Old Hollywood Book Reviews: TCM Classic Movie Trivia

Hope no one is sick of these book reviews as I have plenty of books I’ll be putting up as time goes on (I’m kind of a bookworm as evidenced by my room that’s a mini-library).  Anyway, today’s book comes from the amazing TCM and Chronicle books who have put out one of the most entertaining and definitive trivia books on the market.  The TCM Classic Movie Trivia book was a Christmas present and it’s one of those books you want to whip out to challenge your friends and declare who’s the bigger film nerd.  Or, if you’re like me, you enjoy answering the question to test your knowledge and find some new movies.

The book is a whopping 576 pages and over 4,000 classic movie questions.  The book is divided up into sections focusing on genres, actors, directors, and a variety section.  It’s great if you’re knowledgeable on one thing in particular as the sections are subdivided so with genres you get every decade from 1930s up to present day, and with actors you have sections on leading ladies, leading men, and couples.  There’s even a fun section devoted to quotes actors or directors have said.

For the true film fan there’s an “Experts Only” section that I haven’t even hit up yet because I know I won’t succeed.  The questions vary in difficulty ranging from extremely easy (“Who is Baby in Bringing Up Baby?”) to extremely difficult.  There’s also a great amount of questions devoted to Oscar nominees/winners and my mom especially appreciated the questions devoted to the Batman television series in the Variety category.

The book doesn’t boast a ton of text outside of the questions so this is more of a fun book with friends.  There’s a foreward written by TCM icon Robert Osborne and there’s various “Spotlight On” sections throughout the book where a particular set of questions are geared towards someone with an accompanying paragraph.  If you don’t have a lot of film trivia fans this book might languish on your shelf.

If you’re like me though and love to show how smart you are with your friends and family then this book is for you.  It’s far more engaging than those “Scene-It” games and the trivia is extremely diverse.  Again, this could end up collecting dust on your shelf but it’s fun to pull out from time to time and see how smart you really are!  You can order the book compliments of Amazon here (using this link helps the blog pull in revenue so you’ll be doing a good deed!).

Grade: B