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Home by Bill Bryson

A book about everyday things, Home is a detailed look into the history of items we encounter on a daily basis. Bill Bryson takes a walk through his parsonage in the countryside of England and delves into the past room by room. It is a series of fascinating facts about life in the past, life usually riddled by diseases and discomfort. Home isn't my favourite of Bryson's books. I found the facts unorganized and very loosely held together. He travelled back and forth through time, often referencing historical figures or events he'd mentioned a few chapters and 349 facts ago, rendering it impossible to keep track of the timeline. However, Bryson's strength has always been the intriguing, laughable, shocking or obscure facts that he has dug up and it was hard to not stop and interrupt Scott every other minute to share a new factoid such as:

- the average marriage in the 1700s lasted 10 years, not because of divorce, but because death was so common weather through disease, accident or childbirth.
- until the 1850s, condiment stands for the table where designed for oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, and a shaker whose use has completely faded into history. It's a mysterious missing condiment!
- every species in the animal kingdom can produce in their bodies Vitamin C except for humans and pigs.
- an ounce of corn flakes has more salt than an ounce of salted peanuts
- the architect who designed the interior skeleton of the Statue of Liberty is Alexandre Gustave Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame.
- for a 150 years, men would shave their heads of comfortable hair to put on stuffy, scratchy, itchy wigs.
- Lobsters, now a luxury food, used to be so prolific that they were fed to prisoners and orphans.

For many more facts to pull out at dinner parties for years to come, read the book :)