Eight notable books about parents and kids

Ken Jennings broke game show records in 2004 with his unprecedented seventy-four game, $2.52 million victory streak on Jeopardy!. Jennings’s book Brainiac, about his Jeopardy! adventures, was a critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller, as was his follow-up, Maphead. He is also the author of Ken Jennings’s Trivia Almanac.

Jennings’s new book is Because I Said So!: The Truth Behind the Myths, Tales, and Warnings Every Generation Passes Down to Its Kids.

One of Jennings’s favorite books about parents and children, as told to Publishers Weekly:

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

I just realized this list doesn’t have enough moms on it, probably because I don’t read enough of those books with teacups and gabled windows on the covers. I think they usually have ladies who team up to form some kind of club or sisterhood? Anyway, my favorite literary mom is either Sophie Portnoy or Ignatius J. Reilly’s mother in A Confederacy of Dunces. Give him hell, Irene.

Read about another novel on the list.

A Confederacy of Dunces is among Sarah Stodol's top ten lost-then-found novels, Hallie Ephron's top ten books for a good laugh, Stephen Kelman's top 10 outsiders' stories, John Mullan's ten best moustaches in literature, Michael Lewis's five favorite books, and Cracked magazine's classic funny novels.

--Marshal Zeringue