27th May 2023

I’ve enjoyed Dan Schreiber’s audio works (podcasts and radio shows) for many years, so when his book was announced it went straight onto my list. This is a book of what he describes as ‘facts’ (quote marks his), which are things that people choose to believe, but likely aren’t quite actually true.

I can see this being an excellent book to keep in the bathroom. The chapters are short, and could easily be spread across a number of sittings. However you can also just devour the entire book in a couple of days, which was the approach I took.

As I had expected, the book is excellently researched, well written, funny and enjoyable to read. There are so many fascinating stories and I kept finding myself wanting to share some of its revelations, before remember that they are only ‘facts’.

read more

17th April 2021

The sequel to the Book of the Year 2017, this is a collection of fairly random things from the news in 2018, presented by four of the QI Elves, who are also the hosts of my favourite podcast, No Such Thing As A Fish.

I enjoyed dipping in to this once or twice a day for some random entertainment, and flash backs to a world before the pandemic, when crazy things going on in the world were just a distraction and not our everyday.

However I did feel like this book flew by much faster than its predecessor - lasting less long, and necessitating me ordering the 2019 book sooner than I’d expected.

read more

2nd January 2020

So it’s taken me a surprisingly long time - two years - to get to the end of this review of 2017, wherein the stars of (possibly) the world’s biggest podcast, No Such Thing As a Fish, have collected all the unusual news stories of the year.

It’s a fun trip around the lighter side of the news, although something about the pages in combination with my bathroom lights seems to interfere with my eyes, making it slightly hard to read.

Good fun, and I might even look out for the 2018 edition now…

read more