The Book of Unusual Knowledge

I bought this book over the summer during the 301 Endless Yard Sale taking place in Smithfield/Selma, North Carolina. A kid of about 15 was selling it. The mysterious title of The Book of Unusual Knowledge intrigued me. The picture of Stonehenge is was enticed me to pick it up. The factoid about how many endless hours it took to erect the stone monoliths sold me on the book. One portrait of Abe Lincoln and the book was mine. 

This book is massive. Just under 600 pages in length if you remove the index. A hardback, it's 'deceptively lightweight' as my bride described it one night when I asked her to hand it to me. 

Inside are articles on the real names of celebrities, Popes who were murdered in the Vatican, famous UFO sightings and much more. Some of the material isn't what I would consider 'unusual knowledge'. Information on the various sightings of the Virgin Mary is unusual. The history of that raining summer in Geneva which inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein is not. With topics like movies, animals, pop culture and holidays, what is considered unusual knowledge is really up to the reader to decide.

This felt like one of those Uncle John's Bathroom Readers. Only there aren't any stupid puns about having to poop. There are a few quiz type activities like linking the musician name with their real identities. No article is longer than 3 pages. Okay; there might have been one or two that were 4 pages in length. Most were only a page long. So there's a ton of relatively short reads. However, it took me a long time to read because of how huge this book was.

BuzzFeed listed this 2012 fact book as one of the best gift ideas for the 2024 holiday season. The retail price on Amazon is decent and publisher Publications International Ltd. offers over a dozen more similarly bound books including one volume about cats and another about crime. I'm very tempted to buy another book to increase my unusual knowledge over as I did enjoy this book even though some of it seemed like pretty usual stuff 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.