Inspired in part by the Internet and our current infatuation with information for its own sake, these two fact books run the gamut from informative to pointless.

Marg Meikle was the Answer Lady on CBC Radio’s Gabereau show. Funny You Should Ask is a collection of some of the questions she fielded. Some are silly (Is it legal to do your income tax in Roman numerals?) and some are intriguing (What’s a stool pigeon?) but all are interesting. The answers are clearly and humorously written and often expand upon the question. There are clear explanations of El Niño and time zones, and descriptions of how to make a snow dome and how to dye wool with Kool-Aid.

Funny You Should Ask is not a book to be read cover to cover, but it is compelling when dipped into at odd moments, and has something for everyone. For example, I was fascinated to learn the origin of the expression “dead as a doornail” (doornails were pounded in so hard that they could never be reused) and disappointed to discover that the nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie” probably doesn’t refer to the Great Plague of London after all. The text is further enlivened by Tina Holdcroft’s wacky cartoons and by highlighted related facts. Kids will enjoy the occasionally bizarre questions and parents will be happy with what they learn while reading the answers.

The Top Ten of Everything 1999 is also a book for dipping into. However, there is little depth in which to dip. The facts in this book are divided into categories (Disasters, the Human World, Sports), then further subdivided into lists of the Top Ten something (awards, longest, best). Some are undeniably interesting, like the top ten best-selling books of all time, which lists the Guinness Book of Records fourth after the Bible, Quotes of Mao Tse-tung, and the America Spelling Book; others are silly, like the top 10 gum brands in the U.S.; and it is difficult to understand why some lists, such as the cities with the most Forbes 400 members, are included at all. The lists are also inconsistent: why should the top 10 countries with the most prisoners of war taken be listed for 1914-18 but not 1939-45?

The Top Ten of Everything is attractively packaged with more than 400 illustrations, many in colour, and informative sidebars and snap facts, but it suffers from two major drawbacks. First, top 10 lists are essentially meaningless and when hundreds are collected together, it’s obvious how artificial most of them are. (It may be interesting to know that West Edmonton Mall is the largest shopping centre in Canada, but outside Oshawa, it’s not much use to know that the Oshawa Centre ranks ninth.) Second, the book is out of date as soon as it’s published. Most of the lists go only up to 1997, which is almost history to the Internet generation. My daughters immediately spotted the pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio and the Spice Girls on the cover, but were disappointed to find no reference to either in the lists or index.