Prep

I was checking out Ken Jennings' blog and found out he will be in New York City at the Union Square Barnes and Noble signing books on September 14 at 7 pm. You will find me there as well if the class I will be taking on Tuesday and Thursday nights starting on August 31 has a professor with a lenient attendance policy and if the class has a syllabus that does not include a quiz, presentation or interesting guest speaker on the 14th.
So, that being said - exciting, huh?! Whose in?!

In the meantime, to properly do my duty as a blog writer of Jeopardy-ish things, here's a link to a site for which Ken writes for from time to time and more interestingly, the site has great (i.e. short, informative) quizzes on a different topic each week. Quick to complete, even quicker to find out your score, and even quicker (wow - that is pretty quick) for you to determine if you know anything about the topic or are in need of a refresher course, say before a quiz night, board game night where Trivial Pursuit will be played, or better yet, before a night where you will be watching Jeopardy (or Jeopardys) at a friend's house.
Wow your friends! Amaze your family and look like a trivia whiz!

On another note, in the interest of not only "prepping" for competitions (you really never know where or how these types of questions can come up), if you are thinking I am embracing dorkiness just that one shade too much, it might have something to do with a fantastic book I just finished reading. (True, it might also have nothing to do with that).

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld is a fictional work told from a 20-something character's point of view. The view is about her 4 years at a prep school in the Northeast. The main character, Lee, is a smart, wallflower type who feels she is on the wrong side of the crowd. That is, not "in". It's a great book and I will leave it at that.

But what does this mean?
No, I did not go to prep school and no, I am not making a statement about my high school years. True, I was certainly not on the right side of the lunchroom most of the time I ate lunch in the cafeteria but what I enjoyed about the book so much was that Lee's feelings could hold to true to anyone in their high school years, as a private school attendee or not. Her inner thoughts and outward actions transcend (is that not the most book critic-ish word you have ever heard?) whatever clique you may have been in as a high school student. Even for those post-high schoolers who don't even know what clique they were in or for those who were not in a clique, I truly believe there is something in the book you will relate to. (that's the transcending part).
And that is really where I will leave it.

And that's all about the book I finished reading last week. (Had to get that LAST in there to make some sense of its relation to the niche topic.)