Trivia(l) Pursuit!

Last weekend a couple friends and I decided that we would attend a trivia night at a local bar. We'd never really done anything like that as a group before, but since we have such a diverse group of interests we thought we'd be able to handle any question that got tossed at us. It was the first time any of my friends had attended an event like this... but during undergrad I attended trivia nights fairly regularly, and absolutely loved the atmosphere (a weird mix of light-hearted frivolity and cut-throat competition..) and the excuse to celebrate my nerdiness. I was excited to be 'back in the game' but worried that my once semi-formidable skills would be all rusty-useless :(  *all-time favorite trivia question: What is the longest 1-syllable word in the English language?... I'll put the answer at the bottom of the post. No peeking now!*)

We ended up doing decently as a team (11th out of 38 teams), and, now that my friends have caught trivia-fever, we're definitely planning on going back next week (and the week after that, and probably the one after that...). I'm wickedly competitive though, so I decided that it would be a good idea if I boned up on my trivia during the week. So... I poked through the stacks and came across the ultimate guide to random-facts and nuggets of knowledge:

The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs

I picked this book up partially because it seemed to suit my needs (who WOULDN'T want the smartest person in the world on their trivia team?!) and partially because I read Jacobs's The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible a couple of years ago and absolutely loved it. I was looking for obscure facts presented with humor and humanity... and I got exactly what I wanted, plus a whole lot more!

At its most simplistic level, The Know-It-All is a record of the year Jacobs spent reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.  It highlights some of his favorite random facts (did you know that you only need to  get three rowdy people together to legally qualify as a riot? or that Hank Aaron once played for a baseball team called the Indianapolis Clowns?) and traces patterns and contradictions throughout the text. Jacobs is an incredibly funny writer, and half of the humor of the book comes from the fact that he is such a normal guy (a former writer for Entertainment Tonight who admits that he "stopped reading anything except tabloid gossip columns for years!") undertaking such an incredibly immense project.

While the factoids themselves are fascinating, thought-provoking, and often hilarious, Jacobs breaks up the encyclopedic exploration by interweaving narratives from "his life outside the Books." He deals with family members and friends who are confused and often dismissive of his (crazy) goal, and describes his contrast attempts to work his new-found knowledge into daily conversation (there's a particularly wonderful cocktail party dialogue about the mating habits of amoebas...). There are also stories about his attempts to become recognized as "The Smartest Person in the World:" He attempts to join Mensa, competes in a hard-core Crossword Puzzle Tournament, hangs out with Alex Trebek,  tries out for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire... and each experience teaches him that he's not quite "there yet." He says, tongue-in-cheek, that the only reason he doesn't blow his competitors away is because he hasn't reached the Z's yet!

I absolutely adored this book -- I learned so many randomly wonderful things and had a wonderful time reading (and laughing) along with the author. There's something awfully joyous about reading about somebody else's reading (I guess that's why we blog, after all...) and I enjoyed every minute of this one!

5 STARS We're heading to Vegas and getting hitched next Tuesday. Send flowers!

* the longest 1 syllable English word is "screeched" just fyi :)