I think I was drawn to this book initially by the cover: a photo of someone holding a pile of books that towers so high above them that it threatens to crush them. That’s my kind of cover illustration!

A.J. Jacobs books always kind of start the same way: he gets a crazy idea. In this case, why don’t I read an encyclopedia from A-Z? And then he takes it to the extreme. In his books, he has pursued religions (his wife was unhappy with some of the precepts his adopted), tried to get his body into shape, and volunteered to be a lab rat. Currently, I think he’s puzzling his way through things.

Why did he decide to read the encyclopedia from A-Z? Well, he was feeling kinda dumb, like his post-college professional immersion in pop-culture had purged his wetware of the literature and stuff that he had learned. And his father once had the ambition to read the encyclopedia. (AJ spends a lot of time in his books trying to live up to or outdo his father.)

But first he has to figure out what he means by “The Encyclopedia” as there once were many. He settles on the Encyclopedia Brittanica as the gold standard. And then he had to get ahold of a copy, Encyclopedias not wandering up to your door and persuading you to purchase themselves anymore. And, of course, he must have the p-book version, not the eBook, CD-Rom (how old is this book?!?) or the online version. The p-book version of an encyclopedia… now that’s something you want in your tiny little New York apartment because you wanted to die crushed by the weight of information, right?

This book, after giving a brief introduction about why and how, is arranged alphabetically from “a-ak” (that’s a word) to “Zyweic.” Sometimes Jacobs shares a fact about the word that introduces that segment; sometimes he wanders around a little bit: Masochism, it turns out is named after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, a novelist; Jacobs reflects that he had better take care with his own writing choices and reputation so that to “Jacobs” doesn’t become synonomous with “staying home all the time or washing your hands too frequently.”

Sometimes the word just sets up the section, where Jacobs writes about what it feels like to read the encyclopedia alphabetically, what his friends and family and colleagues think, what trouble he gets himself into with it, and so on. Sometimes he just launches into little anecdotes about his life.

Which is why, I think, I like AJ Jacobs’ work. Who hasn’t fantasized about reading the encyclopedia from A-Z? (Or all of Wikipedia?)* Think of all the fun facts that you’d learn. I am a collection of fun facts (or a compendium of useless information, as I sometimes tell people). One of my Strengthsfinder top 5 is Input. In the description that came with my results, the good folks at Strengthsfinder said that people with Input often collect things. I had an immediate and visceral reaction to this as I do not collect things, the way my husband collects things. He collects bicycles and Snoopy’s, and cookbooks, and scuba gear, and photographic equipment, and old magazines, and financial statements, and the free CDs that you receive to listen to while you read the Sunday NYT, and… and I have lost patience with collections (aside from my library but that doesn’t count; that’s practical). I said as much to the colleague who was facilitating Strengthsfinder at my organization, and he laughed at me. You, he said, are a collector of information: you like to know a little bit about everything.

And he was right.

Somewhere deep inside me is a part of me that worries that the world doesn’t make sense and is convinced that, if I learn enough useless information, I can put it all together somehow and make everything make sense. This may also be why I like mystery novels – because the detective gathers a lot of (seemingly useless) information and then, voila!, it all comes together in the last chapter to reveal the culprit and all is right in the world again, happy ending! That all I want, for the world to make sense.**

Which makes me wonder if Jacobs and I would either really get along or would drive each other nuts. But I totally get into his books. I learn things and I find them really funny. And I love how his wife brings him down to earth again.

If you want to have some fun – and learn a little – dig in.

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^{*Bueller? Bueller?}

^{**Right now, it’s not making sense. I blame David Byrne.}