Well, I just finished The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs last night. The basis for the book is that a journalist (relatively young, in his thirties I believe) decides for various reasons to read the Britannica Encyclopedia in it's entirety. It's 32 volumes and 65,000 pages long, so this is quite a feat. When I first started reading it, the only time I put it down was to stop laughing so hard. The author has a very witty and biting sense of humor, and it cracked me up so hard I cried. I also learned plenty of random bits of facts and trivia (including the temperature of the sun, info on an old mob boss, and how many holes an abalone has for waste). The only slight plot that this book actually has is that the author and his wife are trying to get pregnant - by the end, that's the only reason I was still reading. His humor fell off near the end, replaced instead by his social awkwardness and his own impatience / desire to reach the end. Over all, the book was well worth the read, and definitely worth the $2 I paid for it in a used book store. He has a new book out in which he spends a year trying to follow the Bible as literally as possible, and I'll be looking to pick that up soon.
I give it 3 1/2 stars out of 5.
- Sarah