The Know-It-All

p>On leaving school or university, you feel pretty pleased with yourself. You've learnt a lot, your'e well-read and you know a whole bunch of obscure facts guaranteed at some point to appear in the questions on Mastermind or University Challenge. Then you get a job, and ten years later youre more eloquent and eager to argue about Britney and Big Brother than Beckett and the Brontes. Sound familiar?br>br>Well it happened to AJ Jacobs too. As an editor at i>Esquire/i>, Jacobs had built up a rather impressive knowledge of celebrity trivia - and the cure was going to take a long time. While others might take to reading a broadsheet at the weekend, Jacobs chose to read the i>Encyclopaedia Britannica/i>. All 33,000 pages of it. br>br>Bill Bryson meets i>Schott's Original Miscellany/i> meets Woody Alleni>./i> Part assemblage of fascinating trivia, part journey through adulthood, all laugh-out-loud funny./p> p>On leaving school or university, you feel pretty pleased with yourself. You've learnt a lot, your'e well-read and you know a whole bunch of obscure facts guaranteed at some point to appear in the questions on Mastermind or University Challenge. Then you get a job, and ten years later youre more eloquent and eager to argue about Britney and Big Brother than Beckett and the Brontes. Sound familiar?br>br>Well it happened to AJ Jacobs too. As an editor at i>Esquire/i>, Jacobs had built up a rather impressive knowledge of celebrity trivia - and the cure was going to take a long time. While others might take to reading a broadsheet at the weekend, Jacobs chose to read the i>Encyclopaedia Britannica/i>. All 33,000 pages of it. br>br>Bill Bryson meets i>Schott's Original Miscellany/i> meets Woody Alleni>./i> Part assemblage of fascinating trivia, part journey through adulthood, all laugh-out-loud funny./p>