Book Report

Brainiac
Ken Jennings

Quick: What type font was Ken Jenning's book "Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs" set in?

I really enjoyed this book. For one thing, a lot of the things Ken said in it reminded me of those fun-loving-20-hour-but-still-not-getting-all-that-much-schooling-in college days...

I really liked how the book slowly went through his Jeopardy! experience, but only gave you a little in each chapter, taking right turns all the time into other trivia related tangents.

If I knew back then what I know now about College Bowl, I can think of one thing I would have done different. Earl used to occassionally spend a lot of time trying to think up good questions to put in packets for upcoming tourneys. A couple of times, I came along (his office was in the Talmage building, where the computer room was, not that we couldn't have talked about it at home, living next door to each other...) he was writing questions, and I got sucked in. Earl always seemed to have to spend more time trying to rewrite my questions to properly fit the format then he did trying to get his own questions done, I think. You'd think I would pick up on the thing from sitting in the "intramural" College Bowl Earl and Ken used to try to keep going in the Maeser building back in the day, but I'm kind of slow. And I had an itchy trigger finger back then, and always buzzed in early trying to get the answer quickly, which now I know is how a lot of people did it, all thanks to Ken's little book here.

Besides laughing at old times, this book was facinating from the story it tells, and not just what it's like to be on Jeopardy!. I can't imagine what it would be like to be in a town that shuts down for 2 days a year to do a local radio trivia contest, much less finding people who would actually indulge me in creating a team.

I am sure that if I were single at this point, with nothing to do, after reading the book, I would quickly become addicted to playing NTN Buzztime at whatever restaurant I could find it at. Is that why Tom likes to go to Wild Wings so much when he's back at home? Am I never invited because he doesn't want me showing him up? (The nearest one to our house is 24 miles away...) The best plane ride I was ever on was an overnighter on Song. Tara was with me, we had a baby (Ruth? Emma?) with us, the baby was passed out on my lap while I played the little trivia game on their display all night long. After landing, I wondered if the person in front of me appreciated my poking their headrest all night.

Anyway, back to the book. It's well written and facinating. It struck a chord with the not-so-much-in-the-closet trivia fan in me. (As you can plainly tell by the fact that I have stayed up past 2am to finish it.) Maybe I will organize another neighborhood Trivial Pursuit tournament...