At first I thought this would be a quick read, but when I started reading, I changed my mind about that. It has to be read slowly, to appreciate all the jokes. And to take the humor in small doses.

But then I changed my mind again. The episodes after the first couple didn’t seem as funny. I don’t think it’s really because they were less funny, but more that he’d lost my sense of newness and surprise by that point. Which is a key component of humor. But of course I plowed ahead anyway. It ended up being a very quick read for me.

So my recommendation would be for people to read this one episode at a time. Read one before bed. Keep the book in the bathroom. Read it on your lunch break. Don’t read it on the bus or the subway, as you’ll just want to keep going.

What I love about Wheaton’s jokes is that they’re geeky. You could turn this book into a geek quiz if you wanted to. Earn points every time you catch one of his references. More points for a Voltron reference. Fewer points for a Monty Python one. Though unlike when watching a Joss Whedon show and snickering when you get a geeky joke because it makes you feel smarter and in the know, you actually feel a little less geeky when reading Wheaton when you don’t get a joke. You know it’s there, but you don’t get it. Though I don’t feel so bad if I realize it’s a music joke or a poker joke.

I feel I must mention there are typos that need fixing. Mainly in the area of excess punctuation or extra spaces, but occasionally an extra word or a weird word. It’s the sort of error you expect to see in self-published or small press works. As opposed to missing words, which you expect to see in ‘professionally’ published books. Jeesh, now I’m getting geeky about typos. Anyhow…

I thought this book was great. I could relive the episodes without having to watch them again. And I had forgotten quite a bit. He’d be starting to describe an episode and I’d be.. ‘When did this happen? I don’t remember this.’ Though eventually there will be enough there to finally jog my memory.

It’s interesting to see Wheaton’s take on things from an actor’s point of view. He keeps saying how awesome Patrick Stewart is, and while I know he’s a great actor in theory, I certainly never realized it when I was watching TNG during its first run. Picard was not a favorite character. He was above Pulaski and Troi, granted, but he was far below Tasha, Data, and Wesley. And when people go all ga-ga over episodes that feature him strongly, I’m left thinking ‘eh’. There are FOUR lights! Whatever.

But speaking of Wesley, that’s my major problem with this book. Wheaton keeps making jokes at Wesley’s expense and characterizing all fans as rejoicing when he gets shot by an arrow (which I totally don’t remember) and loving it when Picard tells him to shut up. And yes, there’s a contingent out there that was doing that, but it wasn’t all of us. Heck, I wasn’t even aware of it until I went to hear Wheaton at a con and/or in college when I got onto the Internet.

Don’t paint all fans with the same brush! Some of us were just a year younger than Wesley and loved him. Sure, saving the ship multiple times is silly. But, you know, it’s not unrealistic that a genius kid might do that once in awhile. Starfleet’s all about teamwork and if you don’t recognize that that geeky, dorky kid has some skills you might use, you’re failing at teamwork.

And yes, Wesley said some really lame things. But there were kids like him out there also saying really lame things. And we didn’t have the excuse of writers putting those words in our mouths.

Don’t you see? Wesley showed that you could be geeky and dorky and lame, but still have something to contribute. Could still do really cool stuff like sit on the bridge of the Enterprise.

I just wish Wheaton would realize Wesley did and still does have fans. And I think he knows this. But by not acknowledging it and by going on and on about ‘the fans’ cheering when Wesley gets a smackdown, he’s perpetuating the idea that Wesley fans don’t exist, and never existed.

And I’m tempted to wax all psychological about the group of fans that did hate Wesley with a passion, but that won’t make for a concise, cohesive review.

Especially as I nearly forgot to mention Tracy Torme!

Tracy Torme, who I thought was a woman. Who I was convinced was a woman. Who I preferred because she was a woman. Who I swear I had looked up somewhere to find her relation to Mel Torme (after watching Night Court). Wasn’t she Mel Torme’s daughter or something?

Well, apparently not, because apparently Tracy Torme is a man! What the heck?! When did that happen?

Way to blow my mind, Wheaton.

And D. C. Fontana is a chick. Slightly less surprising, that, though my first guess would not have been that.

Weird.

So, to sum:
Very funny. Best read in short doses rather than all at once. Few too many ‘boo Wesley’ comments. I do look forward to reading more of these, and I hope he has plans to go through at least all the episodes he was in. Though I would love it if he wrote summaries of every single TNG ep. I’d like to hear his take on things.

4 stars out of 5. You dissed Wesley too many times.

So the hardest thing in reading this was I didn’t know where the original left off and the zombies began. It was easy to tell that anything relating to the zombies was new. All references in martial arts, new. Silly little changes like Crypts and Coffins (the original game I can’t immediately name) and Kiss Me Deer (that one I can name, but don’t know how to play), obviously new.

The characters, essentially the same as the original, I’m sure. The general plot, I’m sure the same. When Elizabeth goes from place to place to place, I’m pretty sure she did so in the original. When people get married, again, reasonably sure that was the same.

But other things, when the two ideas seem to intersect, or seem a little unreal, I’m not sure. Are the stupid innuendo jokes about balls in the original? How much puking was Elizabeth’s mom doing? Did Darcy seriously cripple that guy? Wickham, was it? I find it rather unlikely he was traveling around on a bed in the original, but.. how do I know?

And still other things, I know they were new, but I wonder what they were replacing in the original. In specific, Charlotte (was it?) gets stricken with the zombie disease and gets herself quickly married to some guy, Collins? Lots of C names. Very annoying. And then she continues to partake of society while she slowly turns into a zombie. And he doesn’t seem to notice. No one seems to notice except Elizabeth. And then the C guy commits suicide.

So in the original, was she pregnant before she got married? Did she die in childbirth? Did he then kill himself?

Is any of that guessing correct? No idea.

As you can tell, I had a real problem with names. People had first names, and they had surnames, and there were several Miss Bennetts, of course. Which I may not have even just spelled correctly. But then they might also be called ‘the Longbourne ladies’ and it was just very hard for me at first to tell anyone apart or keep anyone straight. So it was especially hard for me to get into it at the beginning, and to keep going. About the halfway mark, it wasn’t as hard to keep going. I guess I finally got into the story. Or.. some story. I don’t even know.

My favorite character? Elizabeth’s father. Until there’s a reference to him boffing a bunch of women. Which I suspect was added. But, again, no real idea if I’m right or not.

Okay, so the zombies themselves. They’re zombies. And you know what, I’m not really into zombies. Or zombie movies. The new vampires they’re not. So in the spirit of zombie movies, there’s gore, there’s unrealistic fight scenes, and there’s attempts at humor.

At the end of the book, there’s a discussion guide. Here’s a question not in the discussion guide:

* Elizabeth and her sisters feel pity for the zombies, embarassment when a friend is turning into one, and even spare the life of a zombie infant. Ninjas, on the other hand, Elizabeth disembowels and kills for no reason at all except to prove her competence as a fighter. Do you think this dichotomy is due to racism, classism, or something else?

The book draws in Japanese and Chinese references, as all the zombie fighters have gone to the Orient to train. One woman in particular, Catherine(?), thinks her Japanese training far superior. Elizabeth is pretty biased towards her own Chinese training.

Why then, does Elizabeth, with her Shaolin training, fight with a katana?

Why does one of the houses have nice Japanese gardens and whatnot, and a ‘coy pond’?

My answer? I think the author (no, not Jane Austen, the other one) has watched too many zombie and martial arts films, and doesn’t quite know what he’s talking about.

One final thought: too much vomit and other bodily fluids. They’re not funny. Not even the first time. Especially not in quantity. Author has also been watching too much SNL.

Long story short, this would’ve made a better short story. Or a direct-to-video movie.

Don’t read it. Seriously. Consider this my holiday gift to you. I have just saved you several hours of time that you can put to better use.

Let’s.. take this in chunks:

The Writing

I had trouble getting into this book at first. As in, I had trouble at a very basic level in comprehension. It was making my brain hurt. Somewhere along the line, it got easier. I’m inclined to say that the writing got better, but it could simply be that I got used to it. I’m not quite sure, but I do have some examples, and the examples are from early on.

Metaphors and other bits of language that make you stop. And yea, they make you think, and yea, they can be a bit humorous. But they also make you stop. It interrupts the flow.

Page 1: “the tourists were [...] seeking refuge in Starbucks over iced drinks ending in vowels.”
Page 3: “Rook had curled his hands to form skin binoculars”
Page 32: “what looked to her like an escalator to the basement painted red” — to describe a graph

Character name switches. She’s Nikki Heat. She’s Heat. She’s Detective Heat. She’s ‘the detective’. Just when you think the author(s) has finalized on Heat and is going to stick with it, out comes another Nikki Heat or just Nikki. And of course it happens with other characters as well. Sometimes trying to give us information by doing it, like ‘her friend’. As if we couldn’t gather that by context.

Number problems. It happened more than once. Here’s one from page 15: “Two thousand six scrape with a bouncer in SoHo; 2008, you pushed a guy [...]” Did some style rulebook tell you not to start a sentence with a number? Because it’s just plain silly to say 2006 and 2008 in two different ways. Plus just silly to give a year that way in the first place.

Maybe an editor should’ve caught that? problems — page 33

“I see,” he said. And then he took the plunge. “Matthew Starr indulged some personal habits that compromised his personal fortune. He did damage.” Noah paused then took the plunge.

At one point, I had trouble following who was speaking, but looking back through, I can’t find where that was.

There were also times where something was mentioned and I had to try to remember what it was referring to. Specifically the ‘perfume ad’. If you weren’t paying attention the first time Heat’s internal monologue came up with that, you were lost. And since I was already overwhelmed with metaphors and odd little references, I did miss that the first time.

The whole feel of it, especially the dialogue, was quite like the show. If you’re not paying attention, you’re going to miss a quip. Even if you are paying attention, you’ll probably miss some quips. Or my geek repetoire is not geeky enough in the right directions (music, old movies, etc) to get everything.

The Characters

So instead of Castle, the bestselling novelist, we have Rook, the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist. Who is somehow also fabulously rich. And instead of whatever her name is, the detective on the show, we have Nikki Heat. Who you can reasonably read into as Castle’s impression of who the detective on the show is, whatever her name is. And other characters map as well, including 2 detectives or cops or whatever who do the girl detective’s bidding, but competently. Unlike some shows.

And, inexplicably, Castle/Rook’s mother, the diva. She shows up briefly in one scene, and her appearance was utterly pointless.

The characters are so like the television show, that I was brought up short every time we were reminded that Rook is a journalist. I guess he didn’t fit my image of a journalist. Wise-cracking, risk-taking, devil may care journalist? And, again, rich?

A book written by Castle?

Well, I can sort of see it. At first, I was reading it in my head in Nathan Fillion’s Castle voice, though eventually that dropped off. And yea, you can totally see a guy like him writing a hot detective chick parading around her apartment naked and then kicking butt in that state.

But then I think.. well, a real novelist.. well, a) wouldn’t map his life so closely like that, and b) should know his main character better. That is, I never really felt like I was inhabiting Nikki Heat. So I never felt like the author was either. But I guess that isn’t necessarily indicative of ‘not a real author’, but more of ‘not a very good author’.

Whoa, trippy man

The quote from the back of the book: “Rick Castle must have been doing his research because Nikki Heat has the unmistakable ring of truth.” — It actually got me thinking.. how many things on the show do we see Castle learning about that made it into the book? And I don’t know the answer to that, because I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the first season of Castle. Are there clever little things like that?

Summary

Interesting to read for what it is, though if it wasn’t what it is, I wouldn’t have read it. And if I had read it, I would’ve put it down. Because I would’ve found it rather dull. Reading all these mysteries is just confirming to me that I’m not particularly fond of them. (Ignoring that I did go through a stage in my youth of reading most of Sherlock Holmes.)

The acknowledgements deserve acknowledgement for being interesting and a bit amusing.

I’m giving the book a rather solid 3 (out of 5). An overall impression of ‘meh’, yet the compulsion to want to buy a copy and mark it up in red ink to figure out why I had such problems with its language.

The cover intrigued me. It looked rather Puritan, but it also looked academic, and there were girls, or at least young women. But while I can now say the cover accurately represents an important scene in the book.. none of those first impressions were correct. No, those girls and even that guy in the robe.. none of them are main characters.

We start with an unpromising prologue. I had trouble following whose point of view it was, or in being very interested in it. Fortunately, I know that most prologues have little to do with the style and tone of the rest of the book. Unfortunately, that means you have to sit through them and get to the real first chapter before you can tell whether to give up on the book or not. Extra wasted time and effort.

This book does get better after the prologue. The point of view problems settle down… mostly. As we alternate sections and/or chapters with first one character, Rathe, a pointsman (this world’s version of a police detective), and a second, Eslingen, a militaryman between jobs acting as a hired guard. But I do say mostly, because there’s one section in particular where they’re in the same scene and the point of view gets all jumbled up again. It’s at this point that I wondered if the two authors were collaborating by each taking one character. And that they then had trouble reconciling it when the two had scenes together.

As for the plot, it’s mostly a mystery plot. Children are disappearing from the city and Rathe sees it as his job and calling and obligation to various people and whatnot to try to find out what’s going on. So a lot of the book is him running here, and running there, and talking to people, and collecting clues. And really, do people like reading mysteries and watching all this running around and talking to people? Because I don’t get a whole lot of pleasure out of it.

Things got hopeful when Rathe first lays eyes on Eslingen. He makes a point of noting he’s handsome and what he’s wearing. Which isn’t unusual, in itself, but my ears and eyes were perked for a budding romance. A love story? A romantic subplot at the very least? A friendship that slowly evolves into something more? Well, perhaps it’s a spoiler to say so, but I was denied, dear reader. DENIED!

And not in the usual way.. where all the slash is subtext that I’m probably reading into a normal manly friendship. No. Because the authors make a point of Rathe being surprised Eslingen was interested in women. And you just know, you just know, that Rathe is interested and that Eslingen probably wouldn’t be too against it either. Because there are hints throughout that this is a very bisexual sort of society. Not that everyone is, but that the society as a whole is. So that maybe, maybe, if the story of these two continues in the next book, Point of Dreams, they might move further along in this relationship. But by the end of this book, it’s not much of a relationship. It’s barely even a friendship.

GRR!

One cute thing about this world is there are gargoyles. And they’re basically like rats. They hang around the garbage and are a nuisance, but a somewhat cute sort of nuisance. Maybe more like wild cats combined with pigeons? Anyway, that’s a cool little addition. And you can see them on the cover of the book. Even if you first take them for firelizards.

The end of the book seems rushed. I even started noticing more and more typos. And then the big bad bad guy is defeated waaaaay too easily. And quickly. Perhaps, in that way, it was again more like a mystery than a typical fantasy. In a mystery, it doesn’t matter if you shoot the guy at the end, as long as you’ve proved it’s him and done all your revelations. (Not that he gets shot. That’s just an analogy.)

One other thing I should definitely say is that this book read like a very long slog. Perhaps not a particularly hard slog, but a slog. It took a lot longer to read than it looked like from the size of the book. There were a lot of words crammed onto an individual page and the chapters were incredibly long. I think there were only about 9 or 10 chapters in the whole book. I read it diligently and plowed ahead with it, but it still took me over a week to finish it.

I’m mostly left feeling that I like this world. Women are more or less equal. The gargoyles are a bit of fun. They don’t mind a bit of same-sex fooling around — prevents the apprentices and journeymen from getting pregnant. There’s an interesting political setup with the way the local police are new and still feeling out their role.. which isn’t quite the same as we know police.

But while I do like the world, and the characters aren’t bad, I just can’t like the story. It wasn’t the story I wanted, I guess.

So I’m torn. Do I revisit the world because it’s cool and I want to learn more about it? Because the authors might explore things I was more interested in? Because the main characters might finally hook up? Or do I not subject myself to another long slog for a similar plot and unfulfilled expectations?

I’m going to have to give this one a 3.

The format of the book is random facts and stories and information (mostly false) roughly sorted by topic into chapters. There’s images to spice things up. And sometimes there’s boxes. You almost feel like there would be sidebars and topbars and bottombars, but because every page also contains a Page-A-Day calendar notation, Hodgman really was running out of room.

The way I’d normally read something like this is to read everything on the page before turning the page. Eventually I had to give that up. I stopped reading the calendar entries and my enjoyment of the reading experience improved. But it was still problematic, because there were footnotes to be reading. So there’s just constant interruptions to the flow in my brain.

As for the content itself? Eh. I think this book would be far better used as a bathroom reader. Small doses would be easier to swallow, and more amusing. I did like the entries for July 12, 13, and 14th. July 31st was distinctly lacking in wizard references! I confess to skipping the several-pages-long list of molemen names. (Firefox thinks I spelled molemen wrong. I probably did.)

All in all, I like Hodgman better on television. In small chunks.

This story covers the part of the lives of Patience and Sarah that I was most interested in reading about. I wanted to hear about how they set up their home, built it up, made it cozy, faced adversity, got along with the neighbors, etc, etc.

Well, I got an itty bitty bit of that from this story. Lesigh.

The first part, and the large part it, is told from the point of view of a neighboring farmer. And his view of the women is very weird. He seems to think they’re strange, and not get that they’re shacking up together, of course. But he also goes on and on admiring them. Wanting them to be independent and succeed. All the while snickering behind his wife’s back that she thinks the women would be fine wives for their sons. He thinks they’re unsuitable for his sons because.. well, I think basically because they’d be hard to control and just not very pleasant to be married to.

That’s not resolved or anything, but they all pay a visit (sons included), and think the house is dressed up rather frivolously, with all of Patience’s pictures that they don’t realize are Patience’s. And then the wife comes out of it not liking them at all, for some slight or other.

Then we get Sarah’s point of view for a bit. In which we get a completely silly scene involving Patience thinking to be fair and equal, she needs to work in the fields. Which is completely ridiculous if they expect to survive on this stupid farm. She decides she’s rubbish at the hoeing and whatnot, because she’s not wearing pants. So then, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WORKING DAY, they trot back home so Sarah can undress and a pattern of her clothes can be cut, so Patience can make similar clothes for herself.

And well, that’s about it. The story, or the novel fragment, or whatever you want to call it, stops.

Two girls try to play house and farm, and are all set to utterly fail and starve to death.

The plot was a little odd. I haven’t read, or even watched, a lot of mysteries, but it still seems odd to me that we start with a dead body and a detective. And the detective goes off on some other tangent, seeking vengeance or justice or something on this guy who he couldn’t nail for previous crimes. And we’re supposed to be on the detective’s side when he kidnaps the guy and beats him up (in a fair fight, supposedly, but it’s off camera)?

So then the detective quits his job and starts a bookstore. But eventually he’s pulled back into the murder mystery when more people are killed. And then he goes and plays vigilante, basically because he wants to.

The women in the book get screwed. Usually literally. The main character’s treatment of them really bugs me, but then, if you think about it, he’s a jerk to nearly everyone. Under the guise of being a nice guy, with a heart, and guilt, but really, he’s a big jerk.

First he’s dating this cop, but we never really get to see her or know anything about her except that she’s a cop. Then when he runs off to be a bookstore owner, that ends. He hires a young chick to help run his store and you get to like her, so you know that can’t end well. Then he’s all older-guy, younger-girl angsting about her.

Then there’s the one-night stand, I guess, girl of the guy he hates. He messes with her head, and her life, and kidnaps her too. She would’ve been a whole lot better off with the guy beating her up than with the cop using her to get to him.

And finally there’s ‘love at first sight’ chick, who goes for bad boys. And that relationship is just totally messed up and freaking annoying. ‘I want to date you, but I shouldn’t, but I can’t.’ And somehow dating this guy makes her start eating meat and bad-for-you cinnamon rolls. And when they have sex, he’s holding his gun the entire time. Then they both joke about rape.

Yea, yea, yuck it up. Which is another problem. The main character thinks he’s funny. And I might actually think he was slightly funny if he didn’t make a point of saying he was funny and nobody gets it when he’s funny. (Old Man’s War by John Scalzi has the same thing, only his main char is actually funny. And not a jerk.)

I didn’t like the main character when he was seeking vengeance or justice or whatever on the evil bad guy I-have-to-take-your-word-for-it, so I didn’t enjoy reading those parts. When he’s all involved in the books and telling me how awesome rare books are and whatnot, that I found interesting. I’m not the sort to prize a valuable book over a nice readable paperback copy of the same book, but it was interesting to read anyway.

And then he goes tearing around the country, and not quite telling us what he’s thinking, and quite possibly going crazy for part of it. And that was deadly dull.

And then the book ended abruptly after the last final reveal.

Bleh.

If you’d asked me halfway through the book how many stars, I might’ve given it three. But the final overall impression inclines me to 1 star. Which is a crying shame, because the premise of a book-loving detective is a really good one.

Patience and Sarah is a historical novel about two women on neighboring farms who find each other and start making plans to move out “West”. And I have to put that in quotes, because if upstate New York is out West, then why didn’t anyone teach me how to lasso a dogie when I was growing up?

What struck me when I first started reading it was the rhythm. It put my head in a calm sort of place and after my first session or two of reading, the book hung around in my head as I was doing other things. I don’t know if that’s the sign of a good book, the sign of a book that’s something new and different for me, or maybe the sign of a book that I’m reading at the right place and time for the universe to align. I won’t say it rarely happens, but it doesn’t usually happen when I’m reading a book, that the world and characters stick with me and I’m eager to go back to reading.

Patience is an old maid of 20-something (and if I hadn’t forgotten, I could tell you the exact number) living with her brother and his wife and their children. She’s got a pretty sweet setup, as her father cared enough about her to provide in his will for her. She’s guaranteed a room of her own and two cows and whatnot. Her only real problem is she doesn’t get along with her sister-in-law and feels obligated to help out with the chores rather than spend time painting as she’d like to. I started being interested in her at this point. She’s got an unusual setup and doesn’t seem to be all ‘woe is me, I’ll never get a man’. Breath of fresh air, that.

Then we, and Patience, meet Sarah. Sarah’s from a farming family that only managed to produce girls. So her father chose her as the biggest and strongest of the girls to turn into a boy. Their family doesn’t go to church or seem to interact much with their neighbors, so mostly being a boy means she helps out with the boy chores, and dresses in a practical boy fashion for doing so. Her hair’s long though.

They meet, they fall in love, they talk about moving to York State together, Sarah blabs about it, families get in an uproar. Sarah sets off on her own instead. And here’s the most annoying part of the book for me. I wanted them both to set off together and build a life together. I wanted the book to be about that. Instead we get Sarah going off as a man to make her way in the world and buy some land and set up a life for herself. But she’s rubbish at it. No one believes she’s 21. They all think she’s an escaped apprentice. So, rather than lie and say she’s 15 or a more reasonable age for a boy with no stubble, and make up a nice non-apprenticey story to go with it, she just keeps telling the truth and getting into trouble. But she meets up with someone who doesn’t care and her world is broadened. And then she goes home.

And Patience and Sarah clear up some misunderstanding or something stupid and angsty. And they start meeting regularly for makeout sessions on Patience’s bed. And here’s another annoying part of the book. Because I was never clear on how far they went. First base was obvious, second base is touched upon, but then it’s all vagueness. Grr. I don’t care if it’s all implied. Just make sure you’re implying in a way that’s clear to me.

More trouble ensues, but I’ll leave the rest in non-spoilery territory.

One very awesome thing in this book is the point of view. I think Miller actually taught me something here, as I came to realize what she was doing, rather than just noticing it. At first, the story is told by Patience in first person. She’s even the one to relate Sarah’s point of view, in a way that makes it clear Sarah must have told her about those parts at some point in the future. But she also slips in little comments about what Sarah must have been thinking or feeling, or how other characters must’ve been thinking or feeling, that contradict what Sarah told her about the situation.

When Sarah goes off on her own, we finally get her point of view straight from the horse’s mouth, and we see what we knew all along. That she’s not as ignorant and naive as Patience seems to think she is. Though she is a bit. It’s not a radical change.

Then when they meet up again, we get more of Patience’s little comments. So you come to really get a sense for Patience’s personality just from how Miller used point of view. Patience thinks she’s better than Sarah in a lot of ways; more well-bred, more sophisticated, older, smarter, wiser. You get the sense she’d like to think she’s in control of the relationship. While Sarah’s on the other side striving for equality and the give-and-take the relationship’s going to need if it’s going to last.

So, cool book. It’s one I’d read again. Even while wishing they’d gone out West to set up their little homestead in chapter 3. Maybe I’ll have to be the one to write that book.

For those who don’t know, yet somehow manage to be cool anyway, Wil Wheaton was the kid version of the narrator in the movie “Stand By Me”, he was Wesley Crusher in what most people consider the second best Star Trek series, he’s a geek, he’s a blogger, he’s a poker player, he’s an author. He’s like one of the top people being followed on twitter. How do you not know who he is?!

****

He wrote a book. Several, in fact. Collections of blog entries, loosely themed. If you haven’t visited his blog, it’s over here. Called Wil Wheaton Dot Net, though it’s not longer at dot net, or WWdN if you’re in the know. And now you’ve read this, you’re in the know.

The Happiest Days of Our Lives is one of the books he wrote. Or, if you prefer, collected. It’s a collection of some of his favorite blog entries, about being a big old geek, and about growing up in the 70′s and 80′s, and a bit about Star Trek. I gather more of the Star Trek and lots of other geeky stuff is in the other two books, which I had fully intended to buy, and to read. I cite lack of money at the time they came out and plethora of too many other interesting books coming to my attention since as to why I haven’t bought or read them.

****

Summer, York Beach, Maine, near that cheesy animal park. In a camp right next to the cheesy animal park, so you could hear the lions and things at night. Which, okay, maybe made the camping experience a little more surreal and I shouldn’t call the park cheesy. It wouldn’t be, really, if it’s wasn’t the biggest amusement park in all of Maine. And that’s just pathetic. (I grew up near Great Escape; I am, perhaps, jaded.)

I had recently gotten into watching TOS and reading science fiction. I had and/or bought a copy of the novel Enterprise I was reading on that trip. But also, a Starlog. (Okay, I’m not entirely certain it was Starlog, but odds are pretty good it was Starlog and I just heard Starlog published its last issue this month, which totally bums me out, so.. if it wasn’t Starlog, it is now.) This Starlog had a whole big article on a NEW STAR TREK. Totally awesome. Totally confusing. Because I’m reading along, and it’s saying how the doctor has a son. And I’m like.. chyea, dudes, McCoy has a daughter okay. Get it right.

Somehow I totally didn’t spot the cast pictures going along with the article until I’d read more of it. So eventually it dawns on me that this is a whole new Trek. Android. Awesome. Kid. Awesome.

(Totally unrelated, but the other thing I remember when I think about this campsite is War and Peace. So I must have read that along about this time. Or, started to, all the names eventually bogged me down and bored me to tears, so I stopped.)

I’m not sure if I realized it then, but TNG was about to become my Star Trek.

****

Back at school. Junior high cafeteria. Sitting at a table with some girls (with the girls may be pushing it) and they’re looking at Teen Beat. And there’s a picture. A full page picture of Wil “Stand By Me” Wheaton. My friend must’ve noticed me wanting it. I demurred. Much giggling. I didn’t want them to think I had a crush on him or anything, because I really didn’t. Not even on Wesley. But regardless of what they thought, I did want that picture. (Even though it shocked me that she’d even offer to tear a page out of bound, written material for any purpose!) It hung on my wall, with an accumulation of Star Trek posters, for a good long time.

I totally did not have a crush on him.

****

Wesley was treated badly by the adults. Especially Picard. How can you hate kids?! How can you treat him like a kid? He’s my age! Probably even a bit older. He’s totally not in the same category as the little kids you made him run around with in a couple episodes. You suck, Picard.

But at least Wesley didn’t die and make me cry in the first season.

Stupid mumblegrumblegrr writers.

****

I started going to Star Trek conventions with Dad. Mostly Creation run. This is probably about the time I started hearing rumors that people didn’t like Wesley. (Pre-Internet, at least pre-WWW) That kinda hurt. Because he was one of my favorite characters. And everyone seemed to hate him just because he was a kid. And/or smart.

You’d think Star Trek geeks would have more sympathy for the smart kid. But what do I know?

****

Wil Wheaton, at a con. TNG is over by this point, I think. Wheaton’s only about a year older than me, but at this con, he seemed so far beyond my comprehension. He was dressed in what then I would’ve called a dangerous kind of punk style. I was afraid he’d turned into, or always was, one of those kids into drinking, smoking, music. I’m not sure if I thought him unChristian or unCool at this point, possibly both.

But he was involved with Video Toaster, which was used in seaQuest. And seaQuest, of course, is totally cool. And he was funny on stage. So I left that con not quite sure what to make of him.

I realize now that he was just being a teenage geek. I just couldn’t recognize it at the time.

****

College – alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die and strek-l, and well, it’s college. I had moved on to DS9 and Pern MUSHing and occasional attendance of classes.

****

At some point I started hearing about this blogging thing, which was somehow different from a website, but not. And I’m sure someone, possibly K, must have pointed me to Wil Wheaton’s blog. And I discovered all over again that he’s a geek. I started reading his blog pretty regularly.

But then he got into playing poker. And blogging about poker. Incessantly. I have little to no interest in poker. Though I did watch him in a game on TV. I stopped reading the blog. I haven’t actually gone back. Relying on other people to tell me he’s going to be in an upcoming episode of something. Or that his book is going to a new publisher, so it’s the last chance to get this version.

****

There are two entries in this book that I read on his blog. And they’re very, very good ones, that I remember reading. How many blog entries do you remember years later?

The one is about being a stepfather to teenage and near-teenage boys, music, and the generation gap, and being a geek.

The other is about a beloved cat.

Yea, those freaking cats are everywhere around writers and bloggers. But it had me tearing up when I reread it in this book anyway.

****

Reading these, you feel like Wheaton is a fellow geek. A fellow child of the 70′s and 80′s. And I get a glimpse of what it’s like to be a father, and an actor, and even a boring old poker player.

I don’t know if it’s from growing up being an actor, how he was raised, his genes, or what, but he’s really, really good at telling an honest, emotional story.

All of the entries in this book are worth reading. All in one gulp, or one by one when you have a spare five minutes.

My least favorite is probably the last one, because it’s about poker. But it’s also about being a minor celebrity in the land of television. It’s a good wrapup to the book. And well, he did need to end it with something more light-hearted than the cat entry before it.

****

Buy his book. Read his blog. Enjoy being a geek with him.

Having reached the bottom of the river, Dag and Fawn go off to see if he can get some training from a Lakewalker healer. Wherein we learn a new term ‘groundsetter’, which I never did quite figure out. It seems to be a specialty, somewhat like a surgeon. This guy, Arkady, takes on the unconventional Dag as his apprentice. But when Dag goes off to heal a farmer kid with lockjaw, this Lakewalker camp isn’t too keen on the idea. So Dag leaves, but he acquires Arkady and a patroller chick. And they all head up The Trace, which is basically a land path up the river back north. Naturally, along the way, they acquire more people, Lakewalker and farmer both.

So other than Dag being a little more educated, this is basically the plot of the last book. Heading on up the river instead of down, acquiring people as they go. I was enjoying the trip, but after awhile, I started wondering when the big, bad conflict would come along. So every time they encountered a new person or group or weird thing, I wondered if this was going to be it. Only, mostly it turned out not to be it.

When the big bad does show up, it’s pretty interesting. And everyone gets something to do. And people get hurt. And people do clever things.

Around about this time, I was having real trouble telling people apart. There were so many of them and they all had similar, one or two-syllable names, mostly nature-based. There’s Ash and Owlet and Sage and Berry and on and on. And just from the name, you couldn’t guess at gender. And just from the name, you couldn’t guess if they were Lakewalker or farmer. So I’d be staring at a name, trying to remember… Lakewalker or farmer? Male or female? Whose husband was that again?

The last chapter was an epilogue. An entire chapter of infodump to tell us what people had been up to and where they’ll go now that the story is over. Granted it’s not ‘As you know, Bob..’ because the Bob in this situation doesn’t know. They’re filling each other in on what they’ve missed while being apart. So while it’s effective enough, it’s a little inelegant.

One theme in this book is halfbloods. Some of the people they pick up along the way are half-Lakewalker, half-farmer, and of course Dag and Fawn are concerned how any of their children are going to get along in the world. And the final chapter really draws this out.

Which is kind of a shame, because I’m actually far more interested in the halfbloods.

All in all, a decent end to a decent story. Though nothing about the series really wowed me. If Bujold writes more in this world, I’ll definitely read it. But I won’t be going back to reread these anytime soon. Unlike the Vorkosigan books, which I really do need to go back and reread soon.