The sock-blasting, jaw-dropping, side-swiping phenomenon that is QI serves up a sparkling new selection of 1,342 facts to leave you flabbergasted.
Welcome to my spot on the BLOG TOUR for new latest QI book:
1,342 QI Facts To Leave You Flabbergasted published in Hardcover by Faber Books on 3 Nov 2016 by
It is 10 years since the
first QI book, The Book of General Ignorance, was
published and topped
the bestseller list. Since
then, drum roll please,
over 3.3 million QI books
have been sold!
This latest addition to the series has been published to coincide
with the new BBC 2
series of QI hosted by
Sandi Toksvig.I've chuckled and gasped my way through most of them, reading them out to my husband, and trying my best to remember them!
Perfect as a stocking filler, this book will give hours and hours of entertainment for all ages.
See www.qi.com and @qikipedia
1,342 QI Facts to leave you flabbergasted is available from Amazon and Waterstones at price £9.99!
About the Authors: JOHN LLOYD CBE is the creator of QI and founding producer of The News Quiz, Not the Nine O’Clock News, Spitting Image, Blackadder – and No Such Thing As The News, which made its BBC2 debut in May. He hosts BBC Radio 4’s The Museum of Curiosity – co-presenting the ninth series, broadcast in July 2016, with Noel Fielding. In 2013 he performed a sell-out solo show Liff of QI at the Edinburgh Fringe. He returned in 2015 with a brand-new show John Lloyd: Emperor of the Prawns.’
JOHN MITCHINSON, QI’s first researcher, once ran the marketing for Waterstones and co-founded the book crowdfunding platform Unbound. He has published The Beatles, Haruki Murakami and publishing phenomenon, Letters of Note. He is also a Vice-President of the Hay Festival, co-host of the book podcast Backlisted and keeps pigs, sheep and bees.
JAMES HARKIN, QI’s Head Elf, has in the course of his Quite Interesting duties sung karaoke with Bhutanese monks, danced with the world’s most advanced humanoid robot and learned how to tear a telephone directory in half. He presents the QI Elves’ podcast No Such Thing As A Fish as well as the BBC 2 spinoff No Such Thing As The News. He also produces QI’s BBC Radio 4 show The Museum of Curiosity.
You will have heard of the QI Elves which is the affectionate name Stephen Fry gave to the people who write and research the QI series. Anne Miller is the most bookish QI Elf and is responsible for many of the literary facts in the book. She’s also a columnist for the Standard Issue.
ANNE MILLER is a scriptwriter and researcher for QI who can usually
be found buried beneath a pile of books. The first QI episode she wrote was entitled ‘Literature’ and she writes a literary column for Standard Issue magazine. She is the Head Researcher of BBC Radio 4’s The Museum of Curiosity, reached the semi-finals of BBC 2’s fiendishly difficult quiz Only Connect, has two Blue Peter badges and really likes puffins.
I'm delighted to welcome Anne to Random Things today, she's talking about My Life In Books.
Five On A Treasure Island, Enid Blyton Five On a Treasure Island is one of my favourite children’s books, striking the perfect balance of friendship and adventure. As a child I flew through as many Blytons as I could lay my hands on, from ones I begged for at the Post Office, to those borrowed from a kind neighbour and a few beautiful hardback editions from my parents’ own childhoods. I joined QI just in time for the J series in 2011 and one of the first questions I wrote was: ‘What did the Famous Five have lashings of?’ It’s not ginger beer, that comes from The Comic Strip Presents’ parody ‘Five Go Mad In Dorset’. The original books mention lots of ginger beer but it never comes in ‘lashings’. Things that do, however, include tomatoes, potatoes, peas and once, memorably, ‘lashings of poisonous snakes’.
The Ship, Antonia Honeywell Antonia Honeywell’s debut novel is about a horrific ruined London where the poor have taken shelter in the British Museum and the rich are making plans to leave. I read The Ship at the start of 2015, loved it and was lucky enough to interview Honeywell in the British Museum’s café, which became the first piece I filed for my books column for Sarah Millican’s online magazine Standard Issue.
A Murder is Announced, Agatha Christie I came to Christie relatively late, picking up my first, The Moving Finger, when searching for more books to read while on holiday in France. Back in London I happily worked my way through the shelf of Christies in my local library. In 2013 the Christie Estate ran a competition called ‘Write Your Own Christie’ and one of my friends sent me the link with a note that I kept saying I wanted to write more fiction so here was a chance. I won Chapter Four and the prize was an incredible dinner at her house, Greenway, with her grandson Matthew Pritchard.
Little Beach Street Bakery, Jenny Colgan This book contains all of my favourite things – Cornwall, puffins and a bakery. It’s the story of Polly who, after her relationship and business fail, moves to the tidal island of Mount Pelbourne, based on St Michael’s Mount, and opens a bakery. Colgan’s writing is so smart, funny and warm and is the perfect antidote to the rough parts of 2016. She also includes recipes at the end of the book so having spent the previous 300 pages reading about getting up early to bake bread as the sun rises you turn the page and there is the option to do exactly that.
The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller The Song of Achilles won (what is now) the Baileys Prize for fiction in 2012 but I only read it this year and was completely captivated by the story told from Patroclus’s point of view. Miller spent 10 years researching and writing and you can definitely tell. The details are delightful, the scope epic and the book a perfect example of exactly why you should read those books that people keep telling you are excellent!
Anne Miller ~ December 2016
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