Product Description

211 Things a Bright Boy Can Do is the essential life-skills handbook for bright boys of every age, featuring all the subjects they don't teach you at school or Scouts. If you reached adulthood without learning the exact rules of conkers, or how to take off your pants without removing your trousers, or how to put a ship into a bottle, this is the book for you. Divided into handy sections, this fascinating volume contains easy-to-follow tutorials and priceless tips on: / How to Be A Real Man -- including how to mow the perfect lawn and how to fight a bull -- with elegance; / Weird Science and Sideshow Physics -- spoon-bending, teach yourself mindreading, and how to lie on a bed of nails; / Bracing Outdoor Activities -- cowboy ropecraft, how to punt without looking a fool, how to head a ball, and how to make a boomerang come back; / Militant Cookery -- how to make your own pickled eggs, how to spit-roast and dress a suckling pig, how to make a proper pork pie; / Parlour diversions -- shadow puppets, easy tunes for the glass harmonica, and how to make a pinhole camera; / The Human Body -- how to make your hair stand on end, how to dissect a man, sumo wrestling for the beginner; / Those Useful Subjects Not Taught at School -- how to interrogate an uncooperative suspect, how to win money in a casino, and how to blag your way in philosophy, science, art, and psychology; / Gags, cons and practical jokes -- classic old and boggling new tricks, juggling, and unusual party pieces for the classroom, pub and restaurant table. Plus much, much more. This volume won't improve your morals or make you smell nice, but it will entertain and inform. So if you've always wanted to know how to tear a phone book in half, how to identify airline insignia, or the essential moves of Morris Dancing, this is the book you've been waiting for.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6607 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Review
'Silly -- but very funny.' The Sunday Times 'A witty, tongue-in-cheek manual.' Mail on Sunday 'Those who enjoyed Conn and Hal Iggulden's hugely successful Dangerous Books For Boys would be well advised to invest in this beauty too because it's every bit as delightful.' Hampstead & Highgate Express '!quirky and humorous!' Cork Evening Echo

About the Author
The son of a sex therapist and a sometime Dominican friar, Tom spent his early manhood in a desultory study of Fine Art and Philosophy at a cloistered university. He began his professional career with a number of false starts as a teacher, set designer, doublebass player, speechwriter, printer, toyshop manager, lyricist, wine waiter, City consultant, puppet maker, typographer, magazine editor, bandleader, portrait painter, radio reporter, cartoonist, and ghost writer for Cardinal Hume, before leaving the rat-race to spend more time with his slippers. Tom has written two acclaimed song books for children and his original ditty 'Pigs on Holiday' has been performed live, with actions, by Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein. He is a practising magician and member of the Magic Circle and in his spare time enjoys murdering Bach on the guitar.

Customer Reviews

Laugh out loud funny
I got this for my boyfriend for Christmas but I dipped in and couldn't put it down. It's a lovely fruitcake of a book. You never know what you will find next. "How to tell when a girl fancies you" next to "How to analyse a handshake" and "How to take snuff". The best thing is it's really hilarious in a sort of cheerfully self-deprecating way. I keep bursting out laughing. A lovely, witty, good-humoured read. Wonderful!

Reminder of less complicated times.
Originally purchased because I had enjoyed the Dangerous Book for Boys and I thought this would be a good follow up. I wanted to get some knowledge and activities, along the lines of the things my father passed on to me when I was a (usually) bored child, to do with my kids.
Unless an activity involves electricity and an enormous initial outlay it seems children don't get exposed to it any more so some simpler things were required.
This book contains educational stuff, how to build a good campfire, adult stuff, lift a man above your head with one arm and kids stuff like conker rules. Better than the Dangerous Book for Boys (I might need grammatical tuition, but I don't want it) and sneaks up on you with things that make you laugh out loud.

Spiffing Fun for Boys and Girls of All Ages!
What, I wonder, was the original motivation for all those boys' self help books of yore? To inculcate skills useful to King and Empire whilst providing a wholesome diversions from idle self-fiddling during the ennui of the long hols, perhaps. ('The devil finds work...' and all that!)
Whatever... In '211 Things a Bright Boy Can Do', Tom Cutler certainly fulfils his aims to amuse, amaze and inform. The activities he covers range from the downright daft, such as How to Light a Fart, to the really useful, like how to tell if someone really fancies you and How to Make a Pantograph. (Myself, I've always wanted to know how to make a Woolton pie - now I can get baking.) And he does all this, not in a pale pastiche of the Boy's Own Paper but in an up-to-the-minute style which is both extremely funny and good humoured. It's good fun. The instructions are clear, too.
If you're a bright boy of any age - or a girl, as bright as they get, even - make it 212 things and buy this book. You'll enjoy it. I did.