Netflix

As you can imagine, I'm fun at parties. As a youth, I sat in the backseat of our family minivan and salivated over world almanacs and was known to plop down on the living room floor with the "B" section of the encyclopedia. I just freakin' love trivia, and my brain has a knack for remembering only the most random facts, like which president went skinny-dipping in the Potomac River (John Quincy Adams).

Anyway, in October 2014, I achieved any trivia nerd's dream and competed — and won — on Jeopardy!. Preparing for it involved watching a lot of old episodes and practicing wagering, but honestly, about 80% of what I knew was hardwired into my brain by many years of reading books on whatever interested me.

So for anyone else who's similarly fascinated by random crap, trying to become a bar trivia champ, or hoping to be on Jeopardy!, here is a sampling of my personal canon* of formative texts.

*These lean heavily toward US history, but these are just the ones that appealed to me personally, so make of them what you will.