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| The Areas of My Expertise | 
 enlarge | Author: John Hodgman
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $7.80
You Save: $6.20 (44%)
Buy New/Used from $4.96
Avg. Customer Rating:  (126 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1628
Format: Bargain Price
Language: English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.607
ASIN: B000O17CZ6
Publication Date: September 5, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Borges meets the bathroom book in John Hodgman's bestselling almanac of complete (and fabricated) world knowledge.
Abridged CDs - 4 CDs, 5 hours
Amazon.com Review
With his Daily Show appearances and his "I'm a PC" Apple ads, John Hodgman has only become more famous since the hardcover edition of his all-you-need compendium of facts, The Areas of My Expertise was released. He has also become smarter. To reflect this, the paperback edition of The Areas of My Expertise has been expanded to include 100 new hobo names and new, additional complete world knowledge. John Hodgman and his fur-hatted associate, Jonathan, have prepared an exclusive video for Amazon customers explaining the above. 
Click here or on the image above to watch John Hodgman describe the only book you'll ever need. |
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| Customer Reviews: Read 121 more reviews...
 Don't read in public November 15, 2008
Areas of My Expertise is hilarious. It meanders at a wonderful pace. I joke with my kids about hobos, so I've read some of the hobo passages and hobo names to them. My only complaint is that you shouldn't read it in public, as laughing like a maniac on the subway is frowned on at 6:00am. I can imagine that Hodgeman was beat up or ridiculed in middle school by the other kids, as he was probably geeky and somewhat obtuse then, too. The fact that he didn't conform is to his credit. He is who he is, and this book is a lot of fun.
 Rubbish :( November 13, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is simply the worst book I've bought in a long time. I didn't find it remotely funny. Previously I've bought other books by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and found them to be hilarious so I expected this to contain the same kind of clever satire that the other two authors have used to great effect. Instead I get a list of a couple of hundred hobo names and a phases of the moon chart for werewolf transformations.
Seriously, I appreciate that you've done some ads for Apple and get a semi-regular stint on the Daily Show but this is just cack. Awful, I want my $5 back.
Brilliant from start to finish November 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I will try to be as unbiased as possible, but it should be known that John Hodgman cut my face with a broken bottle during a disagreement over whether one should be allowed to flip over any Scrabble tile and then consider it to be a "blank." He was down 754-30, and tensions were high. I take some responsibility for provoking Mr. Hodgman with sing-song nursery rhymes intended to raise questions about his virility and ancestry.
That said, this book is one of the best-conceived, fully realized humor tours de force I have ever read. Even parts that I thought would be tedious -- such as his guide to all fifty states, or the complete list of 700 hobo names -- turned out to be unrelentingly hilarious.
So I wear my scar proudly, John Hodgman, because I must admit after reading this book: It was doled out by the better man.
The more education you have, the funnier this book gets ! October 22, 2008
Short and simple, the more that you hang around "professional academics" the funnier this book gets. Both the book and audiobook remind me of evenings with long-winded professors who phase in and out of reality as their lecture grows longer and less likely to be of any use to any sane and normal person.
I honestly believe that if people don't "get" the humor in this book, try hanging around a post-graduate literature department ... (or the local Starbucks where many literary academics end up working). The weaving of half-truths, theories and outright lies are unmatched, and Hodgman's ability to expertly weave them in this pseudo-narrative is nothing short of genius. I've decided that it's just easier to believe what he says than to constantly try to discern truth from fact.
Hodgman's humor is intelligent and unique. If you want a football in the groin, go to YouTube.
The Areas of My Expertise September 13, 2008
I read this book on the plane from Ohio to LAX and could not stop laughing, other passengers were looking at me in confusion. When reading this masterpiece, you either "get it" or you don't...
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