Book review: Guinness World Records 2018
Even after everything is available at one’s fingertips, literary, and books being relegated from bedside tables to bookshelves, Guinness World Records’ annual edition continues to charm people of all ages.
As always, Guinness World Records 2018 is a grandiose celebration of the best, biggest, strongest, longest, smallest, lightest and all the other superlatives in the dictionary. Along with new records, there is a new theme — superlative superheroes — where both fictional and real-world superheroes are brought together to fascinate and inspire.
The number of records broken and new ones set each year, and the range and diversity of these record-breaks feats clearly show that there is very little that man cannot do.
A new feature in this edition that makes reading it more interesting is the addition of poster pages based on different superlative, such as tallest, longest, heaviest, etc. This makes reading the records a more fascinating affair. The round-up at the end of the chapters is also a quick way to check out what would be interesting and then turn to that page. Saves time when going through such a large book!
The special feature on fictional superheroes and crime fighters of the comic world is what all comic book superheroes fans can drool over, and it was the first one I turned to!
Over the years, the quality and quantity of photographs in the reference book have increased to an extent that the text is smaller and almost pushed to the background. Visually, this doesn’t hurt the book, in fact the records make more impact this way.
However, the first thing that struck me about the book and seemed unappealing was its cover colour scheme — red and bright gold looks very tacky over a blue background. Its covers have always fascinated me and this year I was pretty disappointed. But that’s where the disappointment ended, for inside is a feast of incredible feats that make this book the best-selling copyrighted book series of all time.
Available at Paramount Books
Published in Dawn, Young World, October 14th, 2017