There's a certain fellow whom I knew by reputation before I ever met him. I pictured some sinister figure out of the post-Soviet mafia---if it means anything to you, he's a chain in my six degrees of separation to William Restrepo, of the late lamented sketchy Columbian place in Wicker Park---but that image faded after I met him and discovered he has a laugh like a teddy bear. Nonetheless, the stories remain, and the only logical explanation I can find is that God has decided that he shall live, and for this I and those people through whom I met the fellow are most certainly glad.

David Adesnik of Oxblog is having the opposite problem. First the car, then the blowgun. . . mysterious ways and all that, but surely, this shouldn't be happening; he's been put on the wrong list.

No, I don't actually believe in a divine hit list. I'm noticeably more willing to believe in a list of the divinely protected, were it not for the resulting numbers not on the list. Tempting as a way to describe the good, but I never could stomach the idea of the elect and the damned.

When I was in pre-school and kindergarten, my favorite book for bedtime stories was the Facts-on-File World Atlas. I didn't just want it read once, but over and over again (we wore out at least two copies). In high school calculus I used to ignore the lectures because I was too busy reading the 2003 and 2004 World Almanac.

So I guess it should be no surprise that I quite liked A.J. Jacobs's The Know-it-all, which is his account of his attempt to read the Encyclopedia Britannica (macro- and micro- pedias).

I will spoil the ending by telling you that he makes it. Along the way he relates not just a lot of fascinating trivia but also interesting discussions about the role of knowledges versus intelligence, the insecurity he feels around people who are smarter than him, and the nontrivial strains that his project puts on his marriage.

I got the book from my brother for my birthday; I think his penchant for useless trivia is even stronger than my own.