Use (Kirkus Starred) Books to Win Qrank!

After winning the Statesman’s Texas Social Media award last month, Qrank has now started rubbing elbows with a crowd whose brows are noticeably higher. Kirkus Reviews, home of the feared and respected “Kirkus star,” and for whom the Statesman’s own Omar Gallaga writes iPad storybook reviews, is now writing questions for Austin’s favorite quiz game. In keeping with their awesome slogan “because life is too short to read bad books,” you can bet that these questions will have less to do with byronic Edward Cullen and more to do with Candidely Jacob de Zoet. As always, you can count on the clever writing and Jeopardy-style, theme-based quizzes to help you through the dustier hardback questions.

Kirkus, like many literary traditions, has been very short of financial support in the past few years, and actually faced shutting down in late 2009 before the owner of the Mall of America (of all places) came to its rescue. Their partnership with Qrank reveals itself as an attempt to grapple with the root of its problems, the pesky Internet, where anyone can read pre-release book reviews (though usually not as calmly written) which Kirkus has been doing since 1933. The same Internet that seems to have the answers to every fault in our memory and hole in our education might not be able to compete in this category with a well-read pair of eyes.