Top 10 of Everything - Tapa dura

This busy effort will appeal to list lovers. The glittery cover hints at the excitement to come within. There's no resting the eyes here: lists, fact boxes, and photographs abound, with no absolutely no empty spaces. The volume is broken up into 10 sections, including mechanical marvels, the animal kingdom, and epic structures. Each section concludes with a word search, multiple-choice quiz, invitation to readers to come up with their own list, and other puzzles. Answers to the puzzles and two indexes (categorical and alphabetical) complete the text. Though this chatty, loud presentation isn't appropriate for research purposes, it's lots of fun.-- (12/01/2014)

This collection of top 10 goodies -- including "Songs About the Body" and "Amazing Cars for Hire" -- has plenty to entertain, if not educate. Coming at readers like a cross between Man's Adventure pulp magazines and Ripley's Believe It or Not, complete with a rainbow-reflective cover and a hefty 320 pages, Terry's compilation has a pleasing tongue-in-cheek tone -- a good number of the lists are "unofficial." Many of the entries are refreshingly nonhuman, which keeps the book from becoming a celebrity-filled bore. There are plenty of creepy entries from the animal kingdom, including sea lampreys, a great range of natural forces (biggest cave systems, longest coastlines) and a fine gathering of epic structures: buildings with the most ghost sightings, the biggest private house, and did you know there is a cash bar inside Cristo-Rei, the monumental statue of Jesus in Portugal? On each photo-splashed page are "Xtreme Facts" and "Off the Chart" addenda. The sheer busyness of the design -- there is not one spare micron of space for eyes to rest on -- will endear the book to readers with short attention spans, who might just find themselves looking up after an hour has passed, astonished at their absorption. For fans of the form, this compendium has plenty of juice. (index) (Reference 8-14)-- (10/15/2014)