Super Unsolicited Book Advice Bros.

I just finished reading John Hodgman's book, The Areas of My Expertise, which reads quickly because it's mostly structured as a jumbled parody almanac of "complete world knowledge" that is almost entirely made up. Hodgman, as has been pointed out, has been a commentator on the Daily Show lately, but the book's more like the couple of his This American Life segments that I've heard, ranging from obscure daffiness to a kind of muted melancholy. A lot of it is hit-or-miss -- I found the repeated mentions of hoboes and mermen tiresome (this does not include the almost sublimely odd list of 700 hobo names) and he tends to drift into slightly too clever, Dave Eggers-y territory (for instance, most of the "Jokes That Have Never Produced Laughter") -- but the best of it is just hilariously weird. The high point for me is an only somewhat falsified synopsis of The Muppet Movie that nonetheless warps it into a horrifying postmodern exercise ("Then the roof of the soundstage smashes in and a powerful rainbow shines down and obliterates everything, including a plywood imitation of the fake rainbow that had appeared in the first scene. The frog and bear and pig simulations panic as the fake/real and real/fake worlds nearly destroy each other") in which Hodgman makes a cameo appearance. I'm also fond of his short list of "failed palindromes", which capture the forced, cryptic style of real palindromes but don't manage to spell the same thing out backwards as forwards (i.e., "Slow speed: deep owls"). Anyway, I recommend it, if only for the bizarre sensation, after reading a lot of it in one sitting, of not being able to tell whether a stated point of fact is just one of Hodgman's quieter, less egregious falsehoods, or is actually true...