I'll Take Books For 1600, Alex

Chris and I love trivia shows. When we were dating, sometimes we would just sit and watch the game show network when The Weakest Link or Who Wants to be a Millionaire would come on. These days, we watch Jeopardy to get our trivia fix. There’s nothing like knowing one of two of the 60 some odd answers to the questions that can make you feel a little smarter for the next two or three days. That’s why when Chris mentioned that he was thinking about checking out Ken Jennings’ book Brainiac I decided to read it, too. Chris was busy reading something else, so I read it first, and it was great! I didn’t realize that Ken Jennings was so funny. (As a side note, in his book, Ken said that he has googled himself, so if he stumbles upon this page during a google session, I’m honored.) I thought that his book would just be a long narrative of his experience, but it was much more than that. He did write about that, but he also wrote about the history of trivia and wrote about his experiences meeting other people who love trivia as much as he does. There’s even a town in Wisconsin that devotes an entire weekend to trivia, and the whole town comes to a stand still as people listen to music and answer trivia. Also, each chapter has a few trivia questions mixed in with the writing. It was a great read and I recommend it to anyone who even has a passing interest in trivia. It also made me realize that I myself could never appear on Jeopardy and will have to be content sitting on my couch shouting out the wrong answers to the questions as Chris sits quietly by me mumbling the correct ones.