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I Used to Know That: Stuff You Forgot from School by: Caroline Taggart List Price: £9.99 City Travel Guides Price: £3.50 You Save: £6.49 (65%)Prices subject to change. |
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Binding: Hardcover EAN: 9781843173090 ISBN: 1843173093 Label: Michael O'Mara Books Manufacturer: Michael O'Mara Books Number Of Pages: 192 Publication Date: May 22, 2008 Publisher: Michael O'Mara Books Studio: Michael O'Mara Books Sales Rank: 55 Related Items:
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Editorial Review: Tribune, 6 June 08: "a jolly useful old school primer dressed up in postmodern clothes ... Everyone will want to dip into this" Essentials, July 2008: A fun and witty collection of snippets of information we 'used to know' from school. Townswoman Magazine, Summer 08: it is a fascinating read and you might even learn a few things you missed out on first time around. Sainsburys Magazine, Sept 08: In the same series as the hugely popular I Before E (Except After C), this is an absorbing volume of familiar facts and figures you may well have forgotten... If the answers are just out of reach, but you know them really, this is the book for you. The Oldie, Autumn 2008: "a droll personal audit of how much - or how little - of school learning lingers on into later life... it is not only fun to dip into, it is a mine of useful information... It's all there, easily found, clearly laid out." Book Description: Has wisdom come with age... or do you struggle to remember the things you were taught at school? How often have you thought: "I used to know that!" * Can you name all the Bennet sisters in Pride and Prejudice? * From which Shakespeare play comes the phrase `the winter of our discontent' * Can you explain photosynthesis? Or osmosis? * Can you calculate fractions, decimals or percentages? * Can you name the plagues of Egypt, the planets of the Solar System, or the seven wonders of the world? * When was the Battle of Trafalgar? Or the Battle of Waterloo? And who was involved!? * What is the capital of Chile, or of Denmark? * Who followed Henry VIII to the throne? * What is an adverb? Or a pronoun? * What did Byron write? Or Shelley? So if, like me, you have been exclaiming "I used to know that!" while reading the above, you need this book. Caroline Taggart thought that she remembered everything from school. But when she had to explain Pythagoras' theorem and name the world's tallest mountains, she realised that she used to know that. Ideal for your pub quiz knowledge, helping the kids with their homework or just reminding yourself how smart you once were, here is all the old-school knowledge you will ever need in bitesized and amusing chunks. Synopsis: If you've forgotten the capital city of Chile; the basics of osmosis; how to solve a quadratic equation; the names of the Bennet sisters in "Pride and Prejudice"; who wrote the famous poem about daffodils; the use of a conjunction or the number of continents in the world, "I Used to Know That" will provide all the answers. A light-hearted and informative reminder of all the things that we learnt in school but have since become relegated to the backs of our minds, "I Used to Know That" features hundreds of important snippets of wisdom, facts, theories, equations, phrases, rules and sayings.It is a practical guide to turn to when an answer is eluding you, when helping a child with homework or preparing them for the new school year, or maybe just to brush up on trivia for the pub quiz. "I Used to Know That" covers English Language and Literature, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, History, Geography and General Studies, so never again will you find yourself stumped! From the Publisher: In the same series as the bestselling I Before E (Except After C) and My Grammar and I (Or should it be Me?) From the Author: When I started to think about this book, I thought I remembered quite a lot of stuff. After all, I do crosswords and pub quizzes and nobody will play Trivial Pursuit with me. But when I got down to writing it, I realised that I only sort of remembered. I thought I knew what photosynthesis was, until I tried to explain it. When I ran the maths chapter past a friend with a maths degree, I discovered I didn't even know what pi was. I couldn't remember what happened at the end of Wuthering Heights and had to confess that I had never read War and Peace (which was a bit embarrassing, as it turns out to be my publisher's favourite book). To make matters worse, the more I talked to people about what I might put in the book, the more I realised that we had all forgotten different things. I spoke to an American friend who said that she had certainly once known the names of all the presidents and the capitals of all the states; I had a conversation with another friend who she suddenly felt the need to ask me what a square root was. In the end I had to stop asking people, or the book would have been three times the length. Even so, we had to cut a couple of my editor Silvia's favourite bits, so she and I are hoping it will be a success so that we can do Volume 2. About the Author: Caroline Taggart was born in London of Scottish parents, spent her childhood in New Zealand and went to university in Sheffield. Confused for some time, she has now lived in Pimlico for 25 years and thinks of herself as a Londoner, but continues to change allegiance whenever it suits her, particularly during the rugby season. She has worked in publishing for nearly 30 years, the last 18 of them as a freelance editor of non-fiction. She has edited innumerable natural history titles, notably Jonathan Scott's Big Cat Diary books and the tie-in to the BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs, as well as books on gardening, cookery, health, witchcraft, pop music, the Blitz, the D-Day landings, the workings of the House of Commons and the English language. She has also written a handbook for mature students and an encyclopedia of dogs and is the editor of Writer's Market UK 2009. She has forgotten at least 90% of everything she has ever known about any of these subjects, which makes her an ideal person to write this book. Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Careful - not for everybodyI had high hopes for this book but was left a little disappointed. There was lots of stuff in here that I had forgotten but most of it I will surely forget again because I'm not too interested. The bits I was interesting in (maths and science) I found that I did know (because I read sciencey books anyway) and it felt a bit lightweight in that area. The book mostly covers early secondary school topics and touches on some of the basics from 'O' level (I guess that's GCSE now). Overall, I think it is worth a read and it does deliver what it tries to. My problem is that my expectations were unrealistic (but that's not the author's fault). Rating: - a feast of bite sized information This is the age of bite ( or is it byte) sized information. The older generation i.e. me think we are divided from the younger by the fact that we learnt our information by rote. The old exam system was based you learning what the teacher told you or wrote on the board and you passed exams by regurgitating it . As a result we confused knowledge with intelligence.These days you do not have to know the capital of Kazakhstan ( Astana) as the Internet will tell you. I am often told by the less intelligent that most human endeavours are easy or straightforward because you can look it up on the Internet. They forget it is raw information and you have to intelligently apply it. I constantly tell people that no ... Read More: Rating: - ...I Do Now!Leafing through this in the book shop my smug, 'I still know that!' expression was rapidly replaced with an, 'I never knew that!' look of horror!... So I bought it immediately, and having just finished this delightfully ingenious tome I am now happy to say that although I may not have 'Known That', I do now! A great book, birthday and Christmas presents for this year are taken care of! Rating: - Great StuffI bought this book for my Dad, trying to look clever whilst reminding him he is old. When he started asking me if "I knew this or that" I realized how much I had forgotten from school, and I made a complete fool of myself. I asked my father to lend me the book now! I needed a quick read through, but he wouldn't let me have it!! Great fun. Mark Rating: - What is photosynthesis?!Apparently, like loads of other people, I go around thinking that I still know everything that I learnt at school, when in fact, I bet I can't remember half of it, and it wasn't even that long ago! When someone actually asked me to tell them what photosynthesis was I found that I no longer knew anything more than 'it's how plants live and something to do with carbon dioxide and green stuff in leaves'! And more disturbingly all my basic maths skills have also got lost somewhere in the depths of time. This book is a godsend to anyone who wants to be reminded of all these skills so that you no longer feel like a dunce at the pub quiz or just generally really, and it also has loads of things that I was never even taught at school which are of genuine ... Read More: |
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