This is an interesting prompt, but man this is not an easy one. I can’t remember what I was thinking 5 seconds ago, so remembering ten things I Googled because of books is just… well, this will be tough. So instead I think I’m going to include some things I’ve actually Googled, and some things I wondered about while reading but didn’t necessarily get around to looking up. There have been a lot of those!
This book had me looking up how long the British coastline is because I’d forgotten what she said. At least four times, because I forgot again, and again, and again.
I looked up several things while reading this book, but one I remember is how much pigs eat on a daily basis. I don’t remember now, but I can tell you it’s a LOT.
I think I looked up several things while reading this, including native bees of Australia, working holidays on Australian farms and poisonous snakes of Australia. I do not
recommend that last one if you enjoy sleep.
Lively discusses several books that have to do with gardening in this book, and I looked up several of them, and also their authors. I also looked up a few plants I’d forgotten.
Even though this book talks about learning to care for a snail, I got impatient and found myself Googling all kinds of snail-related things, like, “do snails eat bagels” and “do snails poop”
and “do snails climb walls,” etc. etc.
In this book the author learns to shear sheep, spin yarn, dye and create a sweater pattern that she then knits. So, of course, I looked up the resulting sweater, which you can see here.
I loved this book. One of the things I loved the most about it was that it felt distinctly like Ove was neurodivergent as I was reading. It’s never said in the book, but I was thinking about
it as I read, so I think I Googled Fredrik Backman A Man Called Ove autism or something like that to see what other people on the internet were saying.
Oh man, I looked up EVERYTHING while reading this book, even though it was all described in great detail in the text and footnotes. I wanted all the horrid details, and I am
still recovering.
Well obviously I looked up everything she’d ever been in and tried to match up what she was saying in the book with what she was filming at the time until it got overwhelming and I
just gave up.
This book is set during the Spanish Influenza pandemic, so of course I was Googling when it happened, how long it lasted, how fatal it was, how many people died, what happened to
the ones who lived, how it was treated, what the symptoms were etc. etc. It was very upsetting, particularly given our current circumstances.
I forgot I’d started this post, so I began again and came up with these additional ones for books I’ve read in the past couple of weeks:
- While reading Remarkably Bright Creatures: What is the lifespan of a Pacific Octopus (3-5 years) and how smart are Pacific Octopuses (“The giant Pacific octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini) is a highly intelligent animal that can learn to open jars, solve puzzles and interact with caretakers.” according to this link)
- While reading Happily Ever After and Everything In Between: Debbie Tung Blog (it’s here)
- While reading This Much Is True: Miriam Margolyes on Graham Norton (there are several results)
- While reading The Air Raid Book Club: Which books were popular in England during WWII. (the Google results were predictably books about the war rather than read during the war, so I ended up here instead)
So there you go, 1.5 posts this week! Hopefully that made some sense, I am not entirely sure I was making sense by the end of this one! Share your favourite memory of weird or wacky Googling while reading in the comments, and let me know if you had any similar searches when reading any of these books!
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly link-up feature created by The Broke and the Bookish and hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every week TTT has a different topic, and everyone who links up has to create a link of ten items that fit that topic. To see past and upcoming topics, go here.
It’s fun seeing what books were popular in a certain period, but I have a feeling we wouldn’t know most of them because they were probably pulp fiction, the kind of books that weren’t meant to last.
Pam @ Read! Bake! Create!
https://readbakecreate.com/2023-reading-google-map-books-i-read-in-2023/
Ha! Yes, you are probably completely right! Some were mentioned in the book – P.G. Wodehouse came up several times – and I was curious if those passing titles were really that popular at the time. I didn’t get an answer to that, but enjoyed the search!
I love your list! It’s all so interesting and it makes me want to look up that snail book even though I have zero intention of caring for snails!
Hahaha! Well, I haven’t always been into snails that much either – in my childhood they were mostly something we felt annoyed by as they ate our lettuce plants! But Ally on the YouTube channel allisonpaiges (which I love) adopted some snails and recommended this book, which got me into them more. Then my kid started bringing home stories of snails from nature school and shells that had been found in the forest, so it grew. But I think this book is less about the snail and more about the need to connect with another life outside your own when your body becomes a site of suffering. It helps draw you out of yourself and allows you to see past your own pain and imagine a future. That’s the part I loved the most!
I will definitely not look up icky things from Australia. Just hearing about their spiders gives me the chills.
Haha! You’re the only person I would NOT recommend Bill Bryson’s book In A Sunburned Country to, then! It’s a favourite of mine, but also was my introduction to the shocking range of dangerous living creatures they have there!
I’ve heard good things about A Man Called Ove.
Here is our Top Ten Tuesday.
I loved it! The characters are fantastic and you can’t help but love them.
I love the prompt for this week, but, like you, I don’t remember what I have Googled. Now that I see your list, I could probably try again; your list has sparked my memory. But it’s a little too late for that, I suppose.
It’s the complex books, the classics, the nonfiction books that I have Googled the most. Nonfiction books especially seem to require a little additional research.
I don’t think I will read Honey Farm Dreaming—no thank you to poisonous snakes—or This is Going to Hurt—pushes too many of my buttons. These days I am in search of some light reading but not mindlessly light. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of these you might recommend.
I feel like these are possibly not the most interesting or entertaining things I’ve Googled – just the most recent! I do agree though that the majority of the time Googling is triggered by non-fiction books. So often they bring up new topics or ideas or areas of interest and send me off down a new rabbit-hole of research. This is one of the things I love most about them! Haha – the snakes are not the biggest part of the book, but fair enough (maybe also don’t read Bill Bryson’s book In A Sunburned Country….)! I do understand about This Is Going to Hurt. Had it not been for his humour and that he jumps around between patients and experiences quite quickly, I would have found it tough going. Definitely not one for people who are triggered by medical topics!
I think I’d recommend some of the quieter ones. I loved The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating. It is set against the backdrop of the author experiencing chronic illness, so I’m not sure if that would be a difficult element for you, but if not the quiet appreciation that evolves between the author and the snail – even if you have no interest in snails – is lovely. I’d also recommend Life In the Garden if you’re interested in gardening – particularly good as we enter spring – and Unraveling if you have any interest in yarn crafts, as it’s a fascinating look at the yarn-making process.
Thanks for stopping by!