Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac Review

Name	Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac
Author	Ken Jennings
Published	January 2008 (first hardcover release)
Length	531 Pages

Description: Ken Jennings's second book, following his successful Brainiac, is subtitled 8,888 Trivia Question in 365 Days, and the Jeopardy! champion delivers more than promised, taking advantage of the current leap year to make sure that every day of your year, even February 29, is filled with trivia. Containing more than one bonus trivia question per day (Ken confesses to 9,300 total), the book cover stands only one fib short of the John Harvard Statue of Three Lies, so I expect him to admit that his entire Jeopardy! winning streak was a hoax any day now ;-).

Overall Format: Each day of the year presents two or three historical facts from which a related, themed quiz is launched. The relationship between the fact and the quiz is usually obvious but occasionally left as an unstated exercise for the reader to figure out. Answers appear at the end of each month, meaning that you really need two bookmarks to follow along. This is not the ideal setup as you can accidentally spy answers to the next day, but it works if you are careful (e.g., use the bookmark to cover up the answer columns on the right).

Quiz Formats: Several different types of quizzes appear regularly:

• Simple Question and Answer - Composing the majority of the quizzes, some of these are split into balanced Easy, Harder, and Yeah, Good Luck sections.
• Chinese Menu - Match a lettered answer to the numbered phrase (each answer is used exactly once).
• Fill in the Blank - Figure out what word or phrase is missing.
• Commonalities - Figure out what links the items listed (this is a regular "Question 7" feature of Ken's weekly Tuesday Trivia e-mail quiz [see bottom left corner of page]).
• Miscellaneous - Some of the remaining quizzes provide a clever and creative break from the usual trivia such as Anagrams, Cinemashups (two movies who names are mashed together in Wheel of Fortune "Before and After" style), Alliterature (puzzle out the book title from the alliterative description), and Title Cards (word graphics that describe titles).

Conclusion: Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac is an impressive tome from an all-time trivia legend. Jennings lightens the sheer mass of trivia with a dry sense of humor that keeps the book readable and entertaining. An annotated version would be useful to let the reader in on some of the inside jokes and connections that come effortlessly to a trivia veteran yet may slip by casual readers unnoticed. Ken is a Methuselah and a Mackie Shilstone shy of Dennis Miller on the obscurity scale, but I'm sure some of the author's allusions eluded me nevertheless.

The Almanac makes an excellent gift for any Jeopardy!, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, or other trivia game show fan (Mother's Day, Father's Day, and graduation are coming up soon; or just buy it for yourself!). Please see the sample questions that follow in the next post for a flavor of what the book offers.

Updates and Corrections: Corrections to the Almanac are being posted on Ken Jennings's message board (search for "Almanac" to see the real first message; the early messages are for Brainiac). Hopefully someone will eventually collate them neatly (hint, hint, Ken; cf. the updates for my trivia books)

[10/15/08 update: Ken just posted a collection of corrections. Thanks!].

[ Disclaimer: I was one the book's fact-checkers, but despite Ken's modesty, 99.9% of the credit for the Almanac belongs to him and him alone, and I don't consider this review to be biased in any way. ]