The Third QI Book of General Ignorance, by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray: #BookReview.

On By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Creative Writer, opinion, Reading, Review

Subtitled ‘Forget General Knowledge, here’s the right stuff!’

In common with the other books in this series, this isn’t a volume to sit down and consume in one go. It’s a pleasurable source of entertainment combined with education that deserves to be savoured so each tasty morsel provides the full flavour and nutrients to the knowledge it contains.

The book is a mix of trivia and profundity, with all the various levels of scholarship between those extremes. The humour is encapsulated in the writing style but also provided in small bites of content from the TV show itself. If, by the way, you’ve never watched this television gem, you really should try it. You never know, you might actually learn something worth knowing.

At the end of the book is a comprehensive list of the names of sources used for verifying the facts contained, and that’s reinforced by the provision of a link to the website where greater detail is given on that issue.

Read it if you dare; it will make you question everything you think you know. In my view, that’s an excellent and desirable state of mind to adopt. Such questioning can lead only to the truth in everything a reader approaches.

[Any review is a personal opinion. No reviewer can represent the view of anyone else. The best we can manage is an honest reaction to any given book.]

And an apology to my regular readers: for multiple reasons, I’ve had to neglect this blog for too long. My whelm has been rather overed for a while. However, I’m now returning to some normality. Nothing specific or even particularly important has interrupted my life, but, as life does sometimes, life threw quite a lot of stuff in my direction all at the same time, much of it not easy to ignore. So, there will be a return to my usual activity over the coming weeks.
Watch this space!

7 thoughts on “The Third QI Book of General Ignorance, by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray: #BookReview.”

    1. Thanks, Lynette. Back from a couple of weeks in the wonderful English Lake District, where I took over 1000 photos!
      QI (Quite Interesting) is ostensibly a ‘quiz’ show featuring ‘celebrities’, usually comedians, and used to be hosted by Stephen Fry and is now hosted by Sandi Toksvig. They are slowly ploughing through the alphabet, using each letter to highlight certain aspects of life, philosophy, human history, and, in fact, anything you can imagine that might be considered interesting. At present they have reached ‘V’.
      They employ a large number of researchers who dive deeply into the written records to discover the real facts behind many topics. It is truly amazing how much of what we all believe to be true is often inaccurate, misleading and sometimes downright lies! The book cites its sources so readers can check on the veracity. The show is one of the BBC’s excellent productions and provides knowledge in a format that is lightened by the humour of the ‘contestants’ for whom there are no prizes other than their position that week in the team.
      If you can access it online via BBCi Player it’s definitely worth a view.

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      1. It sounds like you had a good holiday!

        Thanks for taking the time to explain about the show and how to access it. Much appreciated. We are considering getting Britbox which has access to BBCi Player but not to the more recent shows so we’ll see. Thanks again, Stuart.

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