Wednesday 6 April 2016

Read in 2016 - 8: A Little Bit of Everything for Dummies

Are you familiar with the "Dummies" books? I knew they exist, but until now had not read anything in the series.

Interestingly, I must have been thinking of them when I posted my recipes under the headlines "Spätze for Dummies", "Pizza for Dummies" and "Tiramisu for Dummies" some years ago here on my blog.



This book, "A Little Bit of Everything for Dummies", was (what else!) free on Amazon's kindle shop.



It contains 20 chapters with excerpts from 20 titles out of the "Dummies"-series, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this highly useful series of books - a great idea!



Spanning subjects from "Windows 7 for Dummies" to "Sex for Dummies", as diverse from each other as Knitting is from Canadian history, I found this to be a most interesting and entertaining choice. Apart from a few pages about Rugby World Cups, guitar playing and (non-digital) photography, I read almost every page of every chapter. Some subjects were of course more interesting to me than others, but I found all of it presented in a very clear and easy-to-read manner without lacking important detail.

If I should ever want to look further (further than, say, reading about it on wikipedia) into any of the hundreds of areas covered by the "Dummies"-series, they will be my first choice.



The collection of 20 chapters give a very good impression not only of the wide variety of subjects available, but also of their style. An excellent level of language without being too high-brow, as good as no errors (editing or otherwise), some humour where it is appropriate, clearly structured contents - in short: I highly recommend the series.

PS: Next up will be the second half of my Sunday flights.

8 comments:

  1. The 'Dummies' books have a lot to commend them. I have used several (I can't recall for what) and I know that I was impressed. There may still be one or two lurking in the loft if the escaped my clearouts a couple of years ago.

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    1. Good to know the majority (or all) of them are now available as ebooks and don't take up loft space :-)

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  2. I really wish they had marketed these differently. For one thing, the yellow/black colors are off=putting and also, because the books are really very good books on whatever the subject! I do wish publishing companies would contact me about these things, I don't care if they have made millions on them, I would still change them for the better! HA!

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    1. That's true, for the cover alone I would have never downloaded the book. Because as much as we try NOT to do that, we humans are still very much judging books by their covers, aren't we!

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    2. The strange thing is that I have always felt that this unusual and garish cover which has become so recognisable was a brilliant piece of marketing.

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    3. It most likely was for most people, but most people are not as picky about colors as I am! I truly love the covers of books and always notice and appreciate the most beautiful ones.

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  3. What fun! I shall have to keep an eye out for "Canadian History for Dummies" just to see what they've done with it.

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    1. That was the last chapter of the book I read in full, and I learned lots from it.

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