QI: The Pocket Book of General Ignorance - Softcover

Lloyd, John; Mitchinson, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571241395 ISBN 13: 9780571241392

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2008

Synopsis

QI: The Pocket Book of General Ignorance is an illuminating collection of fun facts, perfect for general knowledge, trivia and pub quiz enthusiasts. This number-one bestseller is a comprehensive catalogue of all the interesting misconceptions, mistakes and misunderstandings in 'common knowledge' that will make you wonder why anyone bothers going to school. Now available in this handy pocket-sized edition, carry it everywhere to impress your friends, frustrate your enemies and win every argument.

Henry VIII had six wives. WRONG!
Everest is the highest mountain in the world. WRONG!
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. WRONG!

QI: The Pocket Book of General Ignorance is the essential set text for everyone who's proud to admit that they don't know everything, and an ideal sack of interesting facts with which to beat people who think they do.

Perfect for trivia, pub quiz and general knowledge enthusiasts, this is a number-one bestseller from the authors of The Book of General Ignorance and 1,277 Facts To Blow Your Socks Off, packed with weird, wonderful and really quite interesting facts.

About this title

Review:

"Trivia buffs and know-it-alls alike will exult to find so much repeatable wisdom gathered in one place." --"New York Times" ""The Book of General Ignorance" won't make you feel dumb. It's really a call to be more curious." --"The Associated Press" "Ignorance may be bliss, but so is learning surprising information." --"Hartford Courant" "You, too, can banish social awdwardness by having its endless count of facts and factoids at the ready. Or you could just read it and keep what you learned to yourself. Betcha can't." --"New York Daily News" "To impress friends with your cleverness, beg, borrow or buy John Lloyd and John Mitchinson's The Book of General Ignorance, an extraordinary collection of 230 common misperceptions compiled for the BBC panel game QI (Quite Interesting)." --"Financial Times " "This book would make even Edison feel small and silly, for it offers answers to questions you never thought to ask or had no need of asking as you already knew, or thought you knew, the answer." --"The Economist" "Trivia books, like any kind of mental or physical addiction, are both irresistible and unsatisfying. By the standards of the genre, this one has something approaching the force of revelation. Answering silly questions suddenly seems less important than taking the trouble to ask a few." "--Melbourne Age" "Eye-watering, eyebrow-raising, terrific . . . moving slightly faster than your brain does, so that you haven't quite absorbed the full import of one blissful item of trivial information before two or three more come along. Such fine and creative research genuinely deserves to be captured in print." --"Daily Mail" "This UKbestseller redefines 'common knowledge' with factoids that will inform and entertain (or at least liven up your next cocktail party)." -"OK! Magazine" ""The Book of General Ignorance" won't make you feel dumb. It's really a call to be more curious." --"The Associated Press" "Ignorance may be bliss, but so is learning surprising information." --"Hartford Courant" "You, too, can banish social awdwardness by having its endless count of facts and factoids at the ready. Or you could just read it and keep what you learned to yourself. Betcha can't." --"New York Daily News" "To impress friends with your cleverness, beg, borrow or buy John Lloyd and John Mitchinson's The Book of General Ignorance, an extraordinary collection of 230 common misperceptions compiled for the BBC panel game QI (Quite Interesting)." --"Financial Times " "This book would make even Edison feel small and silly, for it offers answers to questions you never thought to ask or had no need of asking as you already knew, or thought you knew, the answer." --"The Economist" "Trivia books, like any kind of mental or physical addiction, are both irresistible and unsatisfying. By the standards of the genre, this one has something approaching the force of revelation. Answering silly questions suddenly seems less important than taking the trouble to ask a few." "--MelbourneAge" "Eye-watering, eyebrow-raising, terrific . . . moving slightly faster than your brain does, so that you haven't quite absorbed the full import of one blissful item of trivial information before two or three more come along. Such fine and creative research genuinely deserves to be captured in print." --"Daily Mail"

From the Author:

It's got a foreword by Stephen Fry and four words by Alan
Davies.

The rest of it is by the people behind QI (BBC2 10pm Fridays).

They are John Lloyd (former producer of Not the Nine O'Clock News,
Blackadder & Spitting Image), John Mitchinson (former publisher of fat
reference books) and their crack research team: an
astrophysicist-turned-zookeeper, an archaeologist specialising in the 9th
century, a stand-up comic who speaks Mandarin Chinese, a lapsed communist
who writes for the Fortean Times and a pub accountant from Bolton.

If you've never watched QI, you will be astonished at how many things you
don't know, from the very large and strange to the very small and familiar
-
galaxies and subatomic particles, killer marmots, black carrots,
colour-blind bulls and loofahs that grow on trees.

This is the world they don't teach you about at school. The real world:
where panthers aren't black, James Bond drinks whisky, America was
discovered by the Welsh, champagne was invented by the English, Santa Claus

is Turkish and there were 14 sheep on Noah's Ark.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0571241395
• ISBN 13: 9780571241392
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320