History Main / ButIReadABookAboutIt

** The Rupert in ''Literature/MonstrousRegiment'' does the same thing. He actually cuts his own hand practicing out of a book.
*** His sword hand, in fact. Do not ask how.

* ''Literature/HoratioHornblower'' is constantly reinforcing his BadassBookworm status by reading. That and the fact that he is very GoodWithNumbers. The ''Midshipman'' stories in particular often have young Hornblower comparing his new, actual experiences of sailing and war to what he's read about in books.

** Hermione gets a few of these. Most of the time, it actually ''is'' enough.

* ''[[Literature/TheTwilightSaga Twilight]]'''s Edward Cullen. While the rest of his family was having housebreaking sex, he was by his lonesome spending his sleepless nights studying everything there is to study. For example, he cooks perfect meals for Bella on his first try, despite never having a reason to cook before.
** He often {{Lampshade}}s this fact when he talks about human emotions like jealousy and lust.
* In ''Literature/TheDayOfTheTriffids'' by Creator/JohnWyndham, a character known only as "the radio man" learns to fly a helicopter by reading books and practicing for half an hour.
--> He seemed to have complete confidence that his instinct for mechanism would not let him down.
* Thoroughly averted in ''Literature/TheLayOfPaulTwister''. Paul is from modern-day America, and he's stranded in a StandardFantasySetting. He's read books about a lot of things, but he only has about as much understanding of how modern technology works as any modern person would pick up from PopculturalOsmosis. So when he wants to get something new invented, he has to get some researchers and engineers who actually know what they're doing and point them in the right direction.
* In ''Literature/WaxAndWayne'', when Waxillium started his career as a lawman, he was woefully naïve about how life in the Roughs actually worked and based all of his efforts on fictional novels he read about lawmen and outlaws. Lessie, a native to the Roughs, is rightfully exasperated by his belief in all of the clichés he takes at face value. Fortunately, he gets TaughtByExperience and shapes up.
* ''Literature/TheScumVillainsSelfSavingSystemRenZhaFanpaiZijiuXitong'': When he starts to fall for Su Xiyan, Tianlang-Jun asked Zhuzhi-Lang why she wasn't acting the same way as the blushing maidens in the books he read or the plays he saw, wondering if he didn't look handsome enough for her to act in that way.

* Much to Myne's frustration in ''Literature/AscendanceOfABookworm'', just because you read a book that talked about how to do something is made doesn't mean you can do it yourself. Several of her attempts at making something to write on are eventually abandoned as being too impractical or because she knows too little about the process to actually succeed. Most explicitly, at one point she vaguely remembers something about papyrus being made of layered reeds or something and just has to try to make it based off that knowledge. She eventually gives up when it fails to meet her expectations, unsure as to whether she was doing it wrong[[note]]She was.[[/note]] or if it really is just that annoying. Another time she tries to make clay tablets, but they just explode when she tries to dry them in an oven.

* In the first ''Film/ShortCircuit'' movie, Number 5 reads everything in Stephanie's house (including the entire encyclopedia) before his adventures. The next day he reads the User's Manual (Not Driver's Training) for Stephanie's van immediately before driving it.
** The difference, for those who don't themselves drive, is the the User's Manual usually kept in a vehicle is information about things like how to check and add oil, how to operate the air conditioning, where the seat postion controls are located,etc - not the rules of the road, which vary from state to state and country to country.
** A subversion in that he's still an abysmal driver, and nearly gets himself and Stephanie killed several times within a span of a couple minutes. Since he only knew how the car was supposed to work, and not the rules of driving, it's still this trope.

* Literally the power of the Marvel superhero called Comicbook/{{Gwenpool}}. Or at least one of them. She has read many of the comic books starring the characters she is now physically interacting with. She gains a momentary advantage over [[Comicbook/{{Thor 2014}} the current Thor]] by shouting out her real name.

* Much to Myne's frustration in ''Literature/AscendanceOfABookworm'', just because you read a book that talked about how to do something is made doesn't mean you can do it yourself. Several of her attempts at making something to write on are eventually abandoned as being too impractical or because she knows too little about the process to actually succeed. Most explicitly, at one point she vaguely remembers something about papyrus being made of layered reeds or something and just has to try to make it based off that knowledge. She eventually gives up when it fails to meet her expectations, unsure as to whether she was doing it wrong or if it really is just that annoying. Another time she tries to make clay tablets, but they just explode when she tries to dry them in an oven.

* In ''Film/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2014'', given that the [[spoiler:Hamato Yoshi backstory was adapted out for the Project Renaissance experiment, Splinter teaches ninjitsu from a book he found, instead of getting their Italian renaissance names from one.]] Shredder lampshades this during his fight that it might not be the best way to learn. [[spoiler:Not that it stops him from actually putting up a good fight.]]

* ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'''s Edward Cullen. While the rest of his family was having housebreaking sex, he was by his lonesome spending his sleepless nights studying everything there is to study. For example, he cooks perfect meals for Bella on his first try, despite never having a reason to cook before.

-->-- '''Fraser''', ''Series/DueSouth''

* ''Masked Dog'' by Raymond Obstfeld. The villain is a convicted criminal used to test an experimental drug which gives him SuperStrength and the ability to retain vast amounts of information. After using his skills to escape, he decides to become a master assassin, but while his new powers make him dangerous, his application is often flawed. For instance he reads a book on lockpicking, but when trying to pick a lock, he loses patience and just smashes down the door.

** This is a large part of Twilight's personality. Between SuperOCD, checklists to track checking her checklists, and apparent access to [[Literature/DiscWorld L-Space]] to be able to find a book on anything anywhere. She has a rule book for a "goof-off", for example with Spike claiming that Twilight has a rule book for everything.

-->'''Peter:''' It'll be okay Brian, I read a book about it.\\

* Much to Myne's frustration in ''LightNovel/AscendanceOfABookworm'', just because you read a book that talked about how to do something is made doesn't mean you can do it yourself. Several of her attempts at making something to write on are eventually abandoned as being too impractical or because she knows too little about the process to actually succeed. Most explicitly, at one point she vaguely remembers something about papyrus being made of layered reeds or something and just has to try to make it based off that knowledge. She eventually gives up when it fails to meet her expectations, unsure as to whether she was doing it right or if it really is just that annoying. Another time she tries to make clay tablets, but they just explode when she tries to dry them.

* WebAnimation/JaidenAnimations grew an obsession with birds through reading the ''Literature/MaximumRide'' book series when she was in 6th grade, and never truly grew out of her bird phase, culminating in her eventually adopting Ari.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder:Fan Fiction]]

[[folder:Film]]

-->'''Kermit:''' Where did you learn to drive?
-->'''Fozzie:''' I took a CorrespondenceCourse.

--> ''With a little help from one of the middle school girls, Emily fixed all things mechanical for us--as long as the thing that needed fixing had an owner's manual.''

-->"Don't worry. I've read all about doing this sort of thing!"

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] unsuccessfully in ''Series/ABitOfFryAndLaurie'' when they try to fly a plane with no experience, not even reading about it.
--->'''Hugh''': Right now, Sir Peter, you've never flown an aeroplane before?
--->'''Stephen''': Never flown in my life, Johnny, no.
--->'''Hugh''': '''And you've never had any lessons?'''
--->'''Stephen''': Oh I've had lessons, maths, geography ...
--->'''Hugh''': But not in flying?
--->'''Stephen''': No.
--->'''Hugh''': And I've never flown before. Is this something you've always wanted to do?
--->'''Stephen''': Not particularly. So when you rang up I just leapt at the chance.
--->'''Hugh''': Right.

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* ''Webcomic/FateTypeRedline'': When Tsukumo Fujimiya gets her fingers chopped off, Kanata Akagi surgically reattaches them. She asks how he did it with such skill, and he thinks to himself that he's lucky he reads ''Manga/BlackJack''.
* A guard in Paris in ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' seems to think that having read about Reverents will prepare him for a fight with a large group that's surfaced in Paris. An older veteran disagrees saying there's nothing which could prepare the uninitiated.
[[/folder]]

-->'''Peter:''' It'll be okay Brian, I read a book about it.
-->'''Brian:''' Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't...''nothing''?
-->'''Peter:''' Oh yeah.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument Mary's Room]] is a philosophical thought experiment that takes this trope UpToEleven. Suppose Mary lives in a room where ''everything'' is black-and-white -- the furniture, the books, the computer screen connected to the internet, everything she ever sees so that she has never seen color. However, she has access to and learns about everything that can ever be known about the physical properties of color: that they are slightly-different wavelengths of light interacting with different receptors within the human eyeball that transfer this information to the brain which interprets it and so on. If her monitor's black-and-white filter were to suddenly break and she sees, say, an apple in red color for the first time, would she learn anything new?

* ''Literature/TheMurderbotDiaries''. When the eponymous RogueDrone has to start acting as a 'security consultant' instead of a [=SecUnit=] it finds itself having to base a lot of its actions on the media it watches obsessively. This is because Murderbot had its memory wiped and so only remembers what happened since then, or if the approprite information module has been downloaded into it. [=SecUnit=]s are basically told what to do and seldom consulted even in their area of expertise, so things are different when Murderbot has to conduct investigations or tell TooDumbToLive humans what they shouldn't do.

* On ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'', Sheldon Cooper attempted to learn to swim on the internet. And to rock climb.
** He's actually pretty good at the climbing. It's when he looks down that it all goes wrong. (He's afraid of heights).