Review: Atom Bomb to Santa Claus by Trevor Homer

Genre: Trivia

Description:

“Three cheers for the ingenious, inventive, United States of America!

From the kitchen to the office to outer space, America has been at the forefront of the advances of the human race for the last two centuries. It's given birth to more new products, devices, medicines, leisure pursuits, sports, musical genres, and vehicles than any other country or people ancient or modern. More Nobel prize winners come from these shores than the next five countries combined.

Atom Bomb to Santa Claus celebrates the country's pioneering drive by describing some of its greatest innovations and some of its greatest – and most surprising – inventors. It challenges the imagination to know that the same country that gave the world the artificial heart and e-mail, also originated sliced bread and Chinese fortune cookies. Guaranteed to entertain and enlighten, Atom Bomb to Santa Claus is an amazing chronicle of some of America's most important and imaginative creations.”

Author:

“Trevor Homer was born and educated in the industrial Midlands of England and is a former British Amateur Champion golfer who represented England and Britain 28 times. Homer is the author of The Book of Origins which was translated into six languages and sold to eleven countries. He is also the author of Born in the USA which was published in the USA by Skyhorse of New York. Married with two sons and three grandsons, Homer now lives in South Staffordshire. This book is based on a lifelong obsession with obscure facts, and a deep admiration of the great democratic experiment which is the United States of America.”

Appraisal:

If you’re into history, interested in knowing some back story of how inventions and innovations came to be, and a bit of a trivia buff, have I got a book for you. Some of these things you probably know about, for example I knew Thomas Edison had helped harness electricity and invented the lightbulb, but other things might be new even on subjects you know. (If I ever knew General Electric Corporation was founded by Edison, I’d forgotten.) The author is British and in some instances his viewpoint might be interesting, seeing how a foreigner perceives something the originated in the US or how what reached the UK was subtly different from the original. For example, the discussion of a dance called the Okey Cokey confused me. Then I realized that the name of what I think of as the Hokey Pokey (yeah, the one where you put you right foot in) goes by a few slightly different names in different areas. If you’ve got a thirst for trivial knowledge, this is a fun read.

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK

FYI:

Uses UK spelling conventions.

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues.

Rating: **** Four Stars

Reviewed by: BigAl

Approximate word count: 75-80,000 words

The Five Star Trivia Book Volume 1 / Rich Meyer

Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Non-Fiction/Trivia

Approximate word count: 13-14,000 words

Availability

Kindle US: YES UK: YES Nook: YES Smashwords: NO Paper: YES

Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

The author of many quiz books aimed at trivia buffs, Rich Meyer’s interests are reflected in the focus of many of those books including comic books and old time radio. Each year Meyer and his team (dubbed “Collective Foole”) participate in the “World’s Largest Trivia Contest,” an event put on by his hometown radio station in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

For more, visit Meyer’s blog. Indie author’s might also be interested in Meyer’s ebook formatting service.

Description:

“Five Star Trivia is a family-friendly fest of forgotten knowledge for all ages! Every aspect of pop culture is here: Movies, television shows, sports, literature, music, cartoons, comic books, old time radio ... along with many more mundane topics like science, geography, history and politics! 600 questions + 600 answers = Hours of fun!”

Appraisal:

One time the boss walked into my office with a strange question (a trivial piece of information about one of the systems we were responsible for). I asked why he'd come to me looking for the answer and he responded, “because you know all kinds of useless, obscure crap.” Among my friends and co-workers, I've always been the person others would ask if they were trying to remember some long-forgotten tidbit of information. Rich Meyer's Five Star Trivia book proved I'm not as smart as they think I am.

With 600 questions running the gambit from pop culture, movies, books, and even some academic subjects like science, geography, and history, this book should challenge even the sharpest trivia buff. The questions are well formed, giving you more than enough information to answer, if it is something you know and can retrieve. (That last part, I found difficult at times, knowing the answer was on the tip of my brain and after giving up, having to kick myself for not being able to retrieve it.)

This is the second of Meyer's trivia books I've tried and, as with the first, my only complaint was not having an easy way to keep track of how I did. I knew I wanted to do this and rather than carrying a paper and pencil to make tick marks, I solved this by using the Kindle highlighting function to mark the correct answers, then counting them (in the Kindle's “My Clippings' document) at the end. Only 25% is a grade of F where I come from. I may be a failure, but Meyer's book is far from it, with excellent questions that should challenge everyone.

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues.

Rating: **** Four Stars

The Pop Culture Quiz Book / Rich Meyer

Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Non-Fiction/Trivia

Approximate word count: 15-20,000 words

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: NO  Smashwords: NO  Paper: NO

Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

The author of many quiz books aimed at trivia buffs, Rich Meyer’s interests are reflected in the focus of many of those books including comic books and old time radio. Each year Meyer and his team (dubbed “Collective Foole”) participate in the “World’s Largest Trivia Contest,” an event put on by his hometown radio station in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

For more, visit Meyer’s blog. Indie author’s might also be interested in Meyer’s ebook formatting service.

Description:

500 trivia questions spanning many pop culture subjects including sports, music, books, TV, history, and more.

Appraisal:

Appraising a book like this isn’t something I typically do and deciding on the correct criteria for judging a trivia book was an interesting exercise. I concluded there are two major areas that mattered most, the wording of the questions and the variety of difficulty.

An ideal trivia question will be as succinct as possible, yet specific enough so that a reasonable person won’t be able to argue that there are multiple equally acceptable correct answers. “He was president of the United States of America” would be an awful question for that reason. So someone formulating a trivia question has to sneak enough facts in their questions to make the correct answer unambiguous. Maybe something like “He was president of the United States of America at the beginning of the War Between the States.” That question requires a person to know that the US Civil War is sometimes referred to as the “War Between the States” along with who the president was when this war started. I found the questions in areas I was familiar enough to be able to judge were well written, both unambiguous in the correct answer and sometimes exercising multiple bits of knowledge to be able to come up with the correct answer. They passed my reasonable person test. (Unreasonable people, like Cliff Clavin when he competed on Jeopardy, will always be problematic.)  

The other ideal is that the questions should be diverse in difficulty. The Pop Culture Quiz Book seemed to hit a nice balance in this regard, too. The book was arranged in sections with questions in a related area grouped together. I found that the areas I knew I was weak, comic books and comic strips being one, were areas I did poorly as expected, but was still able to answer some questions correctly. Those areas where I knew I was relatively strong, music and books for example, I did well, yet found plenty of questions I struggled with and couldn’t come up with the correct answer. I was surprised to discover I’d absorbed more sports trivia through the years than I would have guessed as well, a category it wouldn’t have surprised me to have done poorly in.

I liked how the book was arranged with the question, then the answer following, with the spacing such that you would never see the correct answer until you had formulated your response and chose to page forward to compare. This immediate feedback is great. But short of keeping track on paper, a reader isn’t going to know their “score” (exactly how many answers did I get right?) This realization didn’t strike me until I was well into the questions. For those interested in how many questions they got right, using the Kindle notes capability to record something simple (maybe ‘Y’ or ‘N” for yes I got it right or no, I didn’t) would make it trivial to figure out how well they did after the fact.  I only wish I’d thought of that in advance.

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues.

Rating: **** Four stars