: Isaac Asimov, Richard Feynman, C. S. Forester and George Bernard Shaw.

Running With Scissors

Definitely not chick-lit :-)

After picking up soo many books and losing track of them half way through(yes, anything more than 1 page is halfway there for me... stop snickering), I made a resolution to stick through with the next book that I pick up. That is when the world of books decided to unleash their revenge on me.

I picked up this book after reading the reviews. "Wickedly, ridiculously funny" said the Boston Herald.

The book is a memoir told through the eyes of Augusten, a compilation of his teenage life in a totally whacky and disjoint family. This is a first hand account of the hippie culture, of a family that willingly accepted and embraced the concept of 'free will'. It chronicled the possibilities in a world where parents were not ordained by the society to be the responsible care givers, where everyone is on a Vegas vacation, perpetually. A lot of 'gross-me-out' comical accounts, some with way too many details for the 'lady' and the 'gent'.

The excerpt

Many nights, my mother and I had dinner at Fern's. Her family was genuinely warm and always made me feel like they'd been waiting impatiently all day long for me to show up.

Her four children each had perfectly white, straight smiles. Like Chiclets. Even the girls had clefts in their chins. And they always appeared to have just stepped from a hot shower.

Perhaps because of my determination to bite my tongue and complete the book, I failed to 'get' the book. Maybe one day I will read it again under the tree.

I can see that it could be funny, in that South Park genre of comedy. But sadly, this was not my cup of tea. But hey... if you want to give it a try, give me a holler!

PS: Yes, I did finish the book, from cover to cover.