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jennifer_mangieri 's review for:
A.J. Jacobs sets out to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a year & learns quite a lot along the way, which he imparts to the reader in ways sometimes personal, sometimes factual - the book follows an A to Z format with "entries" based on bits he's read that day in the EB. His comments are sometimes sincere, sometimes snarky, sometimes just really, really funny, and occasionally you want to throw the book across the room! Yeah, it's kind of annoying that he & his wife have the money to undertake this kind of self-indulgent project at all, while living in their Manhattan apartment & visiting his family in the Hamptons & undergoing all kinds of expensive fertility treatments. And that he can get the Self Indulgent Project published when supposedly the publishing world is coming to an end & no one is buying books anymore & What With the Economy & All, & The World is Slowly Grinding to A Halt! But that was kind of what I enjoyed about the book too. What better time in the world to just read something ridiculously funny & pointless?! I liked coming across random facts that I didn't know (without having to read the EB myself!) & random bits of hilarity, & I liked what Jacobs ends up learning from his project. A cynical, depressed hypochondriac - by his own admission - Jacobs ends up deciding that Homo Sapiens is a pretty good species after all, & that things really are better now than they have ever been before, & that there is hope - because we really do find cures for diseases, we sign peace treaties, & we write great books & poetry & create great art & music. He writes, "for all its terrifying problems, now is the best time to be alive," and he's excited for his son to be born into the world. This is a fun book - & sometimes that's all you need!