Dancing Barefoot
Wil Wheaton
Wil Wheaton is one of my favorite dudes, and this is the first book of his I’ve read. (I actually listened to the audiobook version, which is read by him. I first heard him as an audiobook narrator for “Ready Player One” and was sold.) This book is short–it has five memoir-stories, one of which “The Saga of Spongebob Vegas-Pants” is rather long and the others of which are more like impressionistic vignettes. For those of us who are Star Trek nerds, SVP is the only one that is related to Trek in any direct way; the others have to do with other parts of Wheaton’s life. SVP was the one I enjoyed the most (it’s especially fun to hear him do the voices of other Star Trek actors, since he has spent so much time with them), and is a good encapsulation of the journey he made from “former child star” to the person he is today (with “Just a Geek” being the much more extended version of that journey). But I liked the vignettes too. They are mostly written in a very earnest style, which can seem maudlin at times, but mostly imparts an honest and palpable nostalgia. It’s funny for me to read these and realize that WW wrote them when he was around my age. I’m used to either thinking of him as the young kid on Star Trek or the older guy I look up to now, but I guess by the definition of continuity he had to pass through my current age at some point!