Saturday 5 January 2013

Brainiac: Adventures in the World of Trivia Buffs - Ken Jennings


Over the last few days I have read "Brainiac - The Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs" which is a title written by Ken Jennings, of record-breaking Jeopardy fame. It was one of the first books I decided to read on my new kindle,

The title is mainly an investigation of the US Quizzing Scene with Jennings travelling around the country to attend 56-hour radio quiz marathons, plug-and-play tv games against people across the USA and meeting compilers of reference works. This part of the book is very enjoyable and I found it interesting to see the differences and similarities between what I know of the UK scene and our friends across the pond.

Chaptered into the book is is  the tale of Ken's run on Jeopardy which broke records and made him a household name. This is also very interesting to read how Ken first auditioned, his opening night nerves and the way he adapted to the long run. Throw in a sample of questions he faced as well as around 170  questions littered throughout the book (with answers on a separate page

Overall though this is a title I would recommended to anyone with a keen interest in  trivia and quizzing.  Ken clearly has a passion and it comes through throughout the book and reads similar to Marcus Berkmanns Brain Men.

The cheapest format, by a smidge is the paperback in the Amazon Marketplace. Link Below but you can also get it on Kindle for around £7.



1 comment:

  1. If you remember the chapter where Ken was at the NAQT HSNCT, the surprise team from the state of Washington that challenged the team from Thomas Jefferson was captained by the same Kyle Haddad-Fonda who later went on to be on a recent University Challenge winning team.

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