From off-beat to startling, these new books are testaments of the times
Probably the scariest of these discoveries is Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google? Subtititle: Trick questions, Zen-like Riddles, Insanely
Difficult Puzzles, and Other Devious Interviewing Techniques You Need to Know
to Get a Job in the New Economy. It was written by William Poundstone,
author of How Would You Move Mount Fuji? – which sounds like another candidate
for this post.
Here’s one for the doom-sayer on your Christmas list: The Complete Worst-Case Scenario Survival
Handbook by Joshua Piven and
David Borgenicht. It includes a searchable CD with all 11 handbooks (Really?
How many worst-case scenarios can there be?) plus wallpapers, screensaver, and
more. From the blurb: “The worst of the worst, all in one place! Avoid the perils
of mountain lions and blind dates, avalanches and teenage driving lessons,
runaway golf carts, and Christmas turkeys on fire. Boasting more than 500 pages,
this sturdy addition to the Worst-Case Scenario library could stop a
bullet - just one more way to be prepared for the worst.”
And for trivia junkies, I give you the Weird-O-Pedia, “The
Ultimate Book of Surprising, Strange, and Incredibly Bizarre Facts About
(Supposedly) Ordinary Things.” It was compiled by Alex Palmer who, in spite of
writing for such illustrious journals as The New York Post, Huffington Post,
and Writer’s Digest to name only a few, appears to have entirely too much time
on his hands. No, I didn’t know humans
were the only animals who eat spicy foods, that Germans eat an average of 71
pounds of apples a year, or that apples, celery and strawberries have the
highest levels of pesticide residue when they get to the produce aisle. I
didn’t even want to know that. He
also includes a lot of potty-type stuff, so don’t buy it for Aunt Mable.
But this one really tears it: Goodnight
iPad, a parody of the gentle
classic Goodnight
Moon, the one our kids and grandkids couldn’t go to bed without.
Supposedly penned by Ann Droyd (right), the intent is to be relevant for the
next generation. So…is everything that
happened before iPads irrelevant? Wow. How did we survive on nursery rhymes and
fairy tales from medieval Europe? Granted,
it may be a hilarious spoof aimed at grownups. I don’t know. Amazon doesn’t
have the Look Inside feature on it. So for now I’ll give it the benefit of the
doubt.
Probably the scariest of these discoveries is Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google? Subtititle: Trick questions, Zen-like Riddles, Insanely
Difficult Puzzles, and Other Devious Interviewing Techniques You Need to Know
to Get a Job in the New Economy. It was written by William Poundstone,
author of How Would You Move Mount Fuji? – which sounds like another candidate
for this post.
Here’s one for the doom-sayer on your Christmas list: The Complete Worst-Case Scenario Survival
Handbook by Joshua Piven and
David Borgenicht. It includes a searchable CD with all 11 handbooks (Really?
How many worst-case scenarios can there be?) plus wallpapers, screensaver, and
more. From the blurb: “The worst of the worst, all in one place! Avoid the perils
of mountain lions and blind dates, avalanches and teenage driving lessons,
runaway golf carts, and Christmas turkeys on fire. Boasting more than 500 pages,
this sturdy addition to the Worst-Case Scenario library could stop a
bullet - just one more way to be prepared for the worst.” 
And for trivia junkies, I give you the Weird-O-Pedia, “The
Ultimate Book of Surprising, Strange, and Incredibly Bizarre Facts About
(Supposedly) Ordinary Things.” It was compiled by Alex Palmer who, in spite of
writing for such illustrious journals as The New York Post, Huffington Post,
and Writer’s Digest to name only a few, appears to have entirely too much time
on his hands. No, I didn’t know humans
were the only animals who eat spicy foods, that Germans eat an average of 71
pounds of apples a year, or that apples, celery and strawberries have the
highest levels of pesticide residue when they get to the produce aisle. I
didn’t even want to know that. He
also includes a lot of potty-type stuff, so don’t buy it for Aunt Mable.
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