Chapter 8 - A Game of Thrones

In the book Gone With the Wind, Rhett Butler tells Scarlett O'Hara that she should put a sign over the general store she owns saying Caveat Emptor. Scarlett thinks this is a great idea not realizing that the saying is Latin for "Buyer Beware". Having recently played the game Trivial Pursuit - Book Lover's Edition, I would add the saying to this evil game as well.

My youngest daughter, Claire, and her family were visiting recently. She and I decided to play this one rainy Sunday afternoon. Claire is a high school English teacher and I own a bookstore so we are no slouches (or so we thought) when it comes to books. She came to the game with great academic and young adult knowledge and I from a classics and popular fiction base.

We opened the box and were enchanted with the tokens - a stack of books with glasses on top, a shopping bag with books spilling out, a typewriter and a mug. The pieces which are usually pies in the standard game, are books which fit cleverly into the base of the tokens. The game has multiple categories - Children's Books, Book Club, Authors, Classics, Non-Fiction, and Book Bag. Surely we could do well in at least a few of these categories!

As the game progressed we collectively felt stupider and stupider. We decided that no amount of gin and tonics on a hot, rainy, summer afternoon could make this game better. There was a lot of laughing, some cursing, and very few correct answers. Claire was, in fact, crowned queen of Book Lover's Trivial Pursuit but it was a long, painful battle that we are not willing to pursue again!

So, if you want to stump a pretentious book lover, this is the game to play. Be sure to bone up on the questions and answers first though, even select cards where you know at least two of the answers so you don't look too stupid. Most of all - Caveat Emptor!