Product Description

The QI Book of the Dead is a book about life.

'What an awful thing life is. It's like soup with lots of hairs floating on the surface. You have to eat it nevertheless.' (Gustave Flaubert)

Around 90 billion people have existed since the human race began. From this huge number, the bestselling QI team selected 600 of the finest examples of our species and researched them in depth, distilling this immense banquet of life into an exquisite tasting menu of six-dozen crisp, racy mini-biographies, where the internationally and immortally famous rub shoulders with the undeservedly and (until now) permanently obscure.

The object is to learn something about what it means to be alive and how we can make the most of the time we have.

The QI Book of the Dead compares and contrasts the different ways individual human beings cope (or fail to cope) with the curves that the uncaring universe* throws at us. Collected into themed chapters with thought-provoking titles such as 'There s Nothing Like a Bad Start in Life', 'Man Cannot Live by Bread Alone' and 'Is That All There Is?' here is a chance to share the secrets of the Dead, to celebrate their wisdom, to learn from their mistakes, and to marvel at their bad taste in clothes.

'The man who is not dead still has a chance.' (Lebanese Proverb)

*We don t rule out the alternative possibility of a compassionate God whose motives are beyond our ken.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #218 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

Customer Reviews

A different format - but still fascinating
Following the success of the initial QI book and follow-ups such as the Book of Animal Facts, a plethora of hastily - written, badly produced "facts" books appeared on the market. Some of the facts in imitators books were questionable, many based on inaccurate website content.

Perhaps in recognition of this, The QI Book of The Dead has chapters, rather than chunks of info in alphabetical or other order as in previous books. The criteria for grouping people together are somewhat bizarre,as mentioned, but also interesting - as you'd expect. One supposed "fact" is debunked here. There are not as many people alive now as have ever lived. The dead outnumber us by nine to one. (So just why did we ever believe otherwise? Interesting!)

I also wonder if the proofreader read this over lunch; it was certainly done on an off day. No doubt those glitches will be ironed out in the paperback. It might be best to wait, if you can. But if you can't, another really interesting read awaits.

Fascinating, but who did the proof-reading?
I love Q.I. in all it's forms - the series, the books, the website - so the arrival of a new book was a cause of some celebration for me. This time around, the book is a series of potted biographies of noteworthy folk through the ages. For an added twist, they're summarised not by the times they lived in, or even alphabetically... the various figures are categorised according to things that they had in common. So, Freud, Hans Christian Andersen and Da Vinci all wind up in the same chapter because they had absent or bad fathers! It's quirky, but it works. Like the show, this is packed with 'well-I-never' moments, and proves to be a very addictive read. One criticism though - there are so many basic errors in the presentation, you can't help but feel it must've been thrown together in a rush. For example, in the first chapter alone, words are repeated unnecessarily in the same sentence, causing the reader to skid to a halt and re-read for fear of having missed the point. And poor old Hans Christian has his surname go from Andersen to Anderson, then back to Andersen, more than once on the same page! All right, this might be picky, but this is a chunky, reasonably expensive book - you'd hope it was at least proof-read once or twice.
All in all, good fun - and recommended for all fans of the series, or trivia buffs.

More than Quite Interesting
What links Oliver Cromwell, Catherine de Medici, Rembrandt, Frida Kahlo and Madame Mao? Why, monkeys of course! Cromwell was kidnapped by one as a baby, all the others owned at least one simian companion. This is just one of the very many more-than-quite-interesting bits of trivia this book provides. In fact, so consistent were the "how interesting, I never knew that! I must tell someone right now" moments in this book that within half a dozen pages I had to stop mentally note-taking and simply enjoy the ride. I reckon these tidbits must average out to one or two a page, which in a book of over 400 pages, means trivia-lovers will be more than satisfied.

This book is extremely readable and the thematic approach to its subjects (each chapter containing mini-biographies of its subjects based on categories of poor parenting, aforementioned monkeys, fantasy lives or sexual behaviour, amongst others) means it is easy to skip back and forth between chapters as you like. The index and suggested reading are also laid out gloriously clearly - a nerdish thing to notice, but refreshing in such books. There is even a link to QI's 'Book of the Dead' forum where you can discuss any mistakes you've spotted or find out more about the book's sources.

One issue though - as the other reviewers have noticed, there are some glaring syntactical errors which really jar against the generally highly involving and well composed writing. Nonetheless QI is taking over from Schott's Miscellany as the source for fascinating, well written trivia and this book is a brilliant buy for anyone interested in the genre.