The New York Times Practical Guide to Practically Everything: The Essential Companion for Everyday Life

I checked this book out from the library and after only a few pages I knew I must have it! It has sections written by many experts in their field. For example Bob Vila wrote about home renovation, and how long you can expect certain things to last, like drywall, and roofs. There was a section on how to scale and filet a fish with pictures I know I will refer to in the future. Also loved the section on how to pick out a good sofa, I knew nothing about coil count or that % of goose feather in the padding will let you know how soft the sofa could be. And that padding on the arms of a new sofa was particularly important because that's where you are more like to see wear and tear. The more I'm reading this book the more I'm learning. And although this doesn't completely delve into every subject, it enlightens me enough to point me in the right direction and is really enjoyable read. It has subjects that I feel I'm an expert in and don't need any more advice (such as Pets, Home technology and travel). And it also has subjects I want to learn more about and am far from an expert like gardening, real estate, parenting, investing, career paths, and so much more. I'm impressed by how much is in this book and how clearly things are explained. I would recommend this book to anyone and I know that I will be referencing it again.

The New York Times Practical Guide to Practically Everything bills itself as the guide for practically everything in everyday life. An essential one-stop resource. And indeed there are a lot of wonderful resources in it. It is nice to be able to pick up a book like this as a reference without always having to go to Google or the web.

But there are shortcomings, and it doesn't take long to see where this guide falls short. Imagine my surprise when I looked up what to do for common household mold and there were no listings for mold in the index! There are however, listings for things such as "Pets and celebrity photographers" (P. 480). If they are truly going to bill this as a "practical" guide for life, much more of the former and much less of the latter are necessary. I learned that a pet sitting can cost as much as $850. Will 99.9999% of the people reading this guide ever use that information? My guess is an unequivocal no.

Also, some of the information is simply not accurate. The book states that there are three types of bikes: road, mountain and hybrid. When in fact there are many more that could be listed, the most notable one being recumbent bikes.

A nice reference to have for the coffee table or bookshelf for a broad overview of information, but certainly not a necessary one to have on hand.

LOVE this book! My kids and I go thru it all the time and learn together. There are so many fasinating things!

For the coffee table or the bookshelf, I find myself grabbing this a couple time a week for various reasons, and the range of subjects is well chosen and reasonably thorough. Got one for mom, sis, and daughter.

The hype for this book is ridiculous. It is nothing more than a random compilation of rather vaccuous conventional wisdon in over-simplified text, useful maybe for a not-too-bright early teenager, but useless for any reasonable sophisticated Amazon subscriber type person. It is not even fun to browse, its advice is often totally off-base, and its editorial decisions in deciding what to include are unfathomable.

Physically. a "door-stop" size book in a screaming yellow dust jacket, it deserves neither the large space or prominent display it is yelling for; the Times should be ashamed of itself.