[I've been
reading]
The Experts' Guide to 100 Things Everyone Should Know How to Do

I like these little how to books usually. They’re small, fun and I generally learn things. This book was spotty. It’s 100 short essays with how-to advice on a lot of common sense topics. Some of the advice was great like how to write a thank you note, how to make tea, or how to house train a puppy. Other advice was all over the map, from the unhelpful to the downright inaccurate. The how to relax article was basically about how to meditate. The how to tell a joke article was in and of itself a good joke [by Howie Mandel] but didn’t really add much to the topic except for how not to screw it up. The how to wash your hands article strongly implies that hand-washing is a good way to keep from getting meningitis which may be true in an abstract sense, but seemed like a pretty oogy-boogy way to kick off 200 words on hand washing. In any case, some articles were great and some were not. Some topics seemed well covered and some did not. All of these articles were written by “experts” but I didn’t know a lot of them. This doesn’t mean much in terms of their expertness, but each little about the author blurb seemed like an advertisement for the author’s business or product.