ROSITA BOLANDreviews Schott's Almanac 2010by Ben Schott Bloomsbury €16.99; 352pp
IF YOU love lists, or browsing through digestible reminders of events that happened in the year gone by, then Schott's Almanac 2010is the book for you. It now appears annually, and is an esoteric kind of reference book.
Schott's Almanacis arranged in 13 sections. They are: Chronicle; the World; Society and Health; Media and Celebrity; Music and Cinema; Books and Arts; Science, Technology and Internet; Travel and Leisure; Money; Parliament and Politics; Establishment and Faith; Sport; Ephemerides. That last refers to information for the coming year if, like me, you had to look up the definition.
Schott's Almanacis really the Guinness Book of Recordswith a twist: lists reinvented and presented in imaginative ways, covering many topics. So while you are informed Usain Bolt won the 100m sprint at the World Championships, you also find out what effect exercise is thought to have on appetite: a long-distance run makes you crave fruit; swimming in cold water provokes a longing for biscuits or chocolate; a gentle walk doesn't make you hungry at all.
This is a book you dip into periodically, to get lost in a fascinating maze of (mostly) useless facts. Ever wondered what the consistent choice of where you sit on a bus says about your personality? Under Travel and Leisure, a Salford University researcher concludes that sitting in the front on the top deck makes you a forward thinker; the middle of the lower deck is occupied by strong communicators; and the back of the top deck are rebellious types, to which anyone who has ever taken a late-night bus in Dublin can surely attest.
Among the new words of the ebbing year are several associated with micro-blogging site, Twitter, whose tweet postings on 140 characters or less are described as “Object of the Year”. These include, “twerd” a Twitter nerd; and “twoosh”, a tweet of exactly 140 characters.
Overused words that Britain’s local government association suggested should be banned included: benchmarking, blue-sky thinking, can-do culture, fast-track, going forward, outsourced, reconfigured, slippage and upward trend. “Recession” was not one of them.
We learn that a health survey conducted in July of this year on British children between the ages of 8-16 was sabotaged by the crafty participants who attached the pedometers they were given to the collars of their dogs.
Unsabotaged data that was released this year by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showed the number of hours spent on work and leisure in an average year by people in 18 countries. In the US, working hours were 1,986, with leisure 6,864. In Ireland, they were 1,543 and 7,217 respectively. The people of Norway worked for an average of 1,290 hours and frolicked for 7,470.
Among the many other trivia are details of the frocks worn to the Oscars. Understated, sober colours were all the go this year – cream, pearl, beige, grey, silver and nude. Penelope Cruz wore cream vintage Balmain. Kate Winslet wore pewter satin by Yves Saint Laurent.
The caveat about Schott's Almanac is that many of the statistics and lists refer specifically to Britain, so unless you're incredibly curious about who appeared on all the covers of Hello!and OK!during 2009, the queen's birthday honours list, or the British general election breakdown figures from 1979 to 2005, some pages will be of less interest to Irish readers.
Rosita Boland is an Irish Timesjournalist
