Why Don't Cats Like to Swim? : An Imponderables Book (Imponderables Books (Paperback))

I ordered this book to give as a Christmas present, therefore I didn't read it, but it arrived in a timely fashion and was in excellent condition.

This book is actually the original Imponderables book under a new title so it fits the theme of later books better. Unfortunately this isn't mentioned anywhere in the product description. This is mentioned on the cover of the book, but people who are buying it online won't be able to see that since it is put in fineprint, not in the description. I'm sorry to say that nothing has been updated either. That means that some of the information in here is going to be outdated or referring to thing that are no longer common since the early 80's. For example the stuff on milk cartons, collecting money from payphones or records spinning is going to feel out of place for people who think this is latest in the series.

You can tell the passion put into not only trying to answer these questions but to give you a feel for some of the less obvious aspects that are going on behind the scenes in a lot of these like the section on efficiency in washers & hypnosis. It is also contains such interesting things as: Why Do people look up when thinking, why do other hear our voices differently than we do, how did a mile get to be 5,280 feet & the difference between the wait times in different traffic lights. He manages to be informative as well as keeping thing humorous in the book. It also has the origin of some of the frustrables (imponderables that he revisits with new information) such as why do people close their eyes when kissing.

Buy this because you can't fine the original book anymore. Buy this because you have worn out your book in the last 20 years. DON'T buy this because you think it is anew one in the series or that is updated.

I have always been a big fan of the "imponderables" genre, but I had never read any by author David Feldman, an apparently prolific author in the that specific field. I thought the best place to start would be with his first Imponderalbes book, "Why Don't Cats Like to Swim?," which had apparently been originally published with the title, "Imponderables." I further assumed that an author's first venture into this genre would be the most interesting in that there was a high probability of an array of interesting subjects that eventually led to his writing the book. Well, I was wrong!

I finished this book in record time because I discovered that I couldn't care less about many of the alleged imponderables that were discussed. Really, who really cares about some of the following:

Why does root beer taste flatter than coke?
Which fruits are in Juicy Fruit chewing gum?
If trailer parks didn't exist, would tornadoes exist?
Why don't we ever see money from pay phones collected?
What is the purpose of the little slits in sugar cube wrappers?
What is a minor credit card?
Why are so many milk packages difficult to open and close?

If those and similar questions intrique you, you will probably enjoy this book.

About the only section that I found truly interesting was the section describing how stage hypnotists do their thing.

Perhaps his subsequent works got better in that the author solicites potential questions from his readership to be dealt with in later books. I'll never find out.

There are a number of these books out by this author and I had seen some adds that made them look very interesting. I found a number of problems with this book. There were items that only received a small paragraph that I would have liked to have seen pages, and items with pages that could have been a single paragraph. I also wanted more detail that was there, plus it would have been nice to have seen resources on where the information came from. I gave it a 2 as it was interesting to a very small point.

This book is an interesting collection of factoids. However, it is dated.