The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything

I opened the book at random, stumbled upon the "Talk Show Graveyard" bracket, and, to my great delight was confronted with a photograph of Dr. Laura Schlessinger as the Queen of the Damned TV hosts. Whether presented as an aperitif or digestif, "The Final Four of Everything" is the perfect accompaniment to a gathering of your favorite eggheads and bigmouths. Keep it at the ready on the buffet and you'll never be at a loss for conversation. (Note to David Edelstein: How could you not rank Sofia Coppola's demise in Godfather III No. 1 in "Cathartic Movie Deaths"? Audiences were positively cleansed!)

This book inspires one to apply bracketology to just about any multi-option conundrum. Fun to read, can't necessarily agree with every one of their conclusions but that is what makes the book fascinating.

I heard an interview with the author of this book on NPR. I didn't think it would be that great, but then it was on one of the morning news shows, and in a magazine that I read. So I bought it. I'm so glad I did, it's SO much fun! It makes a great coffee table book, it easily starts a conversation. There are a million different categories--best chick flick, best Denzel Washington movie, most commonly misspelled word, most commonly misstaken song lyric (one of my favorities, it says only the wrong words, so it's fun to figure out which song it's from), most annoying grammatical error. There's something for everyone. It gets you discussing which candy bar is really the best, or which is more annoying--bogus apostrophes or its/it's confusion. The book is wonderful--I highly reccomend it!

OK, maybe scholarly isn't the right word for this book. But it does manage to combine a certain level of mock seriousness with hilarious choices (such as the segment devoted to winnowing out the best "person famous for, well, being famous"--guess what, Nicole Richie WINS!). Each two-page section is laid out like a family tree, with branches--or, more appropriately, like a graph of March Madness basketball teams as sports commentators make their predictions about which teams will play each other and who will end up in the Final Four. In addition to the aforementioned example, there are sections devoted to "best movie death scene," "best indie rock albums," "best game show catchphrases," "best simple things" (the toothpick wins!) and more. The coolest thing is that each section is written by a different expert. The section on "the best black-and-white TV shows," for instance, is written by Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University professor who directs the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. "The best investment strategies" section is written by the global chief investment strategist for Citigroup Global Wealth Management, Clark Winter. That's what I mean when I said the book is scholarly, to some extent--the authors did their homework in getting people who really know their fields to make the choices in narrowing each section down to the appropriate finalist. THE ENLIGHTENED BRACKETOLOGIST is a hoot, and a fun gift for the annoying person in your life who already has everything!

This a great way to debate the age old question...what's the best (fill in the blank). All ages, all levels of intelligence and experience have a way to find out "what's the best....".