Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd - Edited by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci

If you've ever watched Star Trek, Star Wars, or The Rocky Horror Picture Show, been into science or participated in a quiz bowl, gone to a sci-fi convention or had an online friend -or even if you haven't- this is the book for you. It's a compilation of short stories and cartoons about some of the geekier aspects of life, brought to you by a great group of writers -some familiar and some maybe not as much- who proudly post their geek credentials in their bios.

I really enjoyed the different takes on various kinds of geekdom and some stories definitely shown above others in that regard. Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci's "Once You're a Jedi, You're a Jedi All the Way" is a cute Jedi/Klingon Romeo and Juliet type story. Tracy Lynn's "One of Us" is a geek tutorial for a cheerleader trying to impress her comic book loving boyfriend. "The King of Pelinesse" by M.T. Anderson, about a graphic novel fan who might have a special person in common his favorite author, was simply fantastic and could have easily been from another era. David Levithan's (I'd never read anything by him before!) "Quiz Bowl Antichrist" was hilarious and had me rolling with laughter. I would love to see Wendy Mass' "The Stars at the Finish Line", about the years long academic competition between a guy and a girl, for a future career that only one of them wants, as a full length novel. It's the only story that I think could have worked that way.

Between the stories, which range from funny to sad to thoughtful, are fun comic type illustrations that serve as mini-guides for different aspects of geek culture. Unfortunately, since my copy is an ARC, it doesn't include all of what will eventually be in the finished copy -and I'm dying to know what the "Ten Words or Phrases You Need to Know in Klingon" are. But if it's as cute and funny as the others, like "How to Look Cool and Not Drool in Front of Your Favorite Author" are then I'm sure it'll be great.

As with most compilations, not every story is a positive and some ongoing themes got a little tiresome after a while. I thought that Scott Westerfeld's "Definitional Chaos" was just plain boring and less a story and more like him just throwing out words like "ConCom" and terms from Dungeons and Dragons. It was the third story in a row that dealt, in part, with a convention of some sort (not that I'm blaming him for his placement in the book) and I wish he'd written about anything else. John Green's "Freak the Geek" reminded me of how much I despise the "bookish main character has only one friend" cliche that some of the other stories (like Libba Bray's "It's Just a Jump to the Left") include. I just didn't feel like the story actually celebrated geekdom. Despite how confident the main character was in her own skin (which is always a good thing) it still resonated as kind of hateful to me, and I wish that such a geek like John hadn't made his main character such a disliked outcast.

Still, this was one of the most fun books I've read in a long time. I love the variety and the joy I could feel from the authors as I read about things that they obviously love and care a lot about. I was already versed in some of the geek culture contained in Geektastic, but now I'm inspired to learn more!

http://thechickmanifesto.blogspot.com/2009/06/geektastic-stories-from-nerd-herd.html