Funny, I also read that book, I did not think it was that popular. IIRC I read it at least 10 years ago. I enjoyed the part about the 1904 World's Fair and the history of that but could have passed on the creeper that incinerated murder victims in an oven.
I used to read a LOT of books when I was younger. Today I pretty much just read industry journals because I have to for work, and read kids' books to my little girl. The last adult book I read was Norm Abram's "Measure Twice, Cut Once" because my wife saw it at the library and thought I would find it interesting (she was spot on, I watched "Nahm" since he was on The New Yankee Workshop in the '80s when PBS was one of the seven channels we got OTA, because OTA was all there was living outside of city limits and the hell we were going to pay to have a C-band dish and receiver!) I think I can recite pretty well every Dr. Seuss book and the entire Llama Llama series from memory by now, and "sticky bears is twice as much" from Michael Bond's "Paddington Bear" is a funny punch line at our house.