A fun read, lots of strange answers to strange questions like how to brew beer in space. Don't people want to know the answer to strange questions. All in all just a fun read, and some of the answers are quite amazing. I mean to say, can a potato be poisonous to you? Have a look.

I’m perplexed as to why this book has a lower rating. It is very informative and seems to be very well researched. If you don’t like to learn random facts, this isn’t the book for you. It answers random questions and individuals with knowledge in the particular answer them. There is no better format for this so don’t complain. If you don’t like non-fiction, don’t read it!

Some of the questions (and especially the answers) were quite fascinating. I certainly enjoyed the one about playing bagpipes in helium chamber, or the one about white bubbles forming from dark guiness beer ("In interest of science, I repeated the experiment several times" :D ) The answers were well formed, often carrying a tone of hilarity, which made for a pleasurable informative reading.

Interesting to read loads of different facts that I’ll never be able to recall or explain.

Unless youa re into knowing the true answers, don;t bother!

A quick easy read with lots of little-known facts. What's not to like?

This book was interesting, but quite boring at the same time. The questions people asked were pretty cool (excepting the ones about beer, which for some reason was quite a lot of them) but towards the end I felt like the same person must be answering them all under different names because they all had this droning tone to them and went way too in depth on stuff they didn't need to. I felt the different chapters were random and illogical and I had no idea who that Ed guy was who kept adding footnotes to people's answers. However, the question-and-answer format made me continuously want to pick this book up, and that doesn't always happen with non-fiction, so it's got that going for it. A pleasant enough read, but not an exceptional one.

I love these little snapshot of information style books, to get some random facts and knowledge. This was good for the information - all submitted by readers (and scientists) to answer pondering questions. This was good in respect that the sorts of questions you can relate to and you get some advice from the expert. It also was credible information - (as their were footnotes of any corrections or updates where needed.)

However the style of writing and layout I found a little old fashioned and boring and i did not get into this book as much as i would like. Its a great little book to dip and out of however and i managed to get through this quite quickly.

A quirky little book of facts, but didn't hold my interest as much as I would like.

I really liked this, some questions made me laugh, so sobered me but all the answers fascinated. To see the wealth of knowledge that came from just asking was half of what I found so great about this book.

Full of facts - fun facts on odd questions, but the book doesn't quite deliver. Perhaps because it's a collection of columns and thus doesn't lend itself to lengthy reading, but probably more so because it tends to be repetitive in its answers (often stating the same thing but by different respondees) and because the book calls itself 'witty' but rarely is.
Randall Munroe's What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions and What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions do this better.

With all of the health issues I've been having, I wanted something light and silly but also intelligent to read while I was waiting in various doctor holding pens. This filled the bill perfectly. It's made up of letters containing questions posed to the New Scientist magazine. In each case, the magazine consulted experts and got bite-sized answers.

I'm unashamed to say I'm a bathroom reader, and this is a great, easy read for those quick in and outs. If you want to have a book on hand for times when you just won't be able to read anything protracted, but don't want to be doing puzzles or reading magazines, this is fantastic. The editors have sprinkled in plenty of humor to make it even more appealing.

If you sit down and read it straight through, it's an insanely quick read, in case you're not looking for in and outs. Either way, you'll probably learn something on the way through!

Five of five stars.

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).