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baronessekat's review
3.0
Contributor and Editor for Esquire Magazine, Jacobs recalls back to when when he thought he was the smartest boy in the world (as many elementary school kids think of themselves) and knew that he was not anywhere near the smartest person in the world. So he endeavors to make himself smarter by reading the ENTIRE Encyclopedia Britannica from cover to cover.
I first encountered Jacobs with his book "The Year of Living Biblically", which I greatly enjoyed. So I figured I should check out his other work. While entertaining and actually, rather informative (I answered 3 Jeopardy questions correctly thanks to this book), I did not care for it as much as his Biblically book. I do still intend to find his other books and read them as well, but it was clear to me that this was his first book, as I saw more growth as a writer in his second book.
I first encountered Jacobs with his book "The Year of Living Biblically", which I greatly enjoyed. So I figured I should check out his other work. While entertaining and actually, rather informative (I answered 3 Jeopardy questions correctly thanks to this book), I did not care for it as much as his Biblically book. I do still intend to find his other books and read them as well, but it was clear to me that this was his first book, as I saw more growth as a writer in his second book.
vanessakm's review
3.0
I surrender. Goodreads tells me I've been reading this book now for 5 months. I haven't opened it in at least 3. I am a person who can happily sit and read a reference book and I did enjoy the random facts I learned (example: honey was used to preserve Alexander the Great's corpse on its long trip back to Macedonia.) But I'm not that much of a fan of this brand of stunt journalism. Jacobs write well but the stories all start to sound the same. He decides to read the Encyclopedia Brittanica in one year, his wife rolls her eyes, he goes to a party or family gathering and starts spouting random facts, his wife and others roll their eyes. He also tries too hard to tie the Britannica reading into events transpiring in his life. Sometimes cilantro is just cilantro, to loosely paraphrase Gertrude Stein. Not for me but I might pull it down off the shelf and read an article occasionally. Or, more likely, I'll just browse through the real encyclopedia online when the mood hits.
Because it was really informative (I can't wait to bring up the baculum in a conversation), I'm still going to give it 3 stars.
Because it was really informative (I can't wait to bring up the baculum in a conversation), I'm still going to give it 3 stars.
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