What Is Brainiac?

For Christmas last year, my husband and I decided to give each other just one book, partly because we have two daughters and other family members to buy for, and Christmas expenses and the whole commercialization thing is out of control, and partly for the challenge. One gift? And it’s got to be a book? Well, then it had better be good. The best book ever! The dictionary! The encyclopedia! No, no, a book. A book to read. The greatest classic of them all, then! The great American novel! No, no. Too hard. A good book. A good book that he doesn’t know about yet. A good solid read that he will thoroughly enjoy. Just a book. One book.

So then it became fun. I work at a bookstore and found myself tidying up tables and considering titles. I would walk along the shelves at the end of the night tidying up “leaners” and wondering, “Should it be from ‘Sports,’ ‘Military History,’ ‘Biography,’ ‘Fiction & Literature’? What’s he going to pick for me? Does he already know?” I stood at the info desk with co-workers and talked about the many, many possibilities.

Although my husband, Jim, doesn’t spend hours in a bookstore every week like I do, he reads Entertainment Weekly and picks up the Chicago Tribune a few times a week, and otherwise keeps abreast of interesting books, movies, and music that come out. Not to mention, he is the single best gift-giver I have ever known. He thinks about gift-giving all year and makes very specific choices. He knows me better than anyone. So he settled on a book for me pretty early, Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund. It is historical fiction about Marie Antoinette, and it was just the thing.

I finally settled on a book for him a little closer to Christmas, Brainiac by Ken Jennings, a memoir by “the greatest champion in ‘Jeopardy!’ History.” Don’t think I wasn’t proud when Jim read it quickly (was it by New Year’s?); it didn’t sit in book purgatory, and I never had to ask, “When are you going to read the book I got for you?” Instead I got to walk in occasionally and find him reading it and say, “You like it! I picked a good one!”

Now, I’m reading Brainiac.

P.S. to Don, Bookstore Manager:
I distinctly remember holding up a copy of Brainiac one night and saying, “Hey, this looks like something you’d be interested in.” You glanced at it, pulled your eyebrows close together and made a thoughtful frown and said, “Ehh” with a shrug. Very dismissive. But, later, when you thought you stumbled upon the book on your own, you read it and liked it. Said Jennings was humble and even a good writer. I called it. I’m just saying.

(My friend Don likes NASCAR and fantasy baseball but should be forgiven for the fantasy baseball since he has good taste in books. There's still nothing to be said for the NASCAR thing, though.)