Review: How To
Title: How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World ProblemsAuthor: Randall Munroe
Genre(s): Humor, Illustrated, Non-Fiction
Pages: 308
Source: Own
For: Play Book Tag
Rating:
Sexual Content:
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Goodreads Synopsis
For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. HOW TO is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.
My Thoughts
My husband turned me onto the xkcd webcomic about a decade ago. I’m not the most religious follower, but I do like his humor. I found out about HOW TO through my library’s “Best in Books 2019” event and actually won a copy of the book while I was there. I was really excited that out of all the books I could’ve won, I won Randall Munroe’s.
I loved HOW TO. I loved all the crazy things Munroe thought of doing using absurd, over-the-top scientific methods accompanied by his typical stylistic stick figure drawings made HOW TO a delight to read. I also loved that since I was in a physics class last semester, a lot of the physics he used and talked about were things I had just learned, albeit on a much simpler level.
Physics doesn’t care if your question is weird. It just gives you the answer, without judging.
One of my favorite chapters was “How to Throw Things” because he has an interactive element on his website with the physics built in. I think it’s hilarious that Thor AND Chris Hemsworth are available throwers. I recommend playing around with it because it’s fun, even if you haven’t read the chapter.
Anyway, I’m glad my Goodreads group’s tag this month was science and prompted me to finally read HOW TO. It was 9 hours well spent (thanks, Bookly, for the stats).
Have you read HOW TO? If so, what did you think about it?
This book sounds like it is practical as well as odd and funny. I should look for it.
It is very odd and funny. I loved it! <3 I hope you like it too if you read it!
I remember the library picking this as one of the Best in Books. It sounded fun, but I’m still on the fence about reading it.
I think you’d like some of it. I’d also think you’d think some of it was way too over-the-top. But, you might surprise me and love it!