Book Review: The Know it All

A book review, final something that doesn’t have to do with The High School Author or Thespian Festival. Yes I know it’s a miracle, but I promise those blogs will return eventually but I finally finished a book called The Know-it-All by A.J. Jacobs, and I am going to say, this book is one of the most annoying, long and stupid book I have ever read.  The book is 385 pages of just boringness. 

Now don’t get me wrong the book does have some humor and interesting ideas but it is so boring that those brief things of humor can’t help you get through this book.

The Know-it-All is short is basically the story of a man’s journey to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, which is just as boring as it sounds. The one interesting thing that actually drew my attention to the book was how it was written. Each chapter was labeled with a letter, and there were definitions of a lot of the words that the author picked, so basically he wrote a dictionary. What I first thought was going to be a cool and interesting idea, suddenly turned into a struggle of a chore.

Yes like I said the book isn’t horrible, with a few redeeming factors, like a little humor here and there. But there is so much filler, that once you actually get to the humor you are either so worn out that you completely miss the joke, so bored that you just start skimming and miss the humor all together, or get to the humor and either don’t get it or do get it and maybe have a small chuckle. For a small chuckle it isn’t worth reading the book.

Finally there really isn’t a “Story” to the book. It is basically just a real telling of how a guy read 

through and understood the Encyclopedia. I mean if you include the little snippets of how he tries using the knowledge that he gains from reading the Encyclopedia in everyday life a “story” then yes there is, but it is an extremely boring story, personally I would have preferred watching paint dry then reading this book.

So in conclusion I personally would not recommend The Know-it-All to anyone. Personally it is just a boring book with a little bit of humor thrown here and there.  But I know there are a few people who will disagree with me so, if you have read this book and do think it is actually good then please comment below trying to defend this book, I would love to see why people think it is a good book.