Contrary To Popular Believe by Joey Green

We all need something to read when we're doing something else. (Well, there may be people who don't read, but they are poor, stunted things, and we don't want to think about them.)

For a couple of months, the book I had in the smallest room of the house was Contrary to Popular Belief, written by Joey Green (of Wash Your Hair With Whipped Cream fame). It contains 250 things that some people believe, and explains why each of them is wrong in a single page.

Sure, I knew most of this already. (And quibbled with some of it; Green is happy to elide complications if it makes a better zinger.) But that makes a book like this even more fun: that smug feeling that you already know better than most people. If you already think you know things that most people misunderstand, this is the book for you -- and you get bonus points for everything you know that Green passes over.

This is not a deep book, or a serious one. But it's a book that sets things straight, which is entirely a positive thing. Its breezy, friendly style may make a few thousand more people learn the truth than otherwise would, which is entirely good. And I didn't actually find anything wrong in it: just things that are less simple than Green presents them. Considering the whole world is less simple than can be presented in a impulse-buy book, that's not too shabby.