Tanya Slover is an author, ghostwriter, and screenwriter. Her trivia trilogy, "The Instant Series," provided an opportunity to use her background in research and anthropology to amuse and entertain.
The first book in the series, The Instant Genius, was recently updated for a second edition, available in paperback as well as for Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook.
Here's a recent Amazon review of
The Instant Genius by reader Robert Boyd:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Trivia for Trivia Masters"
February 7, 2013
Nobody should pass through this life without knowing these gems of knowledge. They make our time here a little more fun. This author must have perfect recall, and uses it to engage our intellect in a fun and challenging discourse. I hope she comes up with more books to broaden my horizons. Give this book a read. You will love it.
To give readers an idea about the series, Tanya offered to share her foreword to
The Instant Genius below.
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A lot of what you'll read in The Instant Genius: An Indispensable Handbook for Know-It-Alls has been rattling around in my head for years. "Why don't you write this stuff down?" a friend said to me one day over lunch. "Who knows? Maybe somebody else will think it's interesting too."
After mulling over her suggestion for a couple of days I decided, Why not? I'd give it a try and promptly began a fact check of what I thought I knew. I contacted museums and libraries, called title companies, consulted experts and sorted through countless pages of often contradictory information on the internet. The endless trolling resulted in the provocative, even bizarre, but hopefully interesting trivia in this book.
Though I researched and verified the information in these pages to the best of my ability, The Instant Genius is obviously tongue in cheek and meant to be entertaining, not scholarly--an enjoyable way to pick up interesting tidbits to share at parties, the office and with your Facebook friends.
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What makes a firefly light up? What poet came up with the first vampire tale? How do headhunters shrink a human head? Find answers to these questions and more in The Instant Genius by Tanya Slover!
