A treasure trove of trivia. If you want to dazzle people at parties with superfluous knowledge, learn this book by heart and you are set.

My personal favourite from page 72:

"Because cats always land on their feet and toast always lands buttered side down, you can construct a perpetual motion machine by simply strapping a slice of buttered toast to a cat's back. When the cat is dropped it will remain suspended and revolve indefinitely due to the opposing forces."

Somehow I think my cat wouldn't see the funny side of it, if I tossed him from our balcony with a slice of toast strapped to his back. But I am very tempted.

Fascinating, funny, and thrilling. This is a collection of the best questions posed to New Scientist magazine over the last decade. I raced through it, riveted by the questions, let alone the answers. A great read for anyone who has a curious bone in their body.

If you regularly read "The New Scientist" you should pretty much know most of the answers in this book already, lol.

This was a blast from the past that wasn't even in my past. Let me explain. When I was a kid, I loved science. I would often grab a science book from the school or public library and lose myself in a quest to discover how things worked in this world. Of course, that was all kid stuff and once I actually had to work to learn things, I found other things to read for pleasure. But the desire to know still lives within me. I tagged this book a couple of years ago and a few weeks ago I actually checked it out. Does Anything Eat Wasps? is a collection of questions and answers from "The Last Word" column in New Scientist magazine. I guess readers can send in a science related question and, if it gets published, other readers will write in with the answer. The questions are the type that pop into one's head at a random moment, or might come up in a conversation while sharing beverages with friends. This collection contains queries from various scientific disciplines, from the inner workings of the human body ("How many different species live on or in the human body?"), to the reaches of outer space. (What would be the effect on the Earth if an alien spaceship came along and dragged the moon away?") Reading it was quite enjoyable, like reading a kids' science book and discovering a few more secrets of the universe.

Not a book to devour, but to enjoy reading one question per night

2007

The quality of the answers to the 101 questions varies widely. They are contributed by website readers and reprinted in this book. Some are terrific -- informative, funny and incisive. Others...not so much. It was difficult to read more than a couple of Q&A selections per day.

3 out of 5, because although there were some real gems in there, I wasn't interested in most of it

Read properly up until like page 100, but then started skimming instead to find the questions that really intrigued me.

An ok book, one of a time thing.

I just began reading this book.

Fun. Fun on many lavels and ways. Fun.

Zobaczyłam kiedyś reklamę w gazecie i od tamtej pory czatowałam na tę książkę, aż dorwałam ją za 10 zł w Realu. Szybko się czyta, pytania są ciekawe. Zwykle jest po kilka odpowiedzi do jednego pytania, więc można sobie porównać jak sprawa wygląda z różnych punktów widzenia. Wadą jest dla mnie natomiast wydanie. Okładka jest całkiem estetyczna, jednak szybko się niszczy i odchodzi z niej folia na brzegach. Myślę, że za 10 zł warto mieć, ale pewnie nie kupiłabym jej za cenę okładkową (32 zł).

A great fast paced read. The stuff you read in this book is so abstract it is funny.