About this title: This is an extraordinarily bizarre and extremely funny compendium of totally useless and--as the author himself proudly admits--entirely apocryphal facts. Readers will gain new insight into such edifying topics as "On Actuaries and Their Tattoos"; learn about the secret, skull-lined tunnel connecting Pottery Barn and theme park Camp Snoopy in the Mall of America; and discover that, according to a helpful table of "Omens and Portents for the Coming Year," if "Someone speaking in an obviously affected accent" and "An owl that screeches with the voice of a man" are both heard, than it signifies ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Dutton Books
Date Published: 11/2005
ISBN-13:9780525949084ISBN:0525949089
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 228 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Dutton Books
Date Published: 11/2005
ISBN-13:9780525949084ISBN:0525949089
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 228 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Dutton Books
Date Published: 11/2005
ISBN-13:9780525949084ISBN:0525949089
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 228 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Dutton Books
Date Published: 11/2005
ISBN-13:9780525949084ISBN:0525949089
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 228 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Description: Fine. 1594482225 Like New-almost perfect. Light wear on cover edges. Cover lays flat. Pages sharp and clean. No marks or highlighting in text. No remainder mark from publisher. Accurate Descriptions with Fast Shipping and Robust Packaging! ORG115S. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Date Published: 2006-09-05
ISBN-13:9781594482229ISBN:1594482225
Description: New in None as issued jacket. New, unread copy with publishers inventory mark. We ship 6 days a week, generally within 24 hours; single CDs and DVDs upgraded to 1st class! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780525949084ISBN:0525949089
Description: Fine. Slight shelf wear, Slight age toning. GoodwillnyBooks is committed to providing each customer with the highest standard of customer service. You may return new items within 30 days of delivery for a full refund. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780525949084ISBN:0525949089
Description: A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. Dust Jacket has some edgewear present. -, Hard Cover, Very Good / Very Good. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780525949084ISBN:0525949089
Description: A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. Dust Jacket has some edgewear present. -, Hard Cover, Very Good / Very Good. read more
Description: Very good. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
"I really wanted to like this book. I think Mr Hodgman is hilarious on the Daily Show and I was hoping for some truly side splitting laughs. Plus he has a whole chapter on hobos and seems to have a werewolf fetish, how could this be bad? He even mentions ninjas!
Well, let me tell you, it is pretty bad. He makes hobos humorless. The book starts out well enough, but around the middle of the first chapter he states, clearly, that he is going to make almost everything up. Ok, that can work. However if you are going to make it up, you best have some type of grounding. You need to pull in things that relate but are not quite right. You can't simply pull in the kitchen sink and hope for the best. Simply making up things like the Hobo King and the Hobo war on America aren't inherently funny. Describing hobos as if they were subhumans also isn't helping with the laughter. Nor does saying that FDR put the polio virus into the water in order to stop the hobo army. This really wasn't funny.
Making Chicago a mythical city that rises from the water also isn't funny. It makes no sense. If you are lying simply to lie, the humor tends to get lost. I don't think this fact got into the equation for this book.
Take for example the funniest line in the book. This line takes place in the last section on the states and talks about how Idaho and Oregon tried to form a super state - Or-Ida. Now that was hilarious since it had some grounding. The ninja section was also funny in a haha kind of way. There were a few funny tables towards the front but the laughs, small as they were, were few and far between.
The book was disappointing. I still love Mr Hodgman on TV but I don't think I'll read any more of his written works."
"Hodgman's witty insights and helpful tables reminded me of the many thoughtful conversations and insightful discussions I've had over the years. Everybody's favorite topics are included and I'd especially recommend the book to people who consider themselves lovers of trivial facts. Even though the facts are made up, the lies contained here are worth far more than mere truths."
"I didn't want to use the phrase "inspired lunacy" to describe this book, as that term is a bit played out, but quite frankly, I really couldn't think of a more adequate description for Hodgman's unique brand of...well, of inspired lunacy.
I usually stray away from comedy books like this, but every once in a while, the situation just seems right. I've read some Dave Barry and Jon Stewart, who both come off being a bit slight, playing out jokes in short bursts that are just barely satisfying. Woody Allen is probably the most enjoyable of the comedy writers I've read, and it is he who John Hodgman most reminds me of, with one very significant difference. Where Woody Allen has an almost ADHD penchant for zipping from one non-sequitar gag to another, Hodgman takes the same jokes, but draws each one out into detailed chapters.
You get bizarre accounts of the Great Hobo War; a description of the lost 51st United State, Hohoq (also known as Ar); ponderings on the metaphorical city of Chicago (which only the naive would take to be a real place); and the secret Masonic history of the District of Columbia. There are dozens of other odd pseudo-factual accounts of other strange occurances dealing with such disparate topics as the prophetic powers of actuaries, furry lobsters, and bad haircuts.
The topics themselves are no more odd than anything found in a Woody Allen gag, but Hodgman isn't content to merely drop the idea in the middle of a sentence and let you trip over the humor on the way to the next sentence. Hodgman elaborates. His Hobo War isn't just a one-off joke. Its practically a well thought-out plot with dozens of odd little details that actually pop in other unexpected places throughout the book. Its certainly a little lunatic to write about the 51st state that floats overhead over central Canada and America, but its inspired that there seems to be a well thought-out back-story explaining its discovery and current status.
Like most comedy books, this won't be for everybody. Humor is subjective. But for myself, I smiled a lot, and out-loud laughing occured."
"I remember back in 2001 or so, I used to spend a lot of time browsing through online personal ads, not really with an eye toward finding someone to date, but just because they were frequently hilarious, sometimes intentionally, often unintentionally. Also, in a precursor to GoodReads kind of way, I enjoyed reading the various responses to the stock profile datapoint: Last Good Book I Read. These of course ranged from cutesy to pompous to dispiriting to inspirational, and gave me a way to gauge my own well-read-ness. At the time, a staggeringly popular response to the last good book was Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. And the majority of people who mentioned it also mentioned that it had them laughing out loud, even in inconvenient places like on the NYC subway. Probably based more on these endorsements from strangers than anything, I picked up MTPOD and read it and ... thought it was OK. Not once did I laugh out loud. Maybe the bar was raised to high. Maybe I'm just not a laugh-out-loud-at-a-book kind of guy. (Note: I totally am. David Sedaris, while enjoyable, just doesn't do it for me.)
But I thought of all that while I was reading The Areas of My Expertise, because (a) I was reading it on the bus and on the train, and (b) I was, in fact, laughing out loud at certain points. The list of Hobo Names alone had me shaking with silent giggles, no doubt to the great discomfort of the person wedged in beside me on the Fairfax Connector. Hodgman's style - exceedingly dry parody of academic officiousness - and his subject matter - very random, fanciful and silly - really appeal to me. I already have the second book in this trilogy, More Information Than You Require, in my to-read pile at home, and I look forward to the eventual publication of That Is All to round it out. Funny, funny stuff."
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