The Know-It-All, by A.J. Jacobs

Arcane Knowledge

In this book, A.J. Jacobs acquires a lot of it while reading the Encyclopedia Britannica cover-to-cover. Throughout the book, he spouts random facts—the opposite of déjà vu is jamais vu; hatters often became ill because they used mercury salts to make felt out of rabbit fur, and the mercury poisoning led to a mental deterioration known as erethism, hence the phrase “mad as a hatter”—that are sure to amuse and delight the reader. If, that is, the reader is me: I love knowing things, especially tiny bits of trivia to whip out at dinner parties, and so this book was eminently satisfying in that area. Too bad I don’t have any dinner parties to go to anytime soon.

Comedy

There’s also lots of this. A.J. Jacobs has a winning writerly voice; he manages to be self-effacing without being irritating—no mean feat for this reader, who is frequently annoyed by authors, clearly brilliant and talented, pretending to be otherwise. He also, unlike some other fact/memoir blends I’ve read (and here books like Wordplay and Crosswords spring to mind), manages to properly balance the public (the Encylopedia) and the personal (his wife, his child, his life). The combination of his facts and the reaction of his loved ones to those facts was not only hilarious, but also just right.
Not that his comedic voice rests only in his self-mockery; he also has a master touch for sarcasm and ridiculousness, which he uses throughout the book, particularly in pointing out amusing or ridiculous facts and situations. See examples to follow.

Encyclopedia Britannica

The real star of the book, I guess, and, let me confess to you: this book was so good that it almost made me want to go read the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Almost. I said almost. In any case, it increased my admiration for the E.B. and the people who write it; this is good, because Jacobs clearly meant to do so. At one point, he visits the office of the Britannica and is blown away by these people: their intelligence, their dedication, their quirky charm. They sound, in his description, like a bunch of librarians—“they love information—reading it, digesting it, and, most of all, organizing it”—but, since I have no less than three close friends in library school right now, I think that’s a great thing.

Giraffe

“The voice has so rarely been heard, that the animal is supposed to be voiceless; but it is capable of low call notes and moans.” Good to know next time I’m playing with kids: “A cow saws moo, a cat says meow, the giraffe says [imitate nonsexual low moan here].” (See? I told you he’s funny!)

Goethe

"...When Goethe wasn’t busy explaining to people how to pronounce his name, he found time to be a critic, journalist, lawyer, painter, theater manage, statesman, educationalist, alchemist, soldier, astrologer, novelist, songwriter, philosopher, botanist, biologist, color theorist, mine inspector, and issuer of military uniforms.

Well, at least he didn’t supervise irrigation schemes, that slacker. Oh, wait. My mistake. He was also a supervisor of irrigation schemes. "

Hip-hop

“...and yet just as I was feeling pathetic and totally un-phat, I read the Britannica’s assertion that Public Enemy and Wu-Tang Clan “were among the popular purveyors of rap during the 1980s and 1990s.” Purveyors of rap? Now that’s got to be the whitest phrase I’ve ever read. Yo, what up, dawg? Just hanging with my posse, drinking my Chivas, purveying some rap.”

Intelligence

Jacobs spends, I thought, an inordinate amount of time mulling over the true meaning of intelligence, including some meeting some experts, such a man offering memory-enhancing adult education classes and a psychologist specializing in intelligence. While this plot thread—and notice! I said plot! That’s how impressive this book is: he managed to take something as mundane as reading the encyclopedia and turn it into a real, honest-to-goodness plot!—is fun, and offers him a chance to reminisce about his father and his childhood, I spent the whole time with a lurking question: did he really ever, at any point, believe that intelligence is just facts? That reading the encyclopedia really would make him, in some concrete way, more intelligent? I hope, frankly, that I don’t get an answer, as an affirmative might make me lose respect for him, and here I was so enjoying thinking his self-effacing attitude was just a pose.

Memoirs

I’m not usually a fan, being more of a fiction lover, but I’ll make an exception here. It’s particularly refreshing to get a memoir that is so strewn about with hard reality, genuine facts, in addition to the author’s own musings. It certainly breaks up the monotony that the memoir genre can create. And, as I’ve said, Jacobs deftly and admirably balances the pitfalls of memoir, as well as the pitfalls of non-fiction, as well as the pitfalls of blending the two. We don’t get too many facts, or too little, and we don’t get too much of him, or too little. Three cheers for a genre structure well done.

Opinion, My Personal

Yes. Very yes. Find this book and read it--now!