The Book of Interesting Things is a book filled with wonders dating back to the beginning of time and going as far forward as the end of the world. Unfortunately, this book has been lost to us for thousands of years after it was destroyed in a house fire in Ancient Greece, after being checked out from the Library at Alexandria. (Interesting fact: it is said that the book had a page devoted to its untimely destruction.)
The truly interesting thing about the book is not the beautifully ornate cover with inlaid gold, silver, diamond, and lapis. Nor is it even really the fine and easy to read hand writing which covers each page, front and back, from cover to cover. It’s not even really the 7 pages devoted to neat facts about toes, which comes right after a 10 page article about flickr’s attempt to sort images by interestingness. But what is the most interesting thing about the book is how few people actually find these things interesting.
Page 834 of The Book of Interesting Things goes into detail on this very subject.
Now, many books have attempted to replace or copy The Book of Interesting Things. Some people claim to have found it. There was Kevin Dullard back in 1827, who claimed to have found the book and began going around reciting passages in a world wide book tour. He became quite wealthy from the gig, until it was found that he was not in possession of the book, but rather had a large collection of cereal boxes and was reading content off the back of them.
More recently, you may remember Charlie Boreded, who wrote the screenplay for the movie “The Book of Interesting Things”, but the large budget production failed to capture the true essence of the book and most enthusiasts, historians, and treasure hunters walked out on the movie and, in an attempt to finally fit in, told their friends they had gone to see Titanic instead.
The list of knock-off titles attempting to capitalize on the book’s fame is lengthy, and while I will not repeat them all here, I will note that the list of “Best 100 Knock-off Titles for The Book of Interesting Things” and the list of “Worst 100 Knock-off Titles for The Book of Interesting Things” can be found within The Book of Interesting Things on pages 272 and 273 respectively.
Also noteworthy in the book is a list of things that the book promises it will not do for you. The list is quite exhaustive, and includes things like: do dishes, help pick up chicks, cure diseases, and carpet your bathroom. Including a footnote behind “cure diseases” stating that there have been some interesting disease cures that are listed on page 6291, should the page numbers still be intact and you are able to read the hand writing which slowly deteriorates from one end of the book to the other.
The hand writing in the book appears to be from a well bred young woman, probably around the age 12. As the book progresses, there is a distinct growth in the script and the small deviations fade away as the writer becomes more apt at the task. Around page 1205 readers can view the first signs of fatigue. From this point out, while the script is immaculate, you notice small indications that the writer is not only much, much older, but also is beginning to enjoy the task less with each passing day.
Literary Archeologist James Rigtway dates the page at being only five years into the task, though some critics claim that is far to soon and others that the first thousand pages were clearly written in a month. The entire chronology is speculation, however, since no dates can be found anywhere in the book and the content often jumps back and forth between future, past, and present. (Where ‘future’, ‘past’, and ‘present’ refers to our present time as well as both past and future times, depending on when you are actually reading the book.)
Few people have actually finished the book cover to cover. The only one on record is the writer of the book, who signs the final page with an illegible squiggle and states: “The book is done. And I read it first.”
Many wild theories about the book have circulated the internet, gossip circles, chain letters, city council debates, and even campfires. The most likely explanation is that the book is indeed lost for all time, though a small group of people still claim NASA has the book and buried it on the moon in 1969.
And so it remains a mystery, even today. The Book of Interesting Things clearly has an interesting history and probably contains a lot of interesting facts, but it is a history and facts that we may never know.
-The Book of Interesting Things, “An Introduction to The Book of Interesting Things” page vi