Brainiac – Ken Jennings

I had fun with Brainiac. I had just gotten the call to go for this year’s Jeopardy! audition, and, being me, was in a fever of preparation. (As a few of us were waiting for things to begin, one or two people said “Gosh, I never studied or anything, did *you*??” Yes. Yes I did.)(No, it didn’t help.) So Brainiac seemed like a logical next step.

(Fair warning: I will probably not continue to properly use the exclamation point in “Jeopardy!”. It annoys me. If I get on and win I will use the “!” constantly, believe me, but till then I just don’t want to deal with the autocorrect.)

There’s more to this book than “I got famous appearing on Jeopardy”. It’s partly that; it’s partly memoir; it’s partly an informal history of trivia and trivia competition, and surprisingly filled with drama, humor, and pathos as such.

I do love reading other people’s paths to Jeopardy, because up to a certain point it’s identical to mine. No matter where it happens, whether Glenn or Maggie is in charge, it’s basically the same thing: a group of people ranging from mildly to wildly geeky together in a room with three Jeopardy professionals voluntarily taking a test that many would flee from. I like Ken Jennings. I like his story. I like his story-telling. Heck, if I wasn’t utterly consumed with jealousy I might have given this five stars.

Kidding.