Schotts Quintessential Miscellany by Ben Schott

Schotts Quintessential Miscellany Reviews

• 
  Swaye

  A fascinating little book with lots of interesting and sometimes silly little tidbits of information like Different Types of Kisses, Unlikely Cures for Hiccups, Gemstone Lore, Phases of the Moon, Ways To A Woman's Heart etc.
  
  It's the kind of book that I know I'll keep coming back to.
• 
  reading is my hustle

  Part of an informative series of books that is more than just a collection of facts. These are great books to own and glance through.
  
  I still miss *Schott's Vocab* ::
  http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/.
• 
  Liliana Dalbins

  Loved these books since I was a teenager - pages filled with random information, facts and illustrations of everything from hat sizes to weather forecasting equipment!
• 
  Jenna (Falling Letters)

  Quick review originally published 25 March 2012 on
  Falling Letters.
  
  I first fell in love with Schott's Miscellanies when my mom bought my
  Schott's Food and Drink Miscellany. As soon as I found out there were other books in the series, I made it my mission to pick them up. I own:
  Schott's Original Miscellany,
  Schott's Sporting Gaming and Idling Miscellany, Schott's Miscellany 2009 (American) and Schott's Almanac 2010 (British, signed, I picked it up in Foyle's when I was in London :)). I was very excited when I heard there would be a new book as I was disappointed there wasn't a Schott's Miscellany 2011.
  
  This isn't a really a book you just 'read straight through' - however, I always like to do just that the first time I pick up a book. I just love reading snippet after snippet, and going straight through ensures I don't miss anything. Still, I know I will enjoy picking up the book and opening it to a random page in the future.
  
  The books themselves are very lovely things. Minimal, crisp, well-designed book covers. Each book has its own 'colour', the colour of the ribbon, accent on the dustjacket and the book itself - this one is purple (I love purple~ Haha). The fonts and small icons used within the book are very 'smart' and crisp. What is most impressive, though, is the layout of the pages. All the different pieces fit neatly together like a puzzle, no space is wasted. The organizer of this book deserves much praise!
  
  Everywhere in this book, not just the 'meat' of it, has some fun bit of information to offer. For example, the joke about indexes at the end of the index or the 'note on sauces' following the 'note on sources'. I eat up stuff like this. The last page, 'An Authorial Miscellany' was fun (my favourite word to describe this book XP).
  
  One minor issue I have with the series that was slightly more noticeable for me in this volume than the others is that sometimes I just don't know what is being talked about. For example, 'Legal Animus'. Maybe other people know what this is? Maybe British people? Maybe I'm just ignorant? But there were a few tidbits that I just understand like that one...
  
  Some of my favourite tidbits:
  -----Learning the words antiscii and periscii (page 43)
  -----Postman's Park, where plaques are put up for those who died while rescuing others (Soloman Galaman caught my eye - Aged 11. Died of injuries. September 6 1901. After saving his little brother from being run over in Commercial Street. 'Mother I Saved him but I could not save myself'.) (page 54-55)
  -----Celebrity body parts auctioned off (Napoleon's penis, whyyyyyyy?!) (page 57)
  -----Chronology of Crayola crayons (oh my goodness, crayons are my favourite material object, they are so beautiful and so many shades and I just loved this chart (page 65)
  -----Types of biblios (page 101)
  -----On Journeys (page 107)
  -----And many more...those were just ones I noted down at the time, as particularly interesting or odd or good for inspiring a story (one of the reasons why I enjoy these books - they are very inspirational for me on a creative level)
  -----I laughed at the '~Special Existential Supplement~', nine pages describing various stages of life.
  
• 
  David

  I loved every one of the previous Schott's Miscellanies; this one is not quite of the same caliber. The uniform excellence of the earlier volumes is not maintained here.Though there is still plenty of weirdly fascinating, completely useless trivia, this volume does seem to contain more padding. Ten pages given over to various taxonomies of the different stages of life seems excessive, as does the inclusion of a "Withnail and I Imbibing Guide", and the table of word frequencies in Beatle songs. I would not have missed the complete enumeration of Friends episodes, and tabulating the letters of the Greek alphabet hardly seems worth the space.
  
  But you know what? Maybe I'm just being a petty quibbler here (wouldn't be the first time). Because this is a book that also gives you:
  
  480 different ways to spell "scissors"
  Tintin and the foreign translators (I confess to a prior obsession with the different linguistic variations of "Dupont et Dupond"; it's all here)
  Animal cries (apes gibber and magpies chatter, but did you know that mastodons bellow, or that bitterns boom?)
  The Proust questionnaire
  Notable winds ((from the Chinook to the Williwaw)
  Curious economic indicators
  Fool's errands (tartan paint, ethernet tape, wild haggis, eel's feet, ...)
  Phrases of supererogation and stupidity (coals to Newcastle, owls to Athens, taking your samovar to Tula, ....)
  Unusual April's Fool Hoaxes
  A two-page precipitation lexicon* (toad-stranglers, nubbin-stretchers, monkey's weddings, ...)
  
  Guess what? I've worked myself back up to a 4-star rating. To a certain type of reader (and you know who you are) this stuff is like crack cocaine. This sequel might not be strictly necessary, but that doesn't mean it's not a whole lot of fun.
  
  Forget what I said earlier. Ben Scott's genius remains undisputed.
  
  *: my favorite item.
• 
  Susan

  This isn't a book one reads. It's a book one dips into. And what delightful dipping it is! I'm a trivia nut and Miscellany was a nice break from some of the heavier reading I've been doing lately. Did you know that the shape and color of a halo in classic paintings denotes something specific? (Perhaps you did. I did not.) A list of "animal cries" taught me that woodpeckers blatter, goldfinches twinkle, and mastodons bellow. Who on earth knows what a mastodon sounded like? P.G. Wodehouse, apparently, as referenced in The Inimitable Jeeves: ". . .when Aunt is calling to Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps." I learned that a Canadian Tuxedo is a denim jacked paired with denim trousers, although Canada can't exclusively claim that combo. It was a common fashion statement at my high school in the early 70s.
  
  Anyway, I heartily enjoyed Schott's Quintessential Miscellany.
• 
  Ana

  Being one of a series of miscellanies, this book may be expected to be a compendium of random facts and morsels that one may find amusing as a casual read, forgotten instantly or pulled out at a moment in a closely relevant conversation. What I found instead of a motley collection of tidbits was a gathering of chronologically progressive wisdom taken from newsletters and guidebooks and sources that might not have had their facts entirely straight but manage to outline perfectly how the little things in society work or may have worked, interspersed with interesting points of reference on things you may have always wanted to know or will probably look over again in the future. Definitely a recommended read for anyone with a bit of spare time on their hands, be it two minutes or two hours.
• 
  Brad

  Fun overall, but just a bit below Schott's yearly almanacs (hence four vs five stars). Sadly, Mr. Schott only writes his yearly almanacs based on British current events and not U.S. current events (which he used to do up until 2009).
• 
  Michael

  I love Ben Schott's strangely curated collections of observations and minutiae. They are delightfully beside the point—any point—but make for nice grazing when I don't want to engage my tired head on more demanding literature. Swell stuff.
• 
  Jessica

  Only in this book would you find a list of the Crayola Crayon colors, one with all of the SN words that deal with the nose, a complete list of the Semaphore & Wig-wag symbols, right next to the color assignments from the film "The Reservoir Dogs". It was a fun and interesting read.
• 
  Kimberly

  Not nearly as good as the other two - I mostly skimmed this one.
• 
  Anna

  I love things like this. Weird facts, esoteric knowledge, every Friends episode ever, all in a beautiful layout on lovely paper.
• 
  Robin

  This is a fun little book of lists of all sorts of miscellany!