"The Know It All" was actually written before "A Year of Living Biblically" but I only recently encountered it at Chapters/Indigo on the discount shelves and so I bought it. "The Know it All" is a semi autobiographical story featuring his insights and commentary while he tries to read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica. Jacobs is a writer with an easy to read style and a dry wit that makes the book quite entertaining in places. For me the author's enquiry into the knowledge vs. wisdom, information vs. knowledge dichotomy in of much greater interest than the stories about his friends and family....but that I guess is what keeps the content from becoming too dense.
The central thread of the book is Jacob's reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica, all entries, every page. He takes over a year and has many interesting comments and experiences related to his quest.
I think it is a book that I will keep around and dip into again when I have a little time to kill. I am also thinking that I need to get a set of Encyclopedias to browse when there is nothing pressing on my time.
http://ajjacobs.com/books/kia.asp This is his site and what he says he was doing.
Just stirring the pot and I recognize that print is typically vetted/edited (especially so for encyclopedias), but doesn't a digital source of knowledge (the web) provide more value?
ReplyDelete1. More than one point of view on the subject (think History viewed from victor vs conquered)
2. Portability (via your computing device: phone, tablet, computer)
3. Search capability (vs. printed indices, which only list a limited specific set of words/phrases).