Summary:
Goodreads - Acclaimed authors Holly Black (Ironside) and Cecil Castellucci (Boy Proof) have united in geekdom to edit short stories from some of the best selling and most promising geeks in young adult literature: M.T. Anderson, Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, John Green, Tracy Lynn, Cynthia and Greg Leitich Smith, David Levithan, Kelly Link, Barry Lyga, Wendy Mass, Garth Nix, Scott Westerfield, Lisa Yee, and Sara Zarr.
With illustrated interstitials from comic book artists Hope Larson and Bryan Lee O'Malley, Geektastic covers all things geeky, from Klingons and Jedi Knights to fan fiction, theater geeks, and cosplayers. Whether you're a former, current, or future geek, or if you just want to get in touch with your inner geek, Geektastic will help you get your geek on!
Thoughts
I rarely read short story anthologies because I have such a hard time getting into them, but I saw this was at the library so I thought...well why not? And I'm so glad I did. As I read each of these stories I kept feeling like "This is my home. These are my stories." - even when they were in a "geeky" matter I didn't know anything about. With the exception of maybe two of the stories that I read, I wholeheartedly loved everything in this collection (even if I kept thinking all the characters were gay and then discovering I'd gotten the genders all wrong. Ah the pitfalls of short stories in first person).
This collection seriously has something for everyone - cosplaying, role playing, academic debate, LARPing, computer games, dinosaurs, fanfic, theater, Buffy - you name it, it's in here. And I think it's amazing how drawn into each story I got into, even when I didn't have a clue about what they were talking about, I well and truly cared about the characters. Which completely bypassed all my normal issues about short stories - since I tend to be pretty character centric, it's hard for short stories to be able to draw me in enough to really care about the characters because the stories are...well...short. Some of them I actually would have LOVED to have gotten a whole novel out of the story - David Levithan's in particular. (Which shows me that I need to go pick up one of his books immediately. It's not like they aren't already all on my tbr list anyway, I just haven't done anything about it yet. Which will be remedied. Soon.) His was also the only one featuring anything other than a hetero relationship, which actually made me kind of sad because as I mentioned earlier, I actually assumed 75% of the relationships were same sex at the start of the stories haha. A lot of the stories also had a focus purely on family or friend relationships, and you all know how much I go gaga over that sort of thing!
Sadly I didn't get this post up before the book expired on my kindle, so I lost all the notes I'd taken on the stories I loved, but since there were only two I didn't, just assume that the rest are all pure love for me, because they are. The only two I didn't love were Scott Westerfield's and Barry Lyga's. Scott Westerfields was just kind of...weird. And psychotic. It creeped me out too much to love haha, and while I loved the concept of Barry Lyga's (his was about dinosaurs), the ending definitely didn't make me feel good. But only two out of an entire collection is like a crazy difference than what I'm used to - I tend to be the reverse! So I'm glad I picked it up and highly recommend this, regardless of how you feel about short stories or books about geeky things (because let's face it - if you're reading this blog, you definitely will be able to connect to at least a few stories in the collection regardless).
TL;DR
I don't read short stories. Ever. I get supremely bored by them. But this collection was well worth picking up, and I'd recommend it to all readers because there's something a story in here for everyone.
On my TBR pile then! Thanks for the review! :)
ReplyDeleteAh, damn this was meant to post Thursday haha! But yeah I think this is up your alley :)
ReplyDeleteI tried to love this book... I wanted to... but it just wasn't geeky enough for me. It's been a while since I've read it but I thought it was more stereotype then true geeks. Here is my review on it if you want to read it. I talk about each story in the review: http://angelasanxiouslife.blogspot.com/2014/03/geektastic-stories-from-nerd-herd-by.html#comment-1284577846
ReplyDeleteYeah I can definitely see why that might be the case - the geekiness is just a backdrop for what's happening in the stories and most of them were built off a stereotype and branched off from there - which is exactly why it worked for me haha!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds fun. I occasionally read short story collections, but they tend to be "best of" collections or stories by one author. It's cool that these are all centered around one theme. The theater nerd one sounds particularly intriguing...:)
ReplyDeleteYeah I loved that it had a variety of interests and authors so it's more likely to appeal to different tastes (in my opinion). I think the Rocky Horror one might have been my favourite actually - I feel like that might have been the Libba Bray one? The other theater nerd one was pretty good as well!
ReplyDelete