BobHarris.com - Book Blog

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"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... unlike his buzzer skills, 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

"Hugely funny"

-- Mental Floss

"Like Jeopardy! itself, it covers a lot of ground and in snappy and informative fashion"

-- Associated Press

"Down to earth and entertaining, even for non-Jeopardy! fans"

-- The New York Daily News

"A very funny writer... the book works like gangbusters."

-- Ken Jennings, 74-time Jeopardy! winner, holder of numerous other Jeopardy! records

"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

"Eccentric, energetic, and engaging"

-- Publishers Weekly

"The perfect gift for any Jeopardy! fan... I was thoroughly entertained"

-- USA Today, "Pop Candy"

"Surprisingly compelling... a funny and in-depth look at what it takes to win"

-- Long Island Press

"Wise, honest, and very funny... I wish I'd written it. Then again, I wish I'd won $127,000 and his-and-hers Camaros on Jeopardy!, too."

-- Jeff Greenstein, writer/producer, Desperate Housewives, Will & Grace, Friends

"Cleverly executed... solid entertainment"

-- Kirkus Reviews

"Answer: A hilarious, engaging and highly entertaining book. Question: What is Prisoner of Trebekistan? (All right... that was sort of a lame Jeopardy! joke. But what can I say? It's a great book.)"

-- Paul Feig, creator of Freaks and Geeks, author of Superstud and Kick Me

"A surprisingly intimate, entertaining book."

-- Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game

"Prisoner of Trebekistan is funny, enlightening -- and just might help you win a million bucks on Jeopardy!"

-- A. J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All

"If you don't buy this book -- this funny, learned, charming, and surprisingly moving book -- I will make it burst into flames in your hands."

-- Arthur Phillips, author of Prague and The Egyptologist

"A keeper for anyone who's even remotely a fan of Jeopardy!"

-- TVSquad.com

"If you enjoy... self-aware, geeky good humor, this could actually be your favorite book of the year."

-- The Stranger

"Highly entertaining... laugh-out-loud, absurdist funny... hilarious"

-- Akron Beacon-Journal

"Hilarious... a true treat for all Jeopardy! fans."

-- Strand Bookstore

"Everything you'd hope for... surprisingly compelling... deftly woven together... this sweet, fascinating book is a great read."

-- Book-blog.com

"If super-intelligent space aliens invaded our planet and demanded to interview one member of our species to ascertain whether or not we human beings were logical, bright, kind, and entertaining enough to be allowed to continue, I would nominate, with all my powers of persuasion, Bob Harris."

-- Emo Philips, comedian

"A masterful job of describing the feel of Jeopardy! in the heat of battle... I knew that 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

Books I'm Getting

Now available from the Crown Publishing Group, the kind folks who gave you Prisoner of Trebekistan!

Who Hates Whom:

Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

“Revelatory... wryly funny about some very serious subjects... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”

— Boston Globe

“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

"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."

— New York Observer

“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

Order now from Amazon—and pick up Prisoner of Trebekistan at the same time and save a few nickels.

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Main

Book Blog

If you're just visiting after reading the paper or seeing the AP story online...

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Welcome! Make yourself at home.

Reviews and blurbs are in the left column, extras from the book are listed in the Trebekistan.com menu at right, and if you'd like to watch a reading and hear a sample of the book, be sure to click over to the videos.

If you'd like a copy for yourself or as a gift (and everyone knows somebody who watches Jeopardy! a lot), just click here or on the book cover at upper left.

Thanks!

(If you haven't seen the AP story yet, it's here.)

Yale revisited

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Actually, just visiting for the first time, but mentioning it here again as a reminder:

I'll be reading, signing, and possibly gargling with pages from Prisoner of Trebekistan at the Yale bookstore at 3 pm today (Wednesday). This will be followed at 4 pm by something called a Master's Tea, which I believe is either a chat for and with the students or a bizarre underground initiation ceremony involving skulls, crumpets, and oaths of fealty to Cthulu.

I think it's just tea, though.

The Yale Record guys, especially Mike Gerber, set this up pretty much out of the blue. My thanks!

Update, Thursday: the whole thing was a fabulous experience. Yale seemed like the last place on earth a working-class lefty like me might feel comfortable, but the folks there couldn't have been more down-to-earth or fun to hang out with. Might even have some video to share if I get a minute. My thanks to all involved.

Hail Cthulu!

Yeah, well, I wouldn't be very good at Ender's Game, either

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Another neat surprise for the book.

Turns out that Orson Scott Card, who only has four Hugo awards (ranking as the 3rd-most-Hugoriffic sci-fi writer so far on this entire timeline, two notches ahead of Robert Heinlein), is now doing the small-college-prof thing and scribbling on the side for a small weekly. And so he wrote about Prisoner of Trebekistan not long ago here (scroll down). Neat!

In the review, he adds that I've "ended any thought" for him of going on Jeopardy! himself.

Yeah, well, I'd positively suck in Battle School. So we'll call it even.

Weird moment: "Free Hugs" surprise cameo

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So friends have been forwarding me this "Free Hugs" video that's zipping around the Internets. If you haven't seen it, it's wonderful, and here:

Now look a little more closely. See if somebody kinda familiar-looking shows up.

The whole time I was watching this guy, I had the weirdest feeling of deja vu. And that's because, at the 1:12 mark or so... I'm about 99% certain that's me.

Wow. Yeah, I remember now. Small planet. Nice place, mostly.

This is precisely the sort of thing Prisoner of Trebekistan is all about.

Yale

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As long as I'm on the east coast, I've just been invited to read from and sign Prisoner of Trebekistan at the Yale bookstore at 3 pm next Wednesday, October 11th. This will be followed at 4 pm by what I take to be a private event, a Master's Tea (which I take to be some sort of James Liptonish chat for the benefit of students) over on the campus itself.

Some guys at the Yale Record, the nation's oldest humor magazine, are apparently behind this. I'm grateful for the invitation. Very cool.

More to come.

NYC

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In NYC for both personal and book stuff, which are merging in interesting ways. If you've read the book, this trip is almost a post-script by itself.

My sister is doing well enough now that she's arriving tomorrow for her first-ever visit to New York, and I'll be showing her around for a few days. I'll also probably visit with perhaps half a dozen characters in the book -- the Luxembourgian Prince, the guy who makes paper explode in flame with his mind, the professor who beat me so badly that it was shown on airlines as in-flight entertainment, etc. The whole thing culminates in a J!-related visit to Radio City Music Hall in the company of a bunch of publishing people who made the book possible.

Three bits of my life are converging at once. It's pretty damned wonderful. I am grateful to a whole bunch of people.

The NY Daily News visits Trebekistan

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This was a nice surprise today, with the bottom line being:

Down to earth and entertaining, even for non-Jeopardy! fans.

-- The New York Daily News

I'm struck, however, by the sheer volume of plain errors in most reviews so far. People who actually buy and read the book will recognize several in the Daily News piece, even though it's only five sentences long. (And I'm not objecting to being called a "struggling nobody." Absolutely. Aren't we all? Including lots of rich and famous people I can think of. And some presidents.)

I don't fault the reviewers. This may just be a function of how book reviewing is done -- apparently in considerable quantity, by reviewers who are deluged by a never-ending stream of incoming books. I imagine Lucille Ball working the infamous assembly line of chocolates in the classic "I Love Lucy" episode, only with entire books to deal with instead of desserts.

Seriously, could you do that job well for very long? I couldn't.

This explains why Entertainment Weekly briefly alleged (until they graciously printed a retraction this week) that I've won "hundreds of thousands" in untelevised back-alley trivia competitions, and why the Daily News now ambiguously implies I won 13 times on the show, which is of course false. Lucy is just shoving the whole of Prisoner of Trebekistan down her blouse, trying to keep up.

And that's one visual I probably won't be revisiting.

Attacking the Monkey Death Star

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Or, how not to see the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa:

This event takes place late in the book, just as I've started to travel and try to see how all the stuff shoved into my head might mean anything.

You may see some mild video weirdness in the first five seconds, btw. I have no idea why, and so I encourage you to discount this as entirely a figment of your imagination.

Kind words from a Stranger

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Among some of the smaller-paper reviews coming in, there's this from The Stranger, Seattle's alt-weekly:

... if you enjoy... self-aware, geeky good humor, this could actually be your favorite book of the year, God help us all.

Interesting. I'm not sure why people simply enjoying my book would be cause for invoking help from the infinite.

But hey, if that's what it takes. Heaven knows, reading the newspapers lately, we could sure use it.

Newberry's Five-&-Dime: a brief glimpse of where I came from

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Here's a the first of several short clips from a reading of Trebekistan I did for the Mensa World Gathering in Orlando in the middle of August.

(I'm not in Mensa, btw. And why were we in central Florida in the hottest days of August? As I've noted before: because Mensa is full of geniuses.)

If you're from the midwest, you've probably shopped at one of these stores in a neighborhood like the one I came from. I hope this brings back a few fun memories.