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Curiosities of Literature: A Feast for Book Lovers
When did cigarettes start making an appearance in English literature? Which author's heart was purportedly eaten by a cat? One of our best-known and best-loved literary critics turns his attention to the more bizarre areas of literature in this miscellany of fact and trivia. Which author had the heaviest brain? What was the original title of 1984? Who made the first bouillon soup? What do 12 percent of all winners of the Booker Prize have in common? What didn't happen on Thomas Carlyle's famous wedding night? And, while we're at it, who wrote the first Western, and is there any link between asthma and literary genius? Sutherland's irreverent literary masterpiece illuminates every topic imaginable from author advances to Civil War literature to Victorian sex to odd things eaten by literary characters (think Patrick Bateman's girlfriend in American Psycho). Other fascinating insights include the fact that the number one title among American Civil War soldiers was Les Miserables. This is the ideal anthology of fascinating information and trivia for all book lovers.
306 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2008
62 people are currently reading
680 people want to read
About the author
John Sutherland
252 books194 followersJohn Andrew Sutherland is a British academic, newspaper columnist and author. He is Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews
July 22, 2012
Two reviewers on Amazon.com: "Sutherland's witty pomposity will either entertain you or drive you mad. Unfortunately, I found myself in the latter category. Consider which camp you belong to before reading this one." "Unlike the other reviewer who pronounced Sutherland pompous and arrogant, I found this book is so witty and enjoyable that I actually read part of it at the beach." I am firmly in the beach-reading camp. To paraphrase Lincoln, if this is the kind of thing you like, you'll love it, and if not, you will think it violently pretentious at best. But anyone who can distract me from a threatening migraine which has been building up like a New Mexico thunderhead since Friday has my attention, and my gratitude, and my laughter.
One carp: short as the chapters are, there are some very brief squibs which would obviously be sidebars set off by maybe just white space on the printed page, but in the Kindle version they're inserted right in the middle of the text - with the result that the gory result of Hemingway's suicide is interrupted by a blithe page on the origins of literary detectives. This happens about three or four times. However, the detailed, gleefully grotesque illustrations by Martin Rowson are much better-rendered than usual (many of them are quite unnerving, but hilarious). They gain the book a whole star (yes they are that good). And, of course, there is the usual Kindle-ified un-numbered, un-linked useless Index, which is just a list of names. sigh.
One carp: short as the chapters are, there are some very brief squibs which would obviously be sidebars set off by maybe just white space on the printed page, but in the Kindle version they're inserted right in the middle of the text - with the result that the gory result of Hemingway's suicide is interrupted by a blithe page on the origins of literary detectives. This happens about three or four times. However, the detailed, gleefully grotesque illustrations by Martin Rowson are much better-rendered than usual (many of them are quite unnerving, but hilarious). They gain the book a whole star (yes they are that good). And, of course, there is the usual Kindle-ified un-numbered, un-linked useless Index, which is just a list of names. sigh.
May 29, 2019
A literary miscellany, heavy on the Victorians. Good light reading for the bookish type.
January 11, 2023
A fun little jaunt through factoids of literature, though it skews heavily in favor of white European men (as Western literature tends to do).
September 4, 2016
This is a book of trivia, factoids and amusing stories about the world of literature. The author is a professor of English literature, so he knows his stuff. The book is organized by loose themes, beginning with food (both as featured in literature, and as eaten by authors.) There are bits on authors’ pen names, sales figures and famous deaths. After the index, there’s an essay on “the end of the book” where Mr. Sutherland muses whether the codex book as we know it will soon vanish, replaced by electronic media or even telepathic communication.
The illustrations are by Martin Rowson, who is in the old style of detailed editorial cartoons, and give a very British feel to the book. (The words are less obvious about it.)
Being relatively widely-read, I had run across many of the factoids before, but there were some I had no idea of, or had long forgotten (like the true fate of V.C. Andrews.) Mr. Sutherland makes no pretense of being neutral in his opinions–he’s particularly scathing about the Left Behind series. His writing is informative and readable; it might be worthwhile to look his more serious work up.
As with many other trivia and lists books, this is less something one would buy for themselves, and more something to buy as a present for a relative who loves reading. As such, it’s good value for money–but given that “mature themes” are discussed, I would not recommend it for readers below senior high school age.
The illustrations are by Martin Rowson, who is in the old style of detailed editorial cartoons, and give a very British feel to the book. (The words are less obvious about it.)
Being relatively widely-read, I had run across many of the factoids before, but there were some I had no idea of, or had long forgotten (like the true fate of V.C. Andrews.) Mr. Sutherland makes no pretense of being neutral in his opinions–he’s particularly scathing about the Left Behind series. His writing is informative and readable; it might be worthwhile to look his more serious work up.
As with many other trivia and lists books, this is less something one would buy for themselves, and more something to buy as a present for a relative who loves reading. As such, it’s good value for money–but given that “mature themes” are discussed, I would not recommend it for readers below senior high school age.
April 6, 2022
Curiosities of Literature is a deep (at times extremely deep) dive into the most mundane of questions surrounding the world of literature. From the circumstances that led to the writing of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, including the weather in 1816 and the effects the weather had on English literature and its future, to the story of Dante Gabriel Rossetti burying the only manuscript of his poems in his wife's grave and later exhuming it, an extremely wide variety of topics is handled with extreme detail by the author.
The book is laced with sharp humour and goes into incredible detail, displaying the author's love of the subject and the amount of effort that must have gone into collecting the information needed to write this book.
At times, some of the references are too obscure, and it is improbable that a reader who has not studied literature will get all of them. The sourcing of some of the details is a little sketchy at times as well, which is of some concern in a book based entirely on data.
While all questions may not be of interest to every reader, the book is an entertaining read if a bit uneven at times due to the frequent digressions. A casual read, the book is perfect as a side read for a change of pace while perhaps reading another, more serious book.
The book is laced with sharp humour and goes into incredible detail, displaying the author's love of the subject and the amount of effort that must have gone into collecting the information needed to write this book.
At times, some of the references are too obscure, and it is improbable that a reader who has not studied literature will get all of them. The sourcing of some of the details is a little sketchy at times as well, which is of some concern in a book based entirely on data.
While all questions may not be of interest to every reader, the book is an entertaining read if a bit uneven at times due to the frequent digressions. A casual read, the book is perfect as a side read for a change of pace while perhaps reading another, more serious book.
September 20, 2016
як підказує назва, це така збірка цікавинок, фактоїдів, міфів і їхніх розвінчань, які так чи інакше (іноді – дуже інакше) стосуються літератури. вони начебто поділені за розділами: про їжу, про знаряддя письма, про секс, про смерть, про читачів тощо – але загалом доволі випадково позбирані докупи. сазерленд травить байки, і часом йому одному зрозуміло, якими асоціаціями одна чіпляється за іншу. зате з цього виходить хороше чтиво для метро.
December 22, 2020
Read the first 16 pages and gave up. Rambling, tedious, suffocated with the author's desire to impress. There may be some interesting things in this book but I don't want to waste any time trying to unearth them. Why would you start a book of literary curiosities with page after page of dull rot on food? As the author hasn't got the common sense to begin with something at least a tiny bit intriguing and engaging he can go on without me.
January 27, 2019
Treasures for Trivia Aficionados
John Sutherland's compilation of obscure or false beliefs relating, mostly, to authors, is a treasure trove for Trivia Aficionados. Great bedtime reading. Lulls one to lullabies. Inspires dreams. Reader awakens refreshed and corrected, if in need of same.
John Sutherland's compilation of obscure or false beliefs relating, mostly, to authors, is a treasure trove for Trivia Aficionados. Great bedtime reading. Lulls one to lullabies. Inspires dreams. Reader awakens refreshed and corrected, if in need of same.
January 1, 2020
Ugh. This was a struggle. Not a fan of the writing or of the author’s egotistical, idiotic, insensitive opinions. Not worth the effort. Finished it out of spite.
December 4, 2025
This book is accurately titled. Sutherland has gathered together a bunch of anecdotes, stories and short essays on the byways of the literature racket.
He has section on cookies inspired by books, most prominently the Lorna Doone. He has a nice selection of final words by authors and tops it off with famous last words that never got said. He has the scoop on why Emily Bronte had the .. over the E in her last name, even though her father's birth name was Patrick Prunty and she never married. He has sections on the worst novelist, the most prolific author and the longest novels. He has a fascinating discussion of the most famous literary farts.
It is all well written with a light touch. Sutherland's specialty is 19th century English literature so many of his examples come from that world. Dickens get 10 cites in the index. Twain gets 5.
We also get very clever illustrations by Martin Rowson, an English cartoonist with a sub-specialty in literary cartoons. I loved his "Tristan Shandy".
Sutherland also wrote a very clever series of essays on problems in English literature like, "What did Mr. Hyde (of Jekyll and Hyde) look like?" of "How did the Cratchits cook Scrooge's turkey?". They are great fun.
He has section on cookies inspired by books, most prominently the Lorna Doone. He has a nice selection of final words by authors and tops it off with famous last words that never got said. He has the scoop on why Emily Bronte had the .. over the E in her last name, even though her father's birth name was Patrick Prunty and she never married. He has sections on the worst novelist, the most prolific author and the longest novels. He has a fascinating discussion of the most famous literary farts.
It is all well written with a light touch. Sutherland's specialty is 19th century English literature so many of his examples come from that world. Dickens get 10 cites in the index. Twain gets 5.
We also get very clever illustrations by Martin Rowson, an English cartoonist with a sub-specialty in literary cartoons. I loved his "Tristan Shandy".
Sutherland also wrote a very clever series of essays on problems in English literature like, "What did Mr. Hyde (of Jekyll and Hyde) look like?" of "How did the Cratchits cook Scrooge's turkey?". They are great fun.
December 26, 2018
A lot of interesting trivia about literature and authors. Presented with a bit too much snark. (I like a bit of snark, but this was heavy-handed and overbearing at times.) I didn't like the illustrations by Martin Rowson. Mostly I couldn't figure out what they were supposed to be showing. And they were ugly without being funny.
Chapters are: Literary baked meats (about food); The body of literature: heads, lungs, hearts, and bowels; Tools of the trade (includes the first typewriter-writer); Sex and the Victorians (the Carlyles, Dorothea, George Eliot); Better than sex, some say (cigarettes and other forms of tobacco); Some curious literary records: best, worst, and most (worst novelist, shortest poem, most misquoted); Literary crimewatch: Who? who? who? (who wrote ...); Name games (Brontë and others); Readers distinguished and less so (dumb readers, presidential readers, prime ministerial readers); Mammon and the book trade (product placement, listomania, the Potter effect); Wheels (what would Jesus drive, platform 9 3/4); Morbid curiosity (Anthony Trollope, Werther, Baskerville, George Orwell, Hart Crane, Truman Capote); Curious connections: a terminal quiz with answers.
Chapters are: Literary baked meats (about food); The body of literature: heads, lungs, hearts, and bowels; Tools of the trade (includes the first typewriter-writer); Sex and the Victorians (the Carlyles, Dorothea, George Eliot); Better than sex, some say (cigarettes and other forms of tobacco); Some curious literary records: best, worst, and most (worst novelist, shortest poem, most misquoted); Literary crimewatch: Who? who? who? (who wrote ...); Name games (Brontë and others); Readers distinguished and less so (dumb readers, presidential readers, prime ministerial readers); Mammon and the book trade (product placement, listomania, the Potter effect); Wheels (what would Jesus drive, platform 9 3/4); Morbid curiosity (Anthony Trollope, Werther, Baskerville, George Orwell, Hart Crane, Truman Capote); Curious connections: a terminal quiz with answers.
March 15, 2017
I found this book quite enjoyable. It was irreverent and pointless and I rather like that sometimes. However I did find quite a few typos in the text, and in some places I found the sentence structure to be confusing. The author tends to interrupt herself a lot which I find hard to read, especially in a non-fiction book, and sometimes the sentences after the interruption didn't match what went before. I also question a lot of the sources used as there isn't a bibliography and the author cites websites quite frequently. Over all though, I enjoyed the conversational pace and the interesting factoids about novels and their eccentric authors.
August 27, 2020
Evidently, John Sutherland and I have discrete opinions on what piques our curiosity. Too heavy on bathroom humor, sex , and old-hat things like "what famous books were almost named." One to skip, unless you really want to know that story about Dante Gabriel Rossetti grave-robbing exhuming his wife's body to reclaim a manuscript, and don't want to read his whole biography.
January 1, 2024
I thought this would make a fine toilet book -- light, small sections, just the perfect read for that function. Unfortunately Sutherland's approach to curiosities left me very uncurious. So much so that I did not finish this book. Sure, it is chock full of interesting trivia tidbits; but it feels exactly that, trivial. To keep this motif going, his insights into the trivia aren't insightful, and his "feast for book lovers" chews more like hard candy. Maybe it gets better at the end; I don't know.
January 19, 2018
I've read many of Sutherland's books and took my time (4 years) with this one. Enjoyed it well enough--but how does one address famous writer suicides and not mention anything about Richard Brautigan?!
July 18, 2024
A collection of small essays of literary miscellany. It felt really ‘bitty’. It was organised into chapters but the chapters didn’t really flow together. There were moments when his humour shone through and parts that were really interesting but a lot of it felt skippable.
August 12, 2017
Interesting connections between authors, their works and public perceptions. Bit of a dry read though.
March 14, 2019
Interesting, witty: covers various authors and their works and the effects they have had during different periods of history.
July 24, 2019
In this, much shorter book than the Short History book, Sutherland delivers oddities and interesting tidbits which (for the most part) did not make it into the other. There is some repetition, but it's not distracting. He's an entertaining writer, so what he has to say keeps your interest. I would recommend this for those who don't want to spend the time reading an 800-page book, although that one is the better book. Actually, it's fairly easy, and fun, getting through both. Treat yourself.
August 9, 2019
Didn’t finish. Just couldn’t get into this one. Sounded appealing, but ended up dry and boring. Writing style dragged on and on.
February 3, 2020
I gobbled this down in one Sunday. Loved it. Impossible to summarize, just a wonderful mix of literary trivia about books, writers, even readers. Funny, gossipy, and entertaining.
August 16, 2020
Purchased in 2009 and either didn't read or didn't finish.
Read
October 14, 2020A fun read
February 12, 2021
Some fun trivia, but the author is a bit of a pompous ass.
May 23, 2022
I quite enjoyed this! Delightfully humorous and packed full of interesting little bits of literary trivia.
Read
August 1, 2017Oxford University Press published his earlier books but I guess Sutherland has come down in the world. Teaching at Cal Tech doesn't strike me as slumming but maybe to OUP it is. This book is from Skyhorse Publishing, and I'll go out on a limb here and posit that Skyhorse doesn't hew to the same standards OUP does.
This is even worse in its proofreading and typesetting errors than How to Read a Novel. It is rife with stray commas ("Baird's Trilby is, significantly like... (86); "downstream, exploitation" (197)) and even commas instead of words ("Is the Potter effect, good thing?" p. 215*). AIDS is rendered as Aids. Most egregiously, toward the end of the book, a glyph began to supplant single quotation marks.** The house font where I once worked was incomplete. When you viewed nonprinting characters in Microsoft Word, you'd see a rectangular glyph instead of the usual dot that indicates a space. I have never seen, even in faux Austen sequels from vanity presses, such a glyph in a printed book.
Aggravated, I checked the book's front matter, registering the change of house and seeing that it was printed in China. That didn't strike me as unusual or problematic, since just about everything is made in China. So I just now pulled two recent hardcovers ('Tis and Order of the Phoenix, since they were in immediate, non-cockatiel-disturbing reach), and both were printed in the United States (the McCourt says "manufactured"). So maybe printing in China is another proof that Skyhorse is a cut-rate house.
Sutherland says it's interesting to teach reading to non-literary folk like Cal Tech students. He told of one student who dismissed an entire novel because the welding or soldering the protagonist used to smuggle his weapon on the undercarriage of his car wouldn't work. For that reader, because of that minor metallurgical detail, the book was broken, didn't cohere, didn't work. I empathize.
* The Potter effect is a bad thing in this book since its "manufacturer" didn't know how to typeset a fraction. It's not 93 quarters ($23.25!) but 9 and three quarters, 9.75.
** Which are stupid anyway. 'Tis might be a contraction for "it is" or it might be the start of dialogue. A line of speech might read
'We should be careful of the others' but you don't know whether that others is possessive or the end of the speech. It's craziness!
This is even worse in its proofreading and typesetting errors than How to Read a Novel. It is rife with stray commas ("Baird's Trilby is, significantly like... (86); "downstream, exploitation" (197)) and even commas instead of words ("Is the Potter effect, good thing?" p. 215*). AIDS is rendered as Aids. Most egregiously, toward the end of the book, a glyph began to supplant single quotation marks.** The house font where I once worked was incomplete. When you viewed nonprinting characters in Microsoft Word, you'd see a rectangular glyph instead of the usual dot that indicates a space. I have never seen, even in faux Austen sequels from vanity presses, such a glyph in a printed book.
Aggravated, I checked the book's front matter, registering the change of house and seeing that it was printed in China. That didn't strike me as unusual or problematic, since just about everything is made in China. So I just now pulled two recent hardcovers ('Tis and Order of the Phoenix, since they were in immediate, non-cockatiel-disturbing reach), and both were printed in the United States (the McCourt says "manufactured"). So maybe printing in China is another proof that Skyhorse is a cut-rate house.
Sutherland says it's interesting to teach reading to non-literary folk like Cal Tech students. He told of one student who dismissed an entire novel because the welding or soldering the protagonist used to smuggle his weapon on the undercarriage of his car wouldn't work. For that reader, because of that minor metallurgical detail, the book was broken, didn't cohere, didn't work. I empathize.
* The Potter effect is a bad thing in this book since its "manufacturer" didn't know how to typeset a fraction. It's not 93 quarters ($23.25!) but 9 and three quarters, 9.75.
** Which are stupid anyway. 'Tis might be a contraction for "it is" or it might be the start of dialogue. A line of speech might read
'We should be careful of the others' but you don't know whether that others is possessive or the end of the speech. It's craziness!
February 13, 2017
Not his best production.
May 22, 2014
A grab bag - sometimes funny, sometimes sly. If you didn't know that Brontë is a 'patriotic' re-rendering of Irish surname Prunty, or why we say Shavian, Bellovian etc. but we have no adjective for Jane Austen, and these things interest you, then this is a place to spend a little while. Sutherland is a witty enough MC, with a broad literary church that even goes as far as to include a synopsis of the neo-Nazi fantasy opus Kingdom Come.
The structure is loose, ranging around names of authors, money talk, size, titbits of info, misconceptions and conceits, dates of lesser known milestones. Well worth reading if you're a reader, and less so if you're not, but then the title took care of any doubts on that front, didn't it?
The Carlyles and Tony Blair and Norman Mailer get a right shafting, but then Mailer's The Naked and the Dead gets given its due late in the piece. Blair telling non-painter Ian McEwan that he was a fan of his paintings is probably worth the price of admission by itself, as is McEwan's citing of a non-existent article in Enduring Love that most of the Stateside critics took at face value.
And the Guinness-endorsed guy (Howard S. Berg) who reads 25,000 words a minute - what's he reading at the moment?
The structure is loose, ranging around names of authors, money talk, size, titbits of info, misconceptions and conceits, dates of lesser known milestones. Well worth reading if you're a reader, and less so if you're not, but then the title took care of any doubts on that front, didn't it?
The Carlyles and Tony Blair and Norman Mailer get a right shafting, but then Mailer's The Naked and the Dead gets given its due late in the piece. Blair telling non-painter Ian McEwan that he was a fan of his paintings is probably worth the price of admission by itself, as is McEwan's citing of a non-existent article in Enduring Love that most of the Stateside critics took at face value.
And the Guinness-endorsed guy (Howard S. Berg) who reads 25,000 words a minute - what's he reading at the moment?
August 13, 2013
A Perfect Gift for the Book Lover in your Life!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I wasn't quite sure that I would, as sometimes I find books about books to be rather dry. However, Sutherland has really done his research and the result is an enjoyable collection of interesting tidbits about some of our most famous authors and books. I found the author's writing style to be both engaging and witty. He doesn't spend too much time on any one item, which makes for both an easy read and a book that you can pick up when you've only got a few minutes, but want something worthwhile to read. I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I would definitely read something else by this author in the future.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I wasn't quite sure that I would, as sometimes I find books about books to be rather dry. However, Sutherland has really done his research and the result is an enjoyable collection of interesting tidbits about some of our most famous authors and books. I found the author's writing style to be both engaging and witty. He doesn't spend too much time on any one item, which makes for both an easy read and a book that you can pick up when you've only got a few minutes, but want something worthwhile to read. I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I would definitely read something else by this author in the future.
May 16, 2009
This is a book of trivia about books and authors, basically. Normally, I'm a huge sucker for that kind of book. My problem with it was the vast quantity of typos! If you're going to spend that much money to have a book produced in hardcover, wouldn't you take the time to check that sort of thing? I'm just saying.
Also, there were some fact checking problems. For example, he mentions that the 2005 movie of Pride and Prejudice has made about $121M. Then he says something about women wanting to look at Colin Firth's nipples through a wet shirt. Oops! Colin Firth was in the 1995 made for TV movie. Things like that made me not entirely trust his other assertions.
Also, there were some fact checking problems. For example, he mentions that the 2005 movie of Pride and Prejudice has made about $121M. Then he says something about women wanting to look at Colin Firth's nipples through a wet shirt. Oops! Colin Firth was in the 1995 made for TV movie. Things like that made me not entirely trust his other assertions.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews