Why Do Men Have Nipples?: Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini by Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg
Nonfiction/HumorNormally, this is the kind of book I love. Weird trivia, weird humor--what's not to love. But, in the end it wasn't all that funny. The trivia wasn't very fascinating. That just leaves weird.
I absolutely hated the format of this book. At the beginning of each chapter, the two co-authors have printed a transcript of their instant messaging. I suppose that might be a good idea if they discussed writing the book or wrestling with which trivia to include but many of the transcripts read like this: "You there?" "I'm here. Let's name this chapter Sexpots and Despots" "Did despots have sex a lot?" Really fascinating stuff. NOT!
Also, the trivia here was not written about in a way to be interesting to the reader. It's a collaboration between a doctor and a humor writer so it should be hilarious, but the medical mumbo jumbo was over my head a lot of time and then I found I didn't really care enough to look further into it. And the humor writer was just about the unfunniest person I've ever read.
The only thing that saved the book from being a "one-star" read was the few bits and pieces of interesting and relevant trivia. Still, it's like mining for gold in a big batch of dirt. Skip this altogether if you only want to know the answer to the title--you can easily look it up on online.
