Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Move over, Dave Eggers, September 24, 2006
This is an odd, moving, funny, troubling, and hugely ambitious book.
Yes, it is true that it describes some subtleties of how to succeed on Jeopardy; yes, presumably that makes it required reading for anyone who plans to compete on that show.
But to call it a "how-to" book ignores how much you have to learn to succeed on that particular show. So I'd even go further. This book teaches truly useful memory techniques which should be useful to anyone who needs to memorize -- uh -- well, pretty much anything. The works of E. M. Forrester, for example, permanently seared into your brain by a visual image that concludes with the Taj Mahal in a somewhat unusual location. This would be a good book for students, particularly high-school students, say, inflicted with a history teacher who demands rote memorization of history without inspiring a desire to learn it.
But to call this an educational how-to book is to cheapen it greatly. This is a very amusing book, playful and witty. Actually, at times it is laugh-out-loud funny. Mr. Harris has a dry, self-deprecating wit punctuated with occasional flashes of buttocks.
But to call this an educational how-to comedy is to shortchange it. This is an exciting book. Mr. Harris somehow manages to make Jeopardy games matter. He gives them the adrenal pulse of a real competition; he makes us suffer as he falls behind and rejoice when he takes the lead. It shows us the fierce preparation required to succeed, an almost compulsive focus on study and practice worthy of a professional athlete. Ok, so Jeopardy will never supplant football on the world stage, but after reading this book you'll understand why it's been on the air for forty years.
But to call it an exciting educational comic how-to drama is to ignore the real, underlying themes. At core, under it all, this is a very human book, recounted by a humble, observant, caring man. This is a tale of a real personal journey, of a man awakening from the opiatic haze of rudderless America to a higher, more personally satisfying realm; of loss, and love, and friendship; of achievement, of competition, of success, of failure, and in the end of self-acceptance.
This is an odd, moving, funny, troubling, and hugely ambitious book.
This book is a little bit wise, and a little bit muddled; a little bit sad, and a whole lot joyful.
But most of all, this book is worth reading.
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What Is A Great Book About _Jeopardy!_ And About Life?, October 2, 2006
When he initially tried the audition test to become a panelist on the quiz show _Jeopardy!_, Bob Harris flunked out. He subsequently flunked it four more times. It would seem that something inside him knew that becoming a champion player was his destiny, because he kept on trying until he qualified. Eventually getting accepted into the game, and winning, and losing, has made him what he is today, which includes being the author of the funny and surprisingly touching memoir _Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy!_ (Crown Publishers). It may seem that a life largely spent working hard to be good at a television game show would necessarily be superficial or inconsequential, but despite all the jokes in this account, Harris learned some wisdom worthy of the sages, and much of it was on a higher plane than "What is the capital of Thailand?" Readers might pick up some trivia, and will certainly have some laughs, but more importantly, will absorb an account by someone who learned some truly important life lessons.
The worst advice he got after his failures to qualify for an initial show was the reassurance from the people administering the tests he flunked: "After all, they would always insist, it's _impossible_ to study for _Jeopardy!_" Much of the initial part of Harris's book is spent showing just how untrue this is. All the other champions he met had their own training regimens, too. It would seem that an account of training for such an event might make boring reading, but not only are the techniques Harris used interesting in themselves, but they have surprisingly larger meanings, not the least of which is that any ordinary person can absorb as much arcane information as time and energy allow. A good deal of the preparation was spent in mnemonic techniques which memory experts have coached us to use ever since such experts existed. There are plenty of silly sentences to remember the biologist's hierarchy of kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species, but Harris explains it is good to come up with your own as part of being involved in the creativity of memory (his was "King Philip Glass Orders his Family a Generous Special"). Harris summarizes the lessons in his preparation in a list he calls "The Eightfold Path to Enlightened Jeopardy", which actually has nine steps, and the last one is a reminder to relax and let such contradictions go. Following these steps, he enriched his own life in wonderful ways just by _Jeopardy!_ His gratitude and humility shine throughout his earnest book.
_Jeopardy!_ is always going to be part of his life. Harris probably will forever be asked "Hey, what's the capital of Libya?", since most who know him know he is a five-time Jeopardy! winner. He also has made good friends with other contestants. They share his obsession with cramming in more knowledge, of course, but have plenty of admirable qualities besides: "These were just hardworking people with great curiosity, all willing to try interesting things. One of which was _Jeopardy!_" Harris delights in the creativity and sense of community he found among them, and in the stratospheric championship rounds, they all seemed to be friendly competitors, cheering each other on and acknowledging that there was little difference between themselves, the games being decided by an arbitrary "one clue here, a Daily Double there, one lucky category, a millisecond of a blink on the buzzer." He won prizes, but he won friendships, and indirectly his efforts led to his fruitful relationship with his current and long-time paramour and best friend. _Prisoner of Trebekistan_ can be read as a manual for _Jeopardy!_ players, or as a jocular but heartfelt memoir, but there is no denying that there is deeper and delightful wisdom in its pages.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow, September 10, 2006
I am yet another fan of Bob Harris' blog, and the humor and insight that he shows there were really the only reasons I purchased this book. Just officially finished it tonight, and I gotta tell ya: I am impressed. Insightful, moving (there were real tears, on more than one occasion, for happiness, sadness, and more), overall delightful and enlightening book. It was wonderful to take a trek through Trebekistan with him, and I hope there will be more in the future. Maybe he should try his hand at fiction (hint, hint)?
Anyway, this is a really great read (only took me three days, I couldn't put it down), and that coming from someone who hasn't watched Jeopardy! since I was a kid, and have no interest in the show.
Heck, I didn't even know that he had been on the show more than once when I bought the book. So that oughta tell you something.
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