The series of books Almanac of Compete World Knowledge by John Hodgman, former literary agent, minor television personality and deranged millionaire, is a world of strange yet coherent fake trivia. The books are "The Areas of my Expertise", "More Information than you Require" and "That is All". With continuous page and figure numbers, they are meant to be read as one large book. The books also have some strange features, such as the introduction being printed on the book sleeve and a page-a-day calendar on books two and three.
Of course, this trivia is comedic, mixing strange absurdity to obscure American cultural references. The table of contents alone will make you wonder "Really? This books talks about that?" Still, this is an unusual brand of humour, both nerdy and Python-esque, that not everybody will equally enjoy. For me, even if I couldn't understand half of the cultural references, the sheer inventiveness and style of the writing was enough to keep me hooked.
I was actually first introduced to that series with an Apple-led promotion of the audiobook of "The Areas of my Expertise" which was offered for free for a little while in 2007 (2008?). It was an excellent adaptation of a difficult book to adapt in audio form, filled with pictures, diagrams and tables, often replaced with improvised songs by Jonathan Coulton. (By the way, the figure-intensive books makes it difficult to adapt in e-book form other than a PDF, so that's why they are available only in dreaded physical form.)
In either form, I highly recommend those books, or at least trying out the first book. Since the third book deals mostly with the end of the world at the end of this year, you may want to start soon. To give you a taste of the style of humour, here's the trailer video for the third book.
Published on May 27, 2012 at 19:00 EDT
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