The Know It All

via

Although this book has been on my To Read list for years (I came across an article by the author that I clipped out the month it was published, back in 2005!), it wasn't until Summer lent it to me that I actually read it.  And many, many thanks to my wonderful, bibliophile of a cousin who pushed it into my hands.
AJ Jacobs set out to read the entire 2002 Encyclopaedia Britannica- 33,000 pages, around 44 million words- in one calendar year.  His father, an expert tax lawyer who has published his own series of non-fiction books, attempted this feat and only made it to the Bs; AJ Jacobs is determined to finish, although everyone he knows is extremely skeptical.  Spoiler alert: he gets to the end.  It's the journey that's so fun to follow, though.  Throughout the year of EB, he picks up random bits of trivia (Hey, did you know that the Berserkers was a tribe that went into war naked?), tries out for Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, tries desperately for a child with his patient wife, joins Mensa, takes a speed reading class...the man stays busy.  Through it all, though, he questions what intelligence really is.  How will all of these facts make him smarter?  Will it?
A great read that you can breeze through.  You may learn a thing or two!