9. Sandi Toksvig, "The Chain of Curiosity"
A collection of columns from the Sunday Telegraph. Since I never buy Sunday papers of any description, and don't read the Torygraph anyway, this was a useful opportunity to catch up on four years' worth of Toksvig - such as I hadn't already got from the News Quiz, of course. All hail Radio 4.
What is the chain of curiosity? Here: 'Sometimes I find the internet frustrating. I spend my life caught up in what I call a "chain of curiosity". I read one thing, such as the fact that the average person's left hand does 56 per cent of the typing, and immediately I wonder what is the longest word that might occupy the same hand 100 per cent? (It's "stewardesses".) If I am not chasing a fact I am usually checking its veracity...' In short, it's the Wikipedia (or, worse, TV Tropes) effect.
This is a collection of Useless Facts such as I love. Like TV Tropes, it combines interesting, if not hugely relevant, things you never knew you never knew, with a healthy dose of humour. I do like Useless Facts. For example, that Rossini claimed only to have wept twice: once when he heard Adelina Patti sing, and once when he dropped a plate of truffled chicken into Lake Como. (I have to admit, I wonder how one would manage that. History - or Toksvig, at least - doesn't relate.) That Thomas Hardy wished to be buried in Wessex, but that Poets' Corner was deemed more appropriate; that a compromise was reached that involved his heart going to Dorchester and the rest of him to Westminster, and how it possibly didn't work out quite like that. That John Clare was, in his own opinion at least, formerly Byron and Shakespeare. And so on.
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Rather bitty, as is the nature of the beast. But then piernicki are bitty, and I can get through a vast quantity of those... Since each piece is only a few pages long, it's good for dipping in and out of, and, while there are some topical references, most of it hasn't dated as yet.
What is the chain of curiosity? Here: 'Sometimes I find the internet frustrating. I spend my life caught up in what I call a "chain of curiosity". I read one thing, such as the fact that the average person's left hand does 56 per cent of the typing, and immediately I wonder what is the longest word that might occupy the same hand 100 per cent? (It's "stewardesses".) If I am not chasing a fact I am usually checking its veracity...' In short, it's the Wikipedia (or, worse, TV Tropes) effect.
This is a collection of Useless Facts such as I love. Like TV Tropes, it combines interesting, if not hugely relevant, things you never knew you never knew, with a healthy dose of humour. I do like Useless Facts. For example, that Rossini claimed only to have wept twice: once when he heard Adelina Patti sing, and once when he dropped a plate of truffled chicken into Lake Como. (I have to admit, I wonder how one would manage that. History - or Toksvig, at least - doesn't relate.) That Thomas Hardy wished to be buried in Wessex, but that Poets' Corner was deemed more appropriate; that a compromise was reached that involved his heart going to Dorchester and the rest of him to Westminster, and how it possibly didn't work out quite like that. That John Clare was, in his own opinion at least, formerly Byron and Shakespeare. And so on.
( Collapse )
Rather bitty, as is the nature of the beast. But then piernicki are bitty, and I can get through a vast quantity of those... Since each piece is only a few pages long, it's good for dipping in and out of, and, while there are some topical references, most of it hasn't dated as yet.