In how many countries is voting compulsory? Can you name all the Bronte sisters? And what exactly does BHM stand for in the world of dating?
The back cover of this fascinating book, published in 2002, quotes Oscar Wilde: ‘It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.’ Ben Schott’s mission is to remedy this situation with this ingenious round up of trivia from all walks of life.
This is one of those books that we pick up as an afterthought, to leaf idly through in a spare five minutes. Half an hour later we are still engrossed in it. On the face of it, this is a mystery. A list of decathlon events, types of sushi and commonly misspelled words have no appeal in themselves. So why is Schott’s Original Miscellany such a page-turner?
Firstly, it does contain some highly original and genuinely remarkable information. How many of us had ever come across Ambrose Bierce’s Demon’s Dictionary? It is Schott who introduces us to some of Bierce’s witticisms: Achievement is defined as ‘the death of endeavour and the birth of disgust'; a coward as ‘one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs’. Schott runs the gamut of trivia from a glossary of text emoticons to a list of unusual phobias (catagelophobia is a fear of being ridiculed), right through to The Glasgow Coma Scale (1 is no motor response, 6 means the patient obeys commands).
Entries such as the list of Doctors Who and UK Christmas Number One Singles appeal to our nostalgia, even if it is only to screech ‘I remember that - it was awful!
So why is it that we find that, in spite of ourselves, we then start poring over the complete list of wedding anniversaries, the words to the National Anthem and a list of choice chemical acronyms?
The key is in the layout. At 159 pages, it is an extremely easy volume to leaf through, with four or five entries per double page. This makes coming upon a genuinely fascinating list highly likely. Once absorbed in an entry, we relax and the instinct to flick through takes over. We think to ourselves: surely there must be more interesting facts and figures hidden elsewhere here. I’ll just have a quick look…
Ben Schott has edited his entries cleverly; none are too long. This merely adds to the impulse to scan through. Having put us in an open frame of mind, he then inserts entries detailing the various types of polygon and antiquarian paper sizes, side by side with untimely pop star deaths and a glossary of cockney rhyming slang. Because we are now both relaxed and inquisitive, these seemingly dry topics now take on an eccentric appeal that is impossible to resist.
This is the perfect present for anyone who loves trivia.
