Product Description

Does anything eat shit? Have moles always lived in holes? Why are blondes so stupid? How much radiation can a pickled onion withstand? The world is full of really important questions. You will find none of them in this book. What you will find is plenty of nonsense, lots of lies and just enough truth to make you double check the 'facts' with a reliable source. Following the huge success of the New Scientist books - "Does Anything Eat Wasps?" and "Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze?" this is an alternative take on human curiosity. With plenty of detailed answers to as many ridiculous questions, if you've learnt absolutely nothing useful by the time you've finished this book, at least you'll be laughing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #120496 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Paul Henderson, The Bookseller, June 2007
'My favourite paperback title of the year'

Exepose magazine, 21st January 2008
"Will appeal to anybody who likes or has a slightly twisted sense of humour."

Customer Reviews

Embarrassing. Pointless. Don't waste your money.
This book appears to have been written by some slightly backward teenager who has had the embarrassing misfortune not to be clearly told that they neither amusing or clever prior to publication. It's an uninformative, cringing read devoid of all real wit, charm or quirky facts.

The authors unfortunate belief that they are endearingly humorous only serves to make the book more painfully unfunny. The questions posed are simply inane, making the answers equally so. Any adult reader will find it's content and level of humor insulting at best. Without any, of the no doubt intended, child-like charm the book lacks even the barest glimmer of real amusement or interesting information. Don't waste your time or money on something this pointless.

It's not funny...
...and it's not clever!

This supposed "parody" of such great New Scientist books, Does Anything Eat Wasps? and Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? really falls short of the mark. Just as a couple of examples, on pages 130-1 you can learn that toasters have a setting that allows you to burn the toast due to a disgruntled employee in the factory that manufactured the first toaster changing the design, causing "high levels of lung disease, skin cancer and sooty warts" because of the increased levels of carcinogens on burnt toast. On the very next pair of pages (132-3) you can chuckle away to the fact that although regular use of sun beds is "dangerous and can cause skin cancer", it does allow our armed forces to build up an "Outer Defence System" reducing "burn damage and death in a bomb explosion". HI-LAR-IOUS I'm sure you'd agree!!!

Granted, I've picked a couple of the poorer examples, but they are by all means not the only ones that bad included in the book.

Why bother parodying books that were both informative and humorous in their own right by removing the information, and using humour that is at best childish, and at worst verging on offensive???

One to avoid!

please don't waste your money
It's painfully embarrassing to read. The experience is similar to listening to a 13 year old girl on the bus who's watched Catherine Tate and thinks she's hilarious repeating catchphrases. I actually went red reading it I was cringing so much.