CoffeeBear.net

Review: Just A Geek

Posted by Mark | Filed under Books, Reviews

On the advice of a friend (Pukka), a while back I began to read Wil Wheaton’s blog. Though I’d seen Stand By Me and Toy Sol­diers, my firmest mem­o­ries of Mr. Wheaton were of Wes­ley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion. That was one of the few sci-fi shows that my par­ents were will­ing to watch and I have to admit while I enjoyed parts of that show (Picard rocks!); I hated Wes­ley. He always struck me as this smart ass; who’d lucked out his way into work­ing on a star­ship. Of course, prob­a­bly what really irked me about it was that it was him and not ME! Even so, that ini­tially made me reluc­tant to visit the blog, but Pukka has a habit of send­ing me inter­est­ing links. Since he’s rarely wrong (unless I’ve already seen what he’s sent); I checked out Mr. Wheaton’s site and have been faith­ful reader ever since. Then back when I ordered my copy of Ghosts in the Snow from Amazon.com; I had one of my oddly, cheap moments.

Ghosts didn’t cost enough for free ship­ping and I didn’t want to pay the ship­ping charges for 1 book. My solu­tion? Order enough books to get the free ship­ping; I did warn you that it was an oddly, cheap moment. The books arrived in due course and I read Ghosts first (no offence, Will but that was what I was really after). Once I’d fin­ished Ghosts; I picked up Just A Geek and started to read. This isn’t my nor­mal type of read­ing; gen­er­ally I pick up some fic­tion and this is auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal. Just A Geek is a some­thing of a col­lec­tion of entries that Mr. Wheaton has made on his site, but at the same time it’s more than that. I don’t really know how to describe it, but hold­ing the book in my hand and read­ing of Mr. Wheaton’s life expe­ri­ences just feels much more intensely per­sonal than read­ing it online. Read­ing this book takes you on an jour­ney inside the life of this geeky guy who’s strug­gled to find work as an actor and now is a devoted father¹ who writes a very good book.

Again, this is another book that I’d highly rec­om­mend (5 out of 5 stars) for any­body to read, but espe­cially if you remem­ber sit­ting down once a week to see what sort of trou­ble Wes­ley could get into this week.

¹ Yes, I know tech­ni­cally it’s step-father but the obvi­ous pride & affec­tion that Mr. Wheaton feels for his kids over­rules any such stu­pid tech­ni­cal­i­ties and makes his a “real dad”.

Similar Posts

• Speaking of TV shows
  I also happened to catch tonight's CSI and while I enjoyed it; I did feel somewhat cheated. See, Wil ...
• Who’s Annoying Anyways?
  Back in his ST:TNG days, I couldn't stand Wesley Crusher. Fortunately, as an author Wil Wheaton is m ...
• Why I Read?
  A friend of mine recently asked if other people had similar reactions when reading a good book. Sinc ...
• QotD: Rock Stars and Bathrooms
  One of the new books I picked up recently was Just A Geek by Wil Wheaton. I've been reading his blog ...
• Review: Threads of Malice
  Threads of Malice My rating: 4 out of 5. I read Threads of Malice last week1 and wowsers! If you've ...