'Rubbish trivia books have spread like a disease'

Ben Schott has a lot to answer for – although his miscellanies are excellent, his imitators have produced a slush pile of poorly written, badly researched publishing mulch, writes DARRAGH McMANUS

WOULD IT BE too much to blame Ben Schott for the flood of miscellanies saturating the books market? Maybe: we've always enjoyed collections of quotes, statistics and odds'n'ends – witness the enduring popularity of the Guinness World Recordssince the 1950s.

But the success of Schott's Original Miscellanyin 2002 opened the floodgates. The original book and its spin-offs, Food and Drink,and Sporting, Gaming and Idling, have sold more than two million copies, along with a successful annual Almanacand a New York Timesblog on vocabulary.

And apres Ben, le deluge. Thousands of miscellanies have been written since, and they're still coming in their droves: recent or imminent publications include Chuck Norris Cannot Be Stopped(out June 10th),  Awkward Family Photosand Other People's Rejection Letters(both just out). Later in the year we'll have a new Almanacand Gill and MacMillan's Quotes of the Year. The second Book of General Ignoranceis due in October.

According to Stephen Boylan, books purchasing manager at Easons, "Miscellanies are popular every year and some very strong brands have emerged recently: the range of titles from New Scientistmagazine, the QIbooks based on the BBC series chaired by Stephen Fry. The biggest seller, however, is still the Guinness World Records.

"A couple of recent Irish publications have done well, such as My Mother Always Used to Sayby Valerie Bowe. The most 'traditional' annual miscellany is Schott's Almanac. It's quirky with a wry humour, and sells consistently well."

Schott’s work is original, useful and well-written. Would that the same could be said of the many poor imitations, most of which are random, shabby and thrown together, with no point, theme or coherence.

The worst I’ve read is literally a collection of unrelated, uninteresting and incorrect rubbish that someone had half-inched from Google. Every second “fact” is wrong, it is filled with lists of supposedly fascinating US laws and has so many typos you’d think a child had edited it.

Of the current crop, a few are decent – Don't Swallow Your Gumis properly informative, The Culchie's Guide to Dublinis interesting and fun – but they are far outnumbered by the drivel. Many are inaccurate, pointless, solipsistic, intrusive, vague, vulgar, grindingly unfunny or have designer-quirky titles that make you want to stab the writer with a biro.

Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit?I'm not sure, but these books certainly are. (Having said that, I loved Overheard in Dublin– which could safely be described as random and pointless – so what do I know?) And because of the "democratisation" of knowledge in the online age – where someone's opinion is apparently as valid as actual facts – you can't trust what you read in many miscellanies. For instance, did you know LeQuinton was an old Irish name meaning wanderer? Thanks to the most useless baby names book ever vomited into existence, you do now.

The reader often doesn’t know where they got their information; it could have been just another junk book like this one. It’s redolent of those conspiranoia books that are crammed with footnotes and references, thus giving a scholarly patina, but all the references are to other unreliable weirdos.

Tom Galvin has written the travelogue There's an Egg in My Soup,and has also produced two miscellanies – The Little Book of Dublinand That's Cork– a process he playfully describes as "a labour of love that ends in broken hearts". He says: "Often writers will jump on a trend, and miscellanies are good for cashing-in on something topical – Vampire Miscellanyby Kevin Jackson, for example. Also, they work as presents for lazy buyers. And publishers love them as they sell well and quickly."

So what makes a good miscellany? “Information is everywhere now but compiling a miscellany still requires discipline, hard work and good judgment in choosing what to include,” says Galvin. “Even if it seems to be a mish-mash of facts and figures, there should be a logical chapter sequence, and information should be presented coherently and accurately.

"The writer should try to inject their style and personality into it. The worst are those books of lists. On the other hand, something like The Book of Dead Philosophersby Simon Critchley reads brilliantly and works on many levels, introducing complex ideas in an entertaining and original way – just how a good miscellany should be."

John Mitchinson, along with John Lloyd, has written the five QIbooks and three annuals, close to two million of which have been sold since 2006. "Rubbish trivia books have spread like a disease," he says. "They are everywhere – lazy, badly researched and disposable. Facts, in and of themselves, aren't the point. Connections, meaning, patterns are what matter, and those books don't give you any of that . . . We rarely look at them. There are so many rich and scholarly books."

Among the miscellanies he does like are "Ben Schott's Original Miscellany, the New Scientistbooks, Mark Mason's The Importance of Being Trivial, about his search for the perfect fact. But what we really like are inspired works of reference like Alan Davidson's Oxford Companion to Food, or brilliantly researched, original science and history: anything by Steve Jones, for example."

Mitchinson offers an insight into how his books are created: “We don’t do ‘original’ research; we make original connections, making it intelligible and compelling for a mass audience . . . Certainly, we couldn’t produce the shows and books as quickly without the internet, but accuracy really matters to us. We make mistakes and cheerfully admit when we’re wrong; and we try to use and record the best possible sources at all times. A lot of our best work still comes from books. The internet can reduplicate wrong facts even more rapidly than true ones.”