Ultimate Book of Trivia: The Essential Collection of over 1,000 Curious Facts to Impress Your Friends and Expand Your Mind

I wanted to like this book, really I did. My friends are always teasing me about being a great source of useless information, so I'm always up for a trivia book, and I liked the way it was divided by subject etc. And then I read the author's forward about how diligently he fact-checked all his information (great) with primary and secondary sources (uh, secondary sources?) including wikipedia... and still decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. There's still plenty of very useful and accurate information on wikipedia (I'm a frequent user and donor), although it should definitely be fact-checked and taken with the grain of salt, and you should really use the handy bibliography that every entry provides for fact-checking purposes.Where he lost me was when he claimed like 3 pages into the actual trivia section (after a bunch of Star Wars "facts" like "hey, technically Nasa probes use the same propulsion system as TIE Fighters") was that Sir Isaac Newton invented the cat door. Uh, no. Yes, he was mocked by his contemporaries for cutting a second, smaller cat door after his cat had kittens (har har, stupid smart guy couldn't figure out that small cats could go through a bigger hole). But, by then, cat holes in doors and walls had already been a thing for quite some time.In fact, even wikipedia states that it's an urban legend that he invented them (in their pet door entry -- no mention of cat doors or pet doors in their entry on Newton), which tells me that he read something in Cat Fancy or The Daily Mew or something, said "Hey, it's a secondary source and that's good enough!!!" and published it as fact without bothering to do so much as a quick google search to confirm it (seriously, google search it; you won't need to go past the first page to realize it's not fact). At that point, I deleted it from my tablet. If he can't fact-check something that basic, I'm not taking anything else in the book at face value. And it defeats the purpose of reading a trivia book for fun if you have to fact-check every last alleged fact.Sorry for the mini rant, but considering that he went out of his way to start the book with a passage on how diligently he fact-checked everything when he couldn't even be bothered to check GOOGLE, it annoys me and makes me think I could have spent that $1 better elsewhere.

A bit dated now but some interesting facts and figures on many main topics for general and trivia game usage.

I enjoy these types of books. But you can't just be a re-hash or a collection of snippets from other books. For me at least, this one had some new interesting and to me anyway unknowns. I read it while working out on the elliptical. Worth the .63$ I paid for it.

This book was really entertaining and informative. I loved the snarky comments after some of the answers. Gotta tell you though: In the weird place names category, you mentioned Boring Md. You totally missed Cockeysville, Md. and, just up the road from it, Dickeyville, ( may have spelled the second one incorrectly) anyway, they both exist. I lived in Cockeysville for several years. Unless I was totally hallucinating about where I was...? Naw, no way!

I bought this book for a gift for my book loving grandson who also likes trivia. It is a small book but is loaded with all kinds of trivia which is grouped by subject. My grandson liked it and the ONLY reason I'm not giving the 5th star is that it is small and therefore not as easy to navigate.

Interesting info, much of it drivel which could be a fun tool for a friend's trivia party or for dinner talk.

Interesting and fun facts are presented in a entertaining manner. Worth reading in small doses to retain the knowledge. Very readable.

I host trivia in a bar weekly.this is a good resource my only complaint is to many true and false questions. book is organized well.

this was a gift for my husband,he just loved it .He is testing us all the time LoLIt is fun and full of did you know.

If you like trivia this is a good book for you.

Nice book. A few too many true or false though...

Excellent

Great book for groups to okay trivia in any setting