Books! Actual books!
"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"
-- The Wall Street Journal
"Pulls you in like a good sports story"
-- The New York Times Book Review
"Endearingly frank... jubilant... lighthearted and fast-paced"
-- New York Newsday
"A surprisingly touching memoir"
-- Entertainment Weekly
"Snappy and informative"
-- Associated Press
"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."
-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
"I haven't seen Jeopardy! since I was a kid, and yet I was charmed and amused by Bob Harris's fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful book. Through sheer force of personality, he takes this brainy TV show and makes it funny and easy to relate to."
-- Ira Glass, creator and host, This American Life
"A surprisingly intimate, entertaining book."
-- Orson Scott Card, 4-time Hugo Award winner, author of Ender's Game
"Funny, enlightening -- and just might help you win a million bucks on Jeopardy!"
-- A. J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All
"A masterful job of describing the feel of Jeopardy! in the heat of battle... I knew Bob was a great guy and a fantastic Jeopardy! player. Now I've found that he's also a wonderful writer. I think I'm starting to hate him."
-- Brad Rutter, top money-winner in Jeopardy! history
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“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”
— Boston Globe
"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."
— New York Observer
"Only Bob could make a user’s guide to our increasingly hostile world this absorbing, this breezy, and—ultimately—this hopeful.”
— Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs
“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING. A gimlet-eyed look at the world we endure that’s also suitable for enjoying with a gimlet.”
— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
"All three [presidential] candidates should read all three of these [recommended] books, but McCain gets first crack at Bob Harris's "Who Hates Whom“... a lighthearted overview of the insurrections and civil wars in the world today."
— Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, in the New York Times Book Review
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Main  Book Blog
I touched on some of this in Trebekistan, in the bits about encoding information so that it could be retrieved in competitive conditions.
But the more scientists learn, the cooler this stuff gets.
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Just a heads-up: last year's "Quiz Show" episode of Ira Glass's This American Life is repeating this week, including a very brief chat with yours truly in the wake of Prisoner of Trebekistan.
It's a free listen on the TAL website this week.
Next week, Ira takes an inside look at the writers of The Onion. Now that's an episode I'm looking forward to.
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I highly recommend getting at least one of the three from Amazon.
• The Badonkadonk Land Cruiser, nicely packaged for just under $20,000, including 14 cup holders.
• A twist-off jar of pure uranium ore, for just $32.44 including shipping, great for getting extra jiggawatts out of your flux capacitor. (Although any gills, gigantism, or tentacles you may develop are your own problem.)
• Or Ken Jennings's new Trivia Almanac, released today, just $13.60 and packed with over 8,000 questions.
Extra cup holders and jiggawatts sold separately. |
Haven't blogged in a while because I've been busy planning another trip, one I almost reconsidered. But got a reminder today that you gotta live while you're here.
Remember the two posts (first here, second here) about the insanely hard European Quizzing Championships? Where I grumbled happily about the Belgians and their otherworldly abilities?
Just found out that one of these Belgians has left us.
Lieven Van den Brande, top right corner with the beard, who seemed in perfect health to all, and finished second in the individual tournament, stepped out of the room quite suddenly today.
I only met him briefly, casually hanging out the same evening I took this picture of the full Belgian Armada, but he seemed like a very gentle and clearly brilliant fellow. Several of the people I met and liked very much at the tournament knew him well and are greatly saddened. I am sorry for their loss.
Life is so fucking short. Sure would be nice if it weren't. But it is.
Gonna go catch that plane now. Dammit.
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Friend of the blog Paul Paquet runs a combination PR and trivia-question-writing company in Ottawa that actually does a pretty nifty business. I had no idea the market for minutiae was so large.
His website hosts a weekly trivia quiz that Paul writes himself, and it's always a fun way to knock a few minutes off while procrastinating online. This week's quiz is loosely based on Who Hates Whom, a recent book of mine you may have seen subtly mentioned elsewhere on this site. Ahem.
I thank Paul for the thoughtful bit of pluggage. If you've got ten minutes and want to play, click on over.
One key caveat: the quiz also contains material not drawn from the book, and there are several places where the quiz phrases things in a way I wouldn't have chosen. Consider the entire quiz Paul's work, not mine. He deserves full credit for all any fun, reward, or outrage you may experience. Enjoy!
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Astute visitors here may have noticed that the site hasn't been updated in the better part of a week. That's because I've been in Blackpool, England, having a ball at the most unbelievable trivia tournament I've ever seen.
I'm at the European Quizzing Championships, part of a four-man Team USA along with Ken Jennings, Ed Toutant, and David Legler, with occasional cameos by the founder of the US Game Show Congress and US rep on the International Quizzing Association's board Paul Bailey. (Incidentally, if this group were the Beatles, make no mistake: I'm Ringo at best. If not Stu Sutcliffe. Those guys have a total of over $7 million in quiz show winnings between them. Me? I have, um, this blog.)
We've spent the last three days hammering our brains against about 100 inspiring fanatics from nearly 20 countries from all over Europe and as far away as India. And just how crazed can the questions get when you've got people that good from all over the world? This one was completely typical, I swear to you:
I had no idea whatsoever. (Not that you need me to tell you that.) But the English guy sitting next to me came up with it after about thirty seconds of thought. He figured it out, in fact -- by remembering which region Marmont was Duke of, then coming up with its biggest city, then modifying the name into a common French verb form, resulting in the educated and correct guess of "raguser."
Good lord.
Here's another:
There are people from Belgium, Norway, Hungary and so on who walk around knowing that Zamenhof was born in Bialystok. Yes, yes, dear boy, ask us something difficult, would you?
So: this was three days of trying to come up with Albanian dictators, East German ping-pong players, Senegalese poets, and more weird random crap than I ever imagined I'd see asked with a straight face.
We actually did OK, if you're curious. In the singles event, Ken ranked near the top (gee, big surprise there) and the rest of us were respectably middle and up. As a team, we again fared middle-up, losing the exhibition match against an international European side by one point, 60-59, because we could only identify two of the three snips of cinematic dream sequences we were given in the last round.
But winning was never the point, of course. Mostly it was a great chance to hang out with the guys and meet dozens of fascinating international nerds capable of raking at brain-frying trivia while -- let's remember -- not even playing in their own native language.
So: thank you, EQC, thank you Paul Bailey, thank you fellow US players, thank you Steven and Chris and Jane and a bunch of other folks who put together the quizzes, and most of all, my hearty thanks to thousands of random events, objects, and historical people whose names I have now at least heard once before I humbly die.
Incidentally, and I say this with glowing affection: the Belgian players are total freaks. Off the charts. They know crap in four to six languages that I can't even spell in English. Mark these words: never challenge a Belgian to a trivia duel. They will cut you with their minds.
At one point -- my hand to any god you prefer -- they actually asked which species of civet in the Balearic Islands marks its territory by performing handstands.
And like half of the people in the room just nodded dismissively as if they'd just been asked, I dunno, the capital of Denmark. I'm sure the Belgians were waiting for the really hard questions to start.
Wait a minute -- you mean there are civets that do handstands in the Balearic Islands? How did I not know this? At least now I have a picture to seek out for Friday pudublogging.
More when I get the chance. A couple of the guys and I are taking a few days to hang out in Northern Ireland before heading home, and I'm not sure what the WiFi sitch will be. Should also be some pics from there and around Blackpool here, too.
(And yes, I am leaving the identity of that handstanding Balearic civet to your Google skills. Assuming you don't just know it off the top of your head. I'll post the answer later in the week.) |
 Putting it plainiac, you'd be insaniac not to obtainiac. It's entertainiac.
Early next year -- just in time not to be just in time for the holidays, unfortunately -- Ken Jennings also has a new upcoming trivia almanac, in hardbac.
If you're a quiz-bowl type, the whole book is a cardstac.
Fun while eating hardtac in a guardshac.
I will stop now, before you complainiac.
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 While I'm thinking of Trebekistan today, a reminder:
Nineteen-game winner David Madden is still out there hiking the length of the entire east coast -- from Maine's border with Canada all the way to Key West -- while raising money for Fisher House, a top-rated non-profit that provides nearby lodging so that loved ones can be nearby while wounded military veterans undergo extended treatment for war-related injuries.
Last David checked in, he was strolling along a detour through Amish country. Sounds like an amazing trip. If you'd like to see what such a hike looks like, David's way-cool photo albums from the walk so far are here, here, and here.
Wherever we stand on the political spectrum, I hope this is something every American can support.
I hope you'll join me in chipping in, if you have one minute right now, plus a couple of dollars you'd like to share.
Thanks!
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