Our first all-new edition to top 500 pages, this was the Bathroom Reader that made the publishing world stand up and take notice—these guys are here to stay. Also appearing for the first time in Giant 10th Anniversary is our famous “Extended Sitting Section,” a series of extra-long articles for those truly leg-numbing experiences. There are also plenty of short and medium articles covering a whole host of topics, including little-known history, pop science, myth-conceptions, celebrity rumors, comedian quotes, and, of course, really dumb crooks. Read about… * The anatomy of laughter * Is your name your destiny? * The history of the electric guitar * What really happened at Roswell * The Politically Correct quiz * The secret of Nancy Drew * Legendary TV flops * Why you itch And much, much more!

A giant-sized helping of Uncle John’s amazing anecdotes, strange stories, and brain-busters divided into convenient lengths--Quickies, Regular-Length and Long Items for those extended stays. Two big, no, two GIANT thumbs up! This one’s big. Make that pretty huge. No, wait--it’s GIGANTIC! Presenting Uncle John’s Gigantic Bathroom Reader, featuring two of our best-selling and hard-to-find titles: Uncle John’s Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom Reader and Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader, now bound together in this omnibus hardcover edition for your reading pleasure. Tipping the sales at more than 700 pages, this massive missive is guaranteed to boost your IQ! Packed with fun facts, tantalizing tid-bits, and intriguing information, this is no book for the faint of heart. This gigantic volume has it all: entertainment, humor, forgotten history, science, origins of everyday things, strange lawsuits, and a great big pile of pop culture. So don’t go to your throne alone--take Uncle John with you!

Uncle John’s all-new 8th edition is packed with everything that Bathroom Reader fans have come to expect from this stellar series—short, medium, and long articles covering a whole host of topics—everything from dumb crooks to funny quotes to forgotten history. Read about… * Ice cream origins * Olympic cheaters * Celebrity mummies * The first Thanksgiving * Groucho’s wit and wisdom * Weird tales of the Ouija board * The creation of Frankenstein’s monster * “Earring Magic Ken” and other weird dolls And much, much more!

Strategically placed near the best seat in your home, Uncle John’s Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader is jam-packed with great bathroom reading. It’s the gift that keeps on giving...and giving...and giving.... The BRI’s 22nd all-new edition--Uncle John’s Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader--is like reading several books all rolled into one: a history book, a weird news anthology, a science text, a dictionary, a how-to manual, a sports magazine, a joke book…and the list goes on and on. Since 1987, the Bathroom Readers’ Institute has led the movement to stand up for those who sit down and read in the bathroom (and everywhere else for that matter). With more than 11 million books in print, the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader series is the longest-running, most popular series of its kind in the world. Where else could you learn about the lost cloud people of Peru, the world’s first detective, and the history of surfing? Uncle John rules the world of information and humor, so get ready to be thoroughly entertained. Read all about… * Soda pop flops * Spider farms * England’s Secret UFO Files * Real hillbilly recipes * Webster’s least-wanted words * Super-trains * And much more!

The Great White North is revealed as the Great Weird North in this entertaining tome from the best-selling Bathroom Reader series. Did you know that Canada was almost called Hochelaga? That’s just one of thousands of wacky facts awaiting readers in Uncle John’s quirky celebration of Earth’s second largest country. You’ll find page after page of bizarre history (like why the beaver was once classified as a fish), plus head-scratching news items (like the crook who returned to the Tim Hortons he’d just robbed to tip the workers), odd places to go (like Mr. Spock’s birthplace in a town called Vulcan), and crazy eats (like the restaurant that makes you eat in complete darkness). So whether you live in Come By Chance, Joe Batt’s Arm, Starvation Cove, or anywhere else inside (or outside) of Canada, yukon count on Uncle John to deliver a world of weirdness from all over this great country. For example: - Cow-patty bingo in Alberta (Rule #1: Wear gloves) - How to enforce the new Quebec law that requires dogs to be bilingual - The sea of Molson Golden that once shut down an Ontario freeway - The mystery of the mini earthquakes in a New Brunswick town - Why it’s illegal to kill a sasquatch in British Columbia - The Nova Scotia company that makes mattresses for cows - Saskatchewan’s Willow Bunch Giant, a real man who could lift a horse over his head - The giant fiberglass “Happy Rock” statue in--where else?--Gladstone, Manitoba And much, much more!

With the warmth and humor we've come to know, the creator and host of A Prairie Home Companion shares his own remarkable story. In That Time of Year, Garrison Keillor looks back on his life and recounts how a Brethren boy with writerly ambitions grew up in a small town on the Mississippi in the 1950s and, seeing three good friends die young, turned to comedy and radio. Through a series of unreasonable lucky breaks, he founded A Prairie Home Companion and put himself in line for a good life, including mistakes, regrets, and a few medical adventures. PHC lasted forty-two years, 1,557 shows, and enjoyed the freedom to do as it pleased for three or four million listeners every Saturday at 5 p.m. Central. He got to sing with Emmylou Harris and Renée Fleming and once sang two songs to the U.S. Supreme Court. He played a private eye and a cowboy, gave the news from his hometown, Lake Wobegon, and met Somali cabdrivers who’d learned English from listening to the show. He wrote bestselling novels, won a Grammy and a National Humanities Medal, and made a movie with Robert Altman with an alarming amount of improvisation. He says, “I was unemployable and managed to invent work for myself that I loved all my life, and on top of that I married well. That’s the secret, work and love. And I chose the right ancestors, impoverished Scots and Yorkshire farmers, good workers. I’m heading for eighty, and I still get up to write before dawn every day.”

This collection of slap shots, high sticks, and toothless grins offers fans everything they love about hockey: its colorful history, legendary players, and enough hard-hitting trivia to occupy even the most avid stat head. The latest title in the new Uncle John's series dedicated to the wide (and weird ) world of sports, Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores shares the origins of the Coolest Game on Earth, the greatest teams in hockey history, the best (and worst) hockey movies of all time, the Incredible Exploding Zamboni (and those who lived to tell the tale), a rap sheet of hockey arrests, goalies' superstitions (Patrick Roy's conversations with goal posts; Glenn Hall's pre-game gastric cleansing), and much, much more.