Geoff Holden

A few weeks ago, Ken Jennings (of Jeopardy! fame–74 straight wins) came to visit Google. He was doing the tour for his new book “Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs”. I managed to get myself a copy of the book, and stuck around long enough after his talk to get my copy signed.

I recently finished reading the book, and I highly recommend it. It’s a nice, easy and entertaining read. He tells the story of how he got interested in trivia, his time on Jeopardy!, but also some of the history of trivia itself, the people who white trivia books, contestants, etc. Ken’s own story is actually not the main story in the book, this is not an autobiography in any sense. It’s not a trivia book, but a book about trivia, with pieces of his own story peppered throughout. Every chapter also has trivia questions embedded in it, with answers at the end–which is good, because I didn’t know many of the answers.