James Harkin

Having almost no interest in the subject of sports, I put off reading a book for the Nonfiction Reader Challenge category as long as I could. I had drawn up a small shortlist of titles but, as a fan of the informative and hilarious British trivia panel television show, QI, when I spotted Everything To Play For as a new release in a library catalogue, I immediately snapped it up.

Authored by two of the show’s ‘elves’ (aka researchers), Everything To Play For reflects the spirit of the program. Exploring the weird and wonderful wide world of sports, from the disputed origins of golf, to the tactics of tug-of-war, from the invention of the anti-orgasm bicycle seat, to the psychology of teamwork, and much more, the anecdotes embrace the idea that participating in, or watching, sport is about more than just the game, it is an integral part of the human experience with implications for individuals, society, politics, and technology.

Almost in spite of myself I found this book to be intriguing, surprising and entertaining. I had thought I might end up skimming parts, but I even read the extensive footnotes. I feel I learned a lot of fascinating, if perhaps ultimately useless, trivia. I don’t need to know that the football huddle originated with a Gallaudet University quarterback, Paul Dillingham Hubbard, who needed to communicate with his team, or that the invention of plastic was due to the pursuit of cheaper billiard balls, or even that see-sawing was once a Roman spectator sport, but I’m weirdly glad I do.

Written in a personable tone, and with plenty of humour, this book can be read straight through, or dipped into as desired. Ideal for sports fans and trivia buffs, Everything To Play For is all fun and games.… (plus d'informations)

For my full book review, go here: https://thebeerthrillers.com/2022/02/01/book-review-1339-quite-interesting-facts...

For a quick excerpt:

The facts come at you hard and heavy and fast in this quick to read but compact and dense volume. There is four facts per page and there isn’t an exact order to any or all of them. You’ll go from Tolstoy learning to ride bike at 67 to The Swiss are the only Europeans to eat dog meat.

Which right there is one of those spurious ‘facts’ as I mentioned earlier. Firstly, its an extremely over generalized comment / fact. Secondly, its extremely loosely defined. I understand what the ‘fact’ above is saying – that the culture of Swiss people accepts eating dog meat and do so regularly; but it also feels – especially now in the modern (2020’s) era, that its just a massive simplification and over generalization. Especially also throwing out the “only Europeans” part too.

Moving on, we come to one that as a “myth” has been debunked by many many many people over the past decades. From page 215:

The lower the ration between a man’s index and ring fingers, the longer his penis will be.

This has been debunked so often throughout the history of sexual knowledge and education. Its also one of the most regularly Googled things (men looking for help on the size of their penis, if their big enough, if their too small, how do you know the size of a man’s penis by looking at him, is there a correlation between feet size and penis, is there a correlation between finger length and penis size, etc etc etc etc). And time and time again it has been shown that there is no correlation.

But here it is in print…. but don’t worry, they have a site you can use to get more information and to fact check right? Oh…. oh no….. that leads a to a ‘404 Not Found’.

Hmmm, so just how many other facts aren’t really facts?

Some more facts:

It is illegal for US Citizens to eat Penguin meat. (217)
Nostophobia is the fear of going home. (83)
Turning up the music 22% in a bar makes people drink 26% more. (97)
Earthworms have five hearts. (129)
One in every seven minutes spent online is spent on Facebook. (268)
You can only see a rainbow if your back is to the sun. (305)

And there is plenty more.

This is a fun volume, and lots of the ‘oh cool’ or ‘oh thats interesting’ or ‘hmmmmmm’ type of trivia and facts. Part of the problem with volumes like this though, is that the facts are presented so fast and furious at you that there’s no real way to retain any of it all. (Outside of looking up these facts, I wouldn’t remember them.) And thats just a hindrance of the style and format of books like this, not necessarily an indication of this book in particular.

Its a perfect book to quick read on the ‘john’ or for car rides and things like this. Its super quick to read if you just read it straight through in a couple of sittings. And its perfect as an accompaniment to things like Mental Floss YouTube videos and the such. Sadly I find that the facts might be things you could quibble on, find fault in, or might be wrong. And as per their own book and site, you can’t fully fact check them, so that’s a big problem for me right there. But I guess, luckily, you are far likely not to remember too many of the facts afterwards anyway, so its a ‘wash’.… (plus d'informations)