by David Faucheux
(Editor’s Note: David Faucheux is the Library Journal Audiobook Reviewer of the Year (2018) and the recipient of the 2025 American Library Association Louis Shores Award.)
When I was in the seventh grade at the Louisiana School for the Visually Impaired, I discovered that learning didn't have to have a purpose.
Our library housed the complete 1959 World Book Encyclopedia in braille — 145 thick volumes standing at parade rest on the metal shelves that lived along the back wall. During study hall, I'd pull out a volume at random, open it to a chance page, and begin reading. One afternoon it might be lapis lazuli, another Curaçao, papyrus, quaggas, or the Icarian Sea. I wasn't looking for anything in particular. The joy was in not knowing what came next.
If an article especially captivated me, I'd quietly slip the volume into the stack of braille textbooks I carried back to the dormitory; if asked, it was part of a homework assignment. No one asked. While other students smuggled snacks, I smuggled information. More than once I intended to read for 15 minutes and was startled by the shrill 8 p.m. quiet hour bell. There was always another volume waiting, another page to discover. I never wanted the adventure to end. Google would have made me drunk. AI; comatose.
Looking back, I realize I wasn't simply collecting facts. I was developing a habit of mind. One interesting answer always seemed to lead to three new questions.
That habit followed me to LSU. The assigned reading mattered, but it was often the unexpected remarks from professors that stayed with me. One literature professor mentioned that Marcel Proust and James Joyce, meeting in Paris, spent much of their conversation discussing digestive problems. An American history professor reminded us that many westward pioneers fought malaria as surely as they fought the wilderness. Those observations made history feel less like a list of dates and more like the lives of real people, complete with brilliance, flaws, and ordinary human concerns.
The tools I used to satisfy my curiosity changed over the years. Braille was joined by talking books on records, cassettes, cartridges, and eventually downloadable ALCs from Libro.FM and other audiobooks from Audible. Historical novelists such as Gary Jennings, James Clavell, and James Michener carried me to places and eras I might never otherwise have experienced.
In 2006, author David Rothman encouraged me to become an audiobook reviewer for Library Journal. Reviewing meant more than listening to a story. It required judging an author's writing, a narrator's performance, and the success of the audiobook as a whole. Each of the more than 125 assignments introduced me to another writer, another narrator, and another corner of human experience.
Eventually, that lifelong curiosity found an unexpected home in hosting an online trivia game on a website run by and for the blind. Some people think trivia consists of disconnected facts, but I've found exactly the opposite. Every worthwhile fact belongs to a larger story. Scientific discoveries build on earlier discoveries. Historical figures make more sense when viewed alongside the people and events of their time. Even the smallest detail gains meaning when you understand the world around it.
Writing trivia reinforced that lesson. A clue may occupy only a sentence, but creating it often means comparing sources, verifying dates, and deciding which single detail best represents a much larger story. The answer is satisfying, but the greater reward is the curiosity it awakens. If someone finishes a clue wanting to know more, then the clue has done its job. This game led to a book and then a podcast.
Today I have tools my seventh-grade self could scarcely have imagined: search engines, digital libraries, and podcasts. Artificial intelligence can clarify questions, even suggest additional sources, in seconds. Yet these tools are simply newer ways of pursuing the same old curiosity. One answer still leads to three more questions.
When I look back across the years, I see a single thread running through my life. It began by wandering through braille encyclopedia volumes, continued in college classrooms, grew through historical novels and audiobook reviews, and eventually found expression in writing trivia. The tools changed, but the impulse never did. I've always wanted to learn one more thing before the day is over.
That's why I created my podcast, Trivia Flash. Each short episode begins with a handful of trivia clues, but the clues aren't really the destination. They're an invitation. My hope is that one answer will lead a listener to another story, another book, or another fascinating question. If that happens, then those old braille encyclopedia volumes are still doing what they began doing all those years ago — encouraging one more adventure in learning. Join me in fun trivia to unwind your mind.