PatternExon

The Know-It-All – A. J. Jacobs

// June 23rd, 2009 // books, reading, review

The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World was picked by me at the Border store in Plaza Las Americas, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

San Juan was where I went honeymooning, but I have an unhealthy fetish for books, bookstores and libraries. Since it is early in our marriage D lets me indulge. Yeah, we gonna see how long that lasts.

Back to the book, this is A.J. Jacobs’ journey on how he read the entire Britannica Encyclopedia to become smarter. Its witty, casual and personal. The quest of becoming the smartest person in the world is pretty common I guess and the encyclopedia is a good place to start. But unfortunately almost everyone that Jacobs’ wants to impress by proving the he is getting smarter by reading the encyclopedia thinks he is obnoxious and weird. The ones that Jacobs looks up to as smart think that the britannica project is useless and whimsical. Unfettered he reads on, from A to Z and thats how he stacks up chapters in this book.

If you think reading useless trivia is boring this is not for you. But if, like me, you have read parts of encyclopedias, dictionaries and thesauruses for  fun and now know what the keyboard shortcut for getting a random article on wikipedia then you will enjoy it.