Murder by Death

I'm a sucker for practical knowledge and I've been wanting to read this book; its trendiness put me off buying it originally, but about a fortnight ago, my neighbour was getting rid of several boxes of books and offered to let me riffle through them first.  This was one of the books I took.   It's good, it's practical, but I'm glad I didn't buy it when it came out.

Unless you live a very different, very active lifestyle, a good number of these are not going to be scenarios you're likely to confront, short of end-of-life-as-we-know it.  I'm having a hard time coming up with at-all-likely situations where I'd need to know how to meneuver atop a train, or jump from a motorcycle to a moving car.  Ditto hot-wiring (although that's fun to know) and how to win a sword fight.  But most of the entries are for things that for most people are at least possible scenarios, if not probably ones and the information is easy to understand and not so difficult you'd forget how to do it in a crunch (except possibly starting a fire - there's a lot of bits involved in that one). 

It's a very quick read, and a useful book to keep around on the off chance I need to know how to prepare myself for a trip to the desert, or I need to pick a lock.  But I'm glad I waited until fate dropped a free copy in my lap.