Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader

Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader by Bathroom Readers' Institute

My rating: ★★★★☆

A copy of this book was provided through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'll admit it: I didn't actually read this in the bathroom. Blasphemy, right? Worse yet, Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader is my very first taste of the Uncle John's Bathroom Readers. But I'm glad I picked this one up--this is exactly my kind of book.

I'm one of those people who love learning; I enjoy nonfiction, documentaries, museums, educational websites, you name it. And with the advent of the Internet, there's a world of knowledge at the fingertips of the average citizen. Anyone can access nearly any known facts or opinions with the click of a mouse... and it can get overwhelming. I'll start out on one article, and before I know it, I've crashed my browser from opening too many tabs. I can access far more media than one person could ever hope to intake.

So books like the Bathroom Reader line are an amazingly valuable tool. Hundreds of topics have been combed through, selected, tweaked, and condensed to fit inside the pages of a single volume; it's the equivalent of looking at hundreds of web pages without ever opening a single tab--without ever feeling overwhelmed or losing the focus of exactly what to explore next.

Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader was great to read. With 608 pages of math, science, history, and all things weird, it's reminiscent of other media I've enjoyed; the articles are similar to those you would see in a Darwin Awards volume, Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex?, or even History or Travel Channel documentaries. Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader is a condensation of all that knowledge in the form of articles catering to tons of niche interests. There's sports history, war history, math history, Darwin-esque deaths, awesome (and silly!) museums, amusing websites, and much, much more.

All in all, I'm glad to have read this; I've found a great new series to read. And with at least fifty other books from the Bathroom Readers' Institute, I get the feeling I'm going to be reading these for a long time yet.