Flutterby™! : Word Freak

I recently finished Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players by Stefan Fatsis. An interesting look into a world of completely obsessive socially maladjusted people who have reduced the game to specialized pattern memorization. In that way, while I got some insights into thinking, and how specialization affects thinking, but after a bit I got dragged down by the fact that the heroes seemed so pointless, they fought for social acceptance within a circle of 10 or 20 people (okay, maybe as large as 50) with a set of skills that end up being almost completely non-transferrable. A good book, but ultimately not a compelling enough subject to make me want to go back and read it again; and the realization that to become a really good Scrabble player I'd have to give up all of the things that make it fun as a living room game somehow dulls the casual fun I can get from the game.