The Areas of My Expertise

An Almanac of Complete World Knowledge Compiled with Instructive Annotation and Arranged in Useful Order

By: John Hodgman

Narrated by: John Hodgman

Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

In the great tradition of the American almanac, The Areas of My Expertise is a brilliant and hilarious compendium of handy reference tables, fascinating trivia, and sage wisdom on all topics large and small. Although best sellers such as Poor Richard's Almanack and The Book of Lists were certainly valuable, they also were largely true. Here is a different kind of handy desk reference, one in which all of the historical oddities and amazing true facts are sifted through the singular, illuminating imagination of John Hodgman, which is the nice way of saying: He made it all up.

©2005 John Hodgman (P)2006 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Critic reviews

"Wonderfully absurd." (The New York Times)

"Hilarious ... Nabokov's Pale Fire as directed by Wes Anderson." (Time Out New York)

"If Borges and Ben Franklin got drunk and decided to write a book together, the result might have been something a lot like this freaky 'almanac.'" (Tom Perrotta)

Could have been much better

I am in love with The Daily Show, so when I saw that one of their "reporters" wrote a book, I had to read it. I like Hodgman's presentation on the show, so I decided to listen to the audio version of the book. This was a mistake. Hodgman works well as the straight man, but he needs someone to play against, to mirror his over-the-top button-down appearance. This is lacking in his book. The idea is very clever-present all the information one could ever need, regardless of whether or not it's true. It's Wikipedia with a better editor, I thought. However, it wasn't funny at all. The oral presentation of the tables, guest readers, and other gimmicks throughout were simply annoying. I'm not sure if the print version is any better and I am loathe to check it out to find out.

Boring

While John Hodgman is a brilliant comic actor, his reading of his own work is so low key as to be soporific.

On the Areas of My Expertise

I enjoy the comedy of John Hodgman quite a bit, however, I must say that this is a little too much for me. Similar to how the Austin Powers movies had some wonderful one-liners but to watch one in its entirety was too much. This is the same, Hodgman just needed to make this a bit shorter to make it better. Still, to listen to in segments, not bad at all.

Horrible

Please don't waste your time or any money on this poor excuse for a audio book. The author should be ashamed of himself. I would love to know why he wasted his time and even more; how anyone published this. The review wouldn't let me use ZERO STARS or I would have.

Guess I don't get it

I purchased this after hearing so many people rave about John Hodgman and how funny he is. I guess I could have gotten more of a sample than what Audible provides. I didn't find the sample funny, but I thought it was just not a good part of the book.

Nope, it was all like that. I fail to see how such fictional subjects as omens and portents and hobo history in the U.S. is funny in any way.

I just don't get it.

something's not right

I never thought I would call something "dreadfully unfunny", but this audio book is dreadfully unfunny. the introduction was good, but went downhill fast. I, like many other people, bought this book on the strength of Hodgman's Daily Show work. Maybe allowing him to carry on untethered to a subject is too much for him to carry off.

Don't bother

Based on the description and some of the positive reader comments, I was hoping to be entertained, but by the end of the first hour I gave up. This type of material is not really suited for an audio book and in my opinion this is probably the worst of all audio books I have listened to thus far

Absolute drivel.

Don't spend any money, even at the discounted price. Total nonsense. Reminds me of the musings of my two year old daughter, except she made more sence. And it upsets me that I had to give it one star just to post a review. Should be zero.

Disappointing

I really like John Hodgman and I ignored all the negative comments here because of the many glowing reviews by Leo Laporte and others on the TWiT network. Unfortunately, the negative comments are all right. This book is boring, and not funny. When someone like Bill Bryson finds genuinely odd facts and stories it's fascinating and very funny. When you just make up random strange stuff it's not interesting. The whole book feels somehow belabored and strained, as though someone is trying terribly hard to be funny. I really really really wanted to like it but I just couldn't

Hmmmm......

Not that great.

Of the 5,000 $.50 words, I think that 2 of them were funny.