Christmas Fun Facts! From Advent to Xmas, Interesting Trivia and Amazing Fun Facts About Festive Holiday Traditions From Around the World by Marianne Jennings

 Another holiday tradition that I maintain for just myself is to read a holiday 'fact book'. This started when I was very young when my mom would buy me these really cool books that explains Christmas traditions around the world. There would be recipes and activities and games. But above all, there would be knowledge.

I've read several over the years. A couple of years ago, it was a magazine devoted entirely to the life and times of Santa Claus. Before that, I read a holiday Uncle John's Bathroom Reader and countless others. Realizing that I was without such a work this year, I immediately went to Amazon and found this book. 

By Marianne Jennings, it was a good read in which I did learn more about many festive subjects that I knew about before while still managing to discover some new aspects about one of my favorite holidays! New information came to me about holiday foods from other countries. I got a more clear understanding of Solstice and some other pagan customs that became canonized. I never even thought to wonder how the International Space Station celebrates the holidays in orbit! The author's look at Christmas in Australia, where it's hot and sunny, was fascinating. She covers so much about the land down under, that instead of peppering this book with Aussie Christmas customs, she could have made an entire chapter. 

Amazon lists this 2023 book as being 212 pages long. However, it's actually about a dozen or so pages shorter than that. That's because there are some pages that are left half blank. I come from the school of writing and design that empty space is wasted space. I understand that all that blank space is a formatting issue, because you only seem to have these issues right before encountering a photo on the next page. But couldn't Jennings either make the pictures smaller or still figure out a way to add more material to those empty parts?

The author likes to include 'fun facts'. Surely, she had some more factoids somewhere in that Santa's sack of information of her's! Jennings writes in the back that she hopes to make a second volume and I would like that very much. She requests readers to include traditions from her readings and I've got quite a few not covered in this edition. I bet there's one New Year's tradition that my grandmama perfected that Jennings had never even heard of!

I just hope that if a second volume is forthcoming that the writing is a bit more polished. I noticed that the first third of the book had every other paragraph ending with an exclamation point. Just about every tip about staying Earth friendly during the holidays in the sustainability chapter felt repetitive and I get it. I find myself using similar phrases and Ideals as I write nearly 365 reviews, mostly about comics and graphic novels a year. It is one reason why I will drop a mystery writer in a heartbeat if they basically follow the same manuscript with only the murderer and their weapon being the only thing different during each book.

I don't think that will be a problem if Marianne Jennings does in fact publish a companion. There are a ton of holiday movies that weren't even hinted at! Songs too! What about the national gingerbread competition in Asheville, NC? Yes, Virginia There is a Santa Claus? The Macy's Thanksgiving Parade? And what's the deal with egg nog? There's enough out there to do 2 more volumes of Christmas Fun Facts!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

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.

That's a Fact, Jack! by Harry Bright and Jakob Anser

I enjoyed the heck out of this book and yet I was left unsatisfied. For one thing, this book claims to be a 'collection of utterly useless information'. However, I felt that there was some really interesting stuff inside that could be useful for a game of Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy!. 

Then there's the length of the book. 192 pages. However, most pages have only one factoid. Some might have two, tops. Either more facts could have been inserted into this book OR they could have reduced the page count by, oh maybe a third. No wonder we're having a shortage on trees! 

Some generic illustrations are added throughout the book. Public domain stuff from the late 1800s and such. They're extraneous. Again, instead of these fillers, either put in more facts or take out some pages!

When this hardcover book debuted in 2006, the MSRP was $21.99! Had I paid that much for this book based on all the faults I have for it now, I would have been pissed! Currently, this book sells new on Amazon for $9.99. That's a 55% discount and still too rich for my blood.

Thankfully, I got this at a used book store 'fill a bag' sale. I think the bag cost $20 or $25. We filled that sucker to the brim and then some. I'd say I ended up spending less than $0.75 for this book. Maybe a bit less. That sort of bargain prevents me from rating this book lower. But I wonder if I should for those of you who might not benefit from a massive fire sale. 

I liked what I read. I just do not feel like there's a portrait of Andrew Jackson's worth of knowledge inside.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.

Pop Culture by the Numbers by David Hoffman

A really fun little fact book that reviews the numbers behind some of pop cultures most beloved icons. 

You learn some really interesting stuff like the number of theaters that originally agreed to show the first Star Wars film (only 40!), the number of bottle caps in Bert's collection (368!) and the number of steel wire cables that comprise the two gigantic cables of the Golden Gate Bridge (a whopping 25,572!)

There's about 50 total subjects in this book. That number could of been much higher if not for the artwork. There's about 30 pages of pop art-style images of things like Twinkies or Elvis' hips. I liked the art. But you could have had 15-20 more pages of factoids if those images were merely reduced in size by half. Kinda seems like a waste of space. 

This Hallmark Gift Books' publication was ultra trendy and an enjoyable read. But for the original cover price of $12.95, it just doesn't seem to be an efficient use of all 145 plus pages. Glad I got this book for only a buck on trade credit...

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.

The Book of Useless Information

by Noel Botham and The Society of Useless Information

My wife has this bit. Some random article of trivia will pop up and she'll say 'That's a useless piece of I wouldn't mind if you removed it permanently." Recently, I worked at a used book store for trade credit. (It's there where I found this book.) Out of that sweet revenge that only a loving husband can provide his dear bride, I got The Book of Useless Information just for her!

But first, I wanted to read it. 

Amazingly, this was an addictive read. From interesting facts about species of animals to oddball facts about our founding fathers, I literally could not book this collection of trivia down. That's not to say that I didn't have my issues with it.

First of all, this book is 13 years old. I am quite certain that some of the facts were outdated. Those in particular involve stats about movies, TV and social media. Was there social media in 2006? Maybe I'm thinking computer consumption. But I am sure that AOL is no longer the most used search engine and/or email in the world.

Another thing I had problems with was the 'uselessness' of the data. Some stuff didn't seem that unnecessary to me. Maybe that's because I was a history major. To me all history is relevant. Even dumb stuff about those Kardashians. You never know when somebody is going to hold a gun to your head and only your knowledge of 12th century monarchs is going to save your life. I guess useless info is in the eye of the beholder. With as least 3 other books of useless info out there, I am sure that I'll be a quick judge of those sort of details sometime in the future.

(Plus, while this book has tons of info, I wish that they'd provide more detail. Most of the trivia are single lines of fact. But there were a bunch of instances where I wished to know the how or why behind the what!)

Lastly, on 2 different occasions, the same bit of trivia was reprinted. Poor data collection? Bad proof-reading? Slip-ups on the part of the editor? I don't know why someone felt that I needed to know those bits of info twice in the same book. But somebody goofed.

Even though this wasn't the perfect fact book, I really did enjoy it. I particularly loved the last factoid on the very bottom of page 38. It was so random- so non-sequitur- and so un-PC; I laughed and laughed. Plus, I could not resist sharing the hilarity of it with my wife. Just what was so darn funny? You'll have to read it for yourself to find out.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Cinegeek (English Edition)

Cinegeek (English Edition)
Written and Illustrated by Pluttark.
Published by IDW.

Movie Trivia

• John Wayne’s real name was Marion.
• For the movie Babe, film makers used dozens of pigs because those suckers get big pretty quick.
• In Bollywood films, male and female actresses weren’t allowed to kiss on screen until the 90s.
• Adam West turned down the role of James Bond because he felt only British actors should play the part.
• There’s actually a movie called Nudist Camp Zombie Massacre about undead exhibitionists.

Get Your Cinegeek On

If any of these factoids caught your interest then Cinegeek is the book for you. This IDW publication is a fascinating combination of Sunday comics, Hollywood trivia, and fun & games. The book is written and illustrated by French cartoonist Pluttark.

Pluttark devotes a semi-regular cartoony column on movie history on the social media site Cinegeek. He covers everything from the earliest of silent films to recent motion pictures such as Michael Bay’s Battleship. Pluttark’s art and sense of humor go hand-in-hand. His tiny drawings border on caricature while many of his jokes are dripping with sarcasm. But there’s a real fanatic devotion to the material he documents in this book. There’s nothing remotely hostile to Cinegeek, no matter how terrible a film referenced within this book may be.

A Fan of Many Genres

Pluttark appears to be a huge fan of sci-fi and Japanese Kaiju. In those posts, the cartoonist really thrives. Being also French, Pluttark peppers about 10% of the book to the cinema of his native land. However, those references to the films of France are pretty darn obscure.
One thing I enjoyed the most in Cinegeek were the quizzes. Pluttark might draw 10 bad guys and you have to guess who they are. You may also be required to tell the name of the film in some cases. But those darn additions of French movies were what keep me from earning a perfect score every time! I want a retest!!!

Cinegeek is 90 plus pages of trivia fun and challenge. It’s not a bad deal for the cover price $14.99. However, there is a French language version of this book. So unless you can ‘lire francais’, stick to the IDW published edition that debuts in stores today.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

One-up Trivia by Ken Weber

The idea behind this trivia book is kinda novel. You take a commonly known fact and you build from it. For example, most people know that Hollywood icon James Dean meet an untimely death in an automobile accident. But did you know that Donald Turnipseed was the driver of the car that struck Dean’s? That's one-up trivia in a nutshell.

   Now Weber will sometimes two-up or even three-up the knowledge. Working from the James Dean example, the author went on to discuss how people who bought parts of the actors car went on to suffer some bizarre accidents as well, thus, Dean's Porsche 550 Spyder is considered by many to be cursed. Then Weber goes on to discuss superstitions of famous people.

    The premise seems very straight forward. But sometimes I felt like the author was grasping at straws to make a connection. In one instance, Weber talks about the use of the first commode in space then goes on to explain how Thomas Crapper was a real person and then our factfinder rolls into a rant about fake names. Though I thought that this was a very informative book and that Ken Weber is a very clear and concise presenter of facts and figures, discerning how he connects some of these factoids left me scratching my head.

  If you enjoy learning or are a trivia buff like me, you'll enjoy this 2006 book by Running Press. Just be aware that while you learn a lot of cool stuff, you will have to make some weird connections to get to your destination.

  Worth Consuming

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.