Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Dec 15, 2015 Crowinator rated it really liked it

Shelves: illustrated, genre-nonfiction, ra-those-nonfiction-people, adult, 2015-reads

I have to be honest - I didn't read every word in this beautiful book. I pored over the amazingly detailed illustrations, skimmed over some (too much) of the text, and chuckled over the snarky comic asides, while wishing that Munroe had maybe used some of the real, technical words to define things, then explained them in his simplified terms. His simplified terms and definitions were frequently hilarious, but they were also much more confusing. For example, the spread on bridges (or "tall roads" ...more

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Jan 04, 2016 Emily rated it liked it

This was funny AND illuminating! Who knew "nine" was not among the 10K most used words! I learned things about microwaves and then skimmed a lot of stuff because the book was overdue! ...more

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Jul 02, 2016 Noam rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

This book is SO MUCH FUN! I've now checked it out from the library 3 times (there's a wait-list, so I can't renew it, so I return it and get right back in line to check it out again.)

I've noticed that a lot of people either love or hate this book, and a lot of the hate seems to stem from the fact that the book doesn't do what they expected it to do. So, if you haven't read it yet and aren't sure if you want to: this is not like "How Things Work." I mean, it kind of is, but it's also a puzzle, so ...more

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Nov 25, 2015 Allie rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, audience-adults, stem, audience-ya

Generally I really enjoyed this. I especially liked the less complicated/more common things, and I was kind of bored/disinterested with things like a car engine or the Large Hadron Collider. It seems like it wouldn't have been super difficult for Munroe to add some footnotes or endnotes with some of the actual vocabulary. There were a few things I couldn't decode (like specific people who did a specific thing in a specific place) that I couldn't figure out by googling because all the words he us ...more

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