Mental Floss: Scatterbrained

by Mental Floss

Book Overview

The bathroom read to end all bathroom reads

What does Greece (the country) have to do with Grease (the movie)? And what does Grease (the movie) have to do with greasy food? Plenty, if you ask the folks at mental_floss.

Based on the magazine's Scatterbrained section, the mental_floss gang has taken on the Mount Everest of trivia challenges: connecting the entire world through the juiciest facts they could find. How do you get from Puppies...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060882506
• ISBN13: 9780060882501
• Release Date: July 2006
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 7.2"

Customer Reviews

Great book for the bathroom

I agree with the last review about almost everything, so it's hard to come up with a new review that says anything different! Well, the only downside is that it's so short. I think this makes a great bathroom book - chock-full of trivia tidbits that any audience could enjoy for a few minutes. It might make you feel a little scatterbrained after you read it, but that might be the point, and overall, your trivia repertoire will be greatly improved. :)

Awesome book

If you love interesting and somewhat useless knowledge this is for you! It is a fun book to read and you say "Oh yeah" alot.....I would recommend it!

Fascinating, fun, hilarious, and highly recommended

An excellent compendium of oddball factoids, sharply designed and smartly written, c/o the fine folks at Mental_floss. I don't know how long it must have taken to compile all this stuff, but you can easily spend a weekend or more tearing through it. Good stuff -- I couldn't have enjoyed it more had I co-written it myself.

Trivia-tastic

This book is an immense collection of trivia, loosely related by tangential connecting facts. For example, a story about famous downfalls which recounts Oscar Wilde's end says: "But it's not like Wilde was angry enough to start a hunger strike or anything...." And then we're off into "The Greatest Hunger Strikers Ever." Scatterbrained is much like "The Areas of My Expertise" (John Hodgman), except not made-up. And with fewer hobo facts. The Scatterbrained approach to trivia is very readable, like a talkative dinner guest who goes on endless factual tangents. It's amusing and fun, and offers you plenty of chances to bail out when you've had enough (for example, when you've completed your business in the, uh, bathroom). This would also make a nice (albeit small) coffee-table book, as it's the sort of thing your guests can leaf through and call out interesting, often bizarre anecdotes. Nerdy note: this book was co-edited by noted Young Adult author John Green. Fans of "Looking for Alaska" will appreciate "Fond Farewells: The Best and Worst of Famous People's Last Words" on page 125, and fans of "An Abundance of Katherines" will enjoy "Math Nerds Gone Wild (And by Wild, We Mean Nuts)" on page 132.

Fun, hip, funny and interesting.

Chock-full of funny factoids to make you look smart at cocktail parties. An easy-reading smorgasboard of truisms both bizarre and interesting, all linked together. Bathroom reading for the MENSA set.