Just a Geek: Unflinchingly Honest Tales of the Search for Life, Love, and Fulfillment Beyond the Starship Enterprise
Wil Wheaton
As mentioned in my “Dancing Barefoot” review, Wil Wheaton is one of my favorite dudes. This book is the more-extended version of the story of his transition from “former child actor” to the cool person he is now, mostly based on being a very early blogger. Quite a bit of the book reproduces entries from his blog, which I don’t think is a bad thing–I wasn’t reading it back then, and his “present day” commentary adds a lot about his mindset at the time he was writing. Actually, this to me was one of the most interesting parts of the book–hearing the voices of several time-slices of Wheaton. There is the time when blog entries were written, then the slightly later time when the book was written, then the later time when the audiobook was recorded (he adds some parentheticals in the audiobook that are not in the text). On top of all that is my background awareness of his writing voice in the present day, which is different from all three of those. There’s a great deal of maturation between times, so I’m glad to be living in our current time slice!
Note that this entire (9-hour) audiobook was consumed in the car with my wife and father-in-law over the course of a cross-country drive…specifically from about Denver to Chicago (not continuous). So now they know all about my dude too!