Maphead

AUTHOR: Ken Jennings (a.k.a., that guy that was on Jeopardy for like, forever)
PUBLISHED: 2011
GENRE: Non-fiction

It should come as no surprise to you all that in addition to my love of words, Star Trek, and ancient history, I also have a love of maps.  This (along with the Star Trek thing) I blame on my mother, who still has decades-old New York City maps in her hutch.  I also enjoy Jeopardy, mainly because it's about the only time I can yell at the TV screen and not get told to just relax.  Hence my Christmas request for "Maphead".

"Maphead" is all about how loving maps can be fun and is not, as was previously believed, something that needed to be hidden as a shameful fetish.  It's part of the whole nerd renaissance: it's suddenly cool to admit you like something unusual or, heaven forbid, educational.  Jennings is quite obviously a Bill Bryson fan*, modelling his writing style on Bryson's easy-going, lots-of-random-facts and humerous sidebars style.  But as simplistic as that style may seem, it's amazingly hard to replicate.  Jennings can't do it, and as a result ends up with a bunch of wandering chapters that aren't particularly connected in any way.  There's one about geocaching, another about the National Geography Bee, another about the Library of Congress's map division.  There's some history in some, none in others.  There's lots of people he interviewed who I'm sure were fascinating in person but whose stories are flat on the page.  Every chapter seems to go on for a few pages too long.  This isn't to say that it's all bad, or that most of the information isn't interesting.  But what is good just gets lost amongst everything else.

Jennings also horribly abuses a sensitive writing tool: the footnote.**  Nobody loves a fun footnote more than me.  But Jennings's footnotes are rarely fun and are often ridiculously long.  If you're past 10 lines in your footnote, it's time to rethink whether it all a) needs to go in the main body or b) needs to get cut totally.  Some pages have 2 or 3 footnotes, with another footnote on the opposite page.  The short ones often aren't that great either - a quip about how nobody watched CBS's morning show in the '80s might seem funny at the time, but it ain't gonna last.  It's more information in a book that's already chock full of it. 

There's an earnest quality to it all that makes you want to like it, like a mother looking at her child's incomprehensible painting and cooing, it's beautiful!  Jennings put his heart into this thing.  That's why it so sad it doesn't work out. 

PAGES: 249
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: The whole point of it all is that it isn't mainstream.
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: It tries hard, but never particularly finds its way.

*Not to be all Bill Bryson all the time, but in this case, it applies.  Jennings himself quotes one of Bryson's travel books.

**I know.  That's rich, me complaining about footnotes.  I'll give you a few moments to snort derisively and mutter, where does she get off...