How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Real-World Problems by Randall Munroe ★★★★

[Jenni Elyse]

My husband turned me onto the xkcd webcomic about a decade ago. I’m not the most religious follower, but I do like his humor. I found out about HOW TO through my library’s “Best Books of 2019” event and actually won a copy of the book while I was there. I was really excited that out of all the books I could’ve won, I won Randall Munroe’s.

I loved HOW TO. I loved all the crazy things Munroe thought of doing using absurd, over-the-top scientific methods accompanied by his typical stylistic stick figure drawings made HOW TO a delight to read. I also loved that since I was in a physics class last semester, a lot of the physics he used and talked about were things I had just learned, albeit on a much simpler level.

One of my favorite chapters was “How to Throw Things” because he has an interactive element on his website with the physics built in. (https://xkcd.com/throw) I think it’s hilarious that Thor AND Chris Hemsworth are available throwers. I recommend playing around with it because it’s fun, even if you haven’t read the chapter.

Anyway, I’m glad this month's tag was science and prompted me to finally read HOW TO. It was 9 hours well spent (thanks, Bookly, for the stats).