While Anna Karenina sits unfinished on my bedside table...

At the urging of my lovely sister, here's my first rockitgirl book review.

Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive SCRABBLE Players - Stefan Fatsis

Okay, so I'm a weirdo about some subjects. I have an interest in vaguely academic or geeky things that can stretch to reading a whole book about, say, competitive scrabble. So the author had me at hello. But he hooked me with a strong, non-fiction story about his own ascent (or descent) into becoming as similarly obsessed with the game as those he set out intending to profile. What started as a quirky little news piece became an engrossing, 3-year long project for him, and he is very frank about his own participation in how the story unfolds.

The competitors are kooky, the word strategies and letter combinations they use bizarre and nothing near conversational, and the dollar pay-off for devoting your life to the game minimal. But while you pity the players he profiles, it's warming to read about their victories and interesting to see how they bicker among themselves while remaining fiercely protective of each other. You identify really strongly with Fatsis when he ponders what led these people to do this as their life's work, and why they didn't go the straight route, get a job, and play with their families on weekends - and why he himself, with his ever-growing competitiveness and interest in the game, never had even a fleeting thought about taking Scrabble up professionally in his youth. The author taps into your (my) own small interest in geekiness, in languages, in math, to make you relate, just a little, to these strange people.

But maybe if there was a little more money involved it wouldn't seem so strange, and that's really where the heart of the book lies. These players are in it for little more than the rush of playing the perfect game of Scrabble, and that element would most likely disappear should the tournaments ever take place on a larger scale, with more of a payback. Proper weirdos they may be, but dedicated ones too.

An interesting read, 7 out of 10.

Next review: JM Coetzee - Slow Man