The Last Word on wasps (Does Anything Eat Wasps? - New Scientist)

Member Name: Susanna75

Product:	Does Anything Eat Wasps? - New Scientist
Date:	31/05/09 (64 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Occasionally fascinating and funny

Disadvantages: Repetitive, and not all questions will be of interest

Have you ever wondered why bruises are multicoloured? Or how to guarantee to become a fossil when you die? Perhaps the exact amount of water in a cloud is a puzzle that keeps you awake at night. All of these questions and many more have been printed in New Scientist magazine's Last Words section, in order that knowledgeable readers can write in and shed some light on the mystery. "Does Anything Eat Wasps?" is a compilation of a hundred or so of these questions posed between 1994 and 2004.

This premise is promising, suggesting a book full of delightful quirky insights into the world around us, and much of the time it delivers. The book is neatly divided into a variety of topics covering the human body, plants and animals, domestic science, the universe, the Earth, weather and transport. We learn that in order to be bullet-proof, you would have to weigh 650kg; the exact modifications your surfboard will need to allow you to ride a lava flow; and how the bubbles are put into an Aero. All essential information, I'm sure you'll agree.

Inevitably, the sheer variety of topics covered will mean that some items will leave you thinking "so what?" - I am not all that bothered, for example, about why rubber bands melt. Most questions are given several answers, so the format can get a bit repetitive over the course of the book. And as they are supplied by members of the public rather than professional writers, the quality can be a bit hit and miss in terms of interestingness.

However, in amongst al this, some gems are thrown out. I was genuinely interested to learn, for example, that a large ship floating freely alongside a quay can be moved by mere hand power. Best of all, in answer to the above-mentioned fossil question, one correspondent sent in a wonderful poem he learnt at university 50 years previously, which ponders the correct burial place for a late professor of geology: "...If we hew him a rocky sepulchre, He'll rise and break the stones, And examine each stratum that lies around, For he is quite in his element underground." It is perhaps worth buying the book just to read this touching and humorous ode to an obviously beloved teacher.

"Does Anything Eat Wasps?" is a perhaps tad too dry to be read from cover to cover, but as occasional dip-into book it is entertaining and occasionally illuminating. And it gets bonus points from me for the cute flip-movie pictures along the right hand side of the pages, depicting a frog hungrily eyeing an unfortunate wasp until, inevitably, its tongue lashes out and ensnares its victim. For, we learn, frogs (along with many other animals) do indeed eat wasps.

Summary: A goldmine of reasonably useless information