More Information than You Require

"More Information Than You Require" by John Hodgman is Hodgman's continuation of his previous book, "The Areas of My Expertise." Like "Areas", "More" is a book of fake trivia, with Hosdman covering in this book the lives of the presidents, the societies of the mole men, and a weird weather war between Richmond, VA and Milwaukee, WI, amongst a variety of other subjects. To emphasize that "More" is a continuation rather than a mere sequel, the book's page numbers start where the previous book's end, and there are many footnotes back to the previous book.

In addition to its regular collection of fake facts on how to divine the future from a pig's spleen and Teddy Roosevelt's many superhuman acts, each page is also assigned a day of the year, starting with October 21st (when the book is officially published), and we are given a fake factoid for something that supposedly happened that day.

A lot of people that I talked to while I was reading this couldn't get over the whole "fake" part of the fake trivia book. They seemed to think it was weird and a little pointless to read. I whole-heartedly disagree with that: not only are many of the things Hodgman writes funny, but he manages to create an alternate US, one slightly more fascinating than our own, where presidents secretly have hooks for hands, the Declaration of Independance was inspired by mole men, and that a secret lab at Yakle has been secretly performing horrific experiments on cats for decades. And not only that, oftentimes Hodgman will show his nerd cred with a throwaway reference to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, "No Exit", or the Harry Potter books.

All in all, I liked it. However, oftentimes chapters dragged on a bit, and sometimes individual essays did too. I liked the content of the list of 700 molemen, but after bout 200 I was a bit tuckered out. I also disliked the constant footnoting to other pages, including ones of "Areas." I would have preferred Hodgman had merely summarised useful inforamation from his previous book again. But these are all fiarly minor complaints.

Even though it's an odd book and not for everyone, "More Information Than You Require" is a fun and funny book. I enjoyed it a lot and I look forward to Hidgman''s next and final book in "The Areas of my Expertise." I recommend it to you if you consider yourself a nerd or are a fan of extremely surreal and dry humor.