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430 reviews for:
The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World
A.J. Jacobs
3.7 AVERAGE
430 reviews for:
The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World
A.J. Jacobs
3.7 AVERAGE
I only got through the first 5 letters. It was too slow, boring, and awkward when he would refer to his wife. Wasn't worth finishing.
The acquisition of facts does not equal intelligence. He read, but did he try to understand? Only a little. He seems to realize that the Brittanica is heavily Eurocentric with an emphasis on dead white men, but doesn't go into bias. Apparently this is what happens when you're educated in private schools and prestigious colleges - facts and not much else.
Jacobs writes with a conversational style which makes his experiences come to life on the page. I giggled, smiled and read many parts of this book aloud to my boyfriend so that we could enjoy it together. I yearned to hear of the outcomes of his mini-experiments (such as joining Mensa, attempting to win a seat on Jeopardy and the journey of conceiving a much wanted child) and reveled in the victories as he experienced them. I love this book, and have been buying it and giving it to friends since I finished it.
Great. So great. I learned a lot, laughed out loud, and one other thing that starts with an "l" that I can't find in my brain at the moment. Read it.
I like to throw a little non-fiction into my reading list from time to time, and I really enjoyed this book. I found I read it in small bites, almost like reading the encyclopedia itself. :) The author writes engagingly and does a great job of interweaving his actual reading quest with the events of his life during the same period. I also learned a few things along the way. Highly recommended!
Initially intriguing, the alphabetised prose runs the risk of becoming formulaic but develops into a touching exploration of family ties.
At times funny and interesting and at times boring and dry. The idea of the book was a good one, and the author can be entertaining, but at times I just didn't feel like I could be patient enough to keep going...
One year, AJ Jacobs throws himself the challenge of reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica, from A-ak to Zywiec, all 44 million words of it. This is classified as an autobiography because the book, written as a series of definitions, sometimes gives anecdotes of his life during that year, or of the past (always linked more or less closely to the word he’s defining at the moment).
I liked the challenge. I learned a lot of random facts, and often giggled at his definitions or comments on the words and random information given in the EB. If I’d rated based only on the content of the book, I would have given it a 3.5 or a 4.
However, I disliked the author’s immaturity. Sometimes it felt like it was written for an audience of teenagers, but like, how many teenagers did he think were going to read a book about the encyclopedia? And I don’t know if he was exaggerating (I really hope he was!), but all the other “characters” appearing in this book (his family and friends) are such a collection of insufferable pretentious pricks, I can’t even! I wanted to pick up his brother-and-law and use him to beat up his cousin!
His whole objective in doing the challenge itself often got lost. He said it was for a general love of learning, but so often he wrote about how mad he got when someone around him knew more about a topic than he did, and how much he wanted to show them up. Once again, it felt immature.
Finally, I have some issues about the editing. There were a lot of typos. Some innocent and just inattention typos (“prents” instead of “parents,” “diety” instead of “deity”), but some spelling mistake in facts he gave us that should have been checked before they were printed (“Gretsky” instead of “Gretzky,” “Avogrado” instead of “Avogadro”). That, and the fact that he gave two “anecdotes” that I know for a fact were false (one about a Friends episode, another about Einstein’s marriage) made me wonder how many other things in the book were also only true-ish.
Many years ago, I read another of his books, [b:The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible|495395|The Year of Living Biblically One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible|A.J. Jacobs|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327977486s/495395.jpg|2325789] and loved it, but as I was basically a teen back then, I’m wondering now if it really was as funny as I remember it or if like this one it was just a humour destined for a younger generation of readers.
Also, I have to mention that I finished this “quest to become the smartest person in the world” on the day Stephen Hawking passed away. The irony was not lost on me.
I liked the challenge. I learned a lot of random facts, and often giggled at his definitions or comments on the words and random information given in the EB. If I’d rated based only on the content of the book, I would have given it a 3.5 or a 4.
However, I disliked the author’s immaturity. Sometimes it felt like it was written for an audience of teenagers, but like, how many teenagers did he think were going to read a book about the encyclopedia? And I don’t know if he was exaggerating (I really hope he was!), but all the other “characters” appearing in this book (his family and friends) are such a collection of insufferable pretentious pricks, I can’t even! I wanted to pick up his brother-and-law and use him to beat up his cousin!
His whole objective in doing the challenge itself often got lost. He said it was for a general love of learning, but so often he wrote about how mad he got when someone around him knew more about a topic than he did, and how much he wanted to show them up. Once again, it felt immature.
Finally, I have some issues about the editing. There were a lot of typos. Some innocent and just inattention typos (“prents” instead of “parents,” “diety” instead of “deity”), but some spelling mistake in facts he gave us that should have been checked before they were printed (“Gretsky” instead of “Gretzky,” “Avogrado” instead of “Avogadro”). That, and the fact that he gave two “anecdotes” that I know for a fact were false (one about a Friends episode, another about Einstein’s marriage) made me wonder how many other things in the book were also only true-ish.
Many years ago, I read another of his books, [b:The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible|495395|The Year of Living Biblically One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible|A.J. Jacobs|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327977486s/495395.jpg|2325789] and loved it, but as I was basically a teen back then, I’m wondering now if it really was as funny as I remember it or if like this one it was just a humour destined for a younger generation of readers.
Also, I have to mention that I finished this “quest to become the smartest person in the world” on the day Stephen Hawking passed away. The irony was not lost on me.