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A review by srgower
Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Collection of Musings by Wil Wheaton
3.0
I had a somewhat difficult time with this book at the beginning - there were so many annotations, almost as long as the original text, that I couldn't figure out how I was supposed to read the book. Do I stop every time I see a symbol next to a word to read the footnote? Or do I read the whole chapter, and double back to read the footnotes later? Plus, the little stars were hard to pick out in the text, which means I think that the publisher chose a poor typeface for this book. At any rate, I wound up on "read the section until a natural break" and then go back for the footnotes.
Once I got a rhythm going I breezed through the book. I've never read the original Just a Geek before, so most of this was new. Some of it I have read on his blog before, either in original form or in reposts, or retellings over the years. But the "narrative" portion between blog posts was wholly new to me and I found it interesting.
As for the annotations - the first chapter was very much full of Wheaton apologizing for making homophobic or misogynistic jokes. I appreciate that he is able to recognize his mistakes in past writing and acknowledges he still needs to be better, I found it distracting how many times he pointed out the bad jokes and apologized. I think his one-page introduction that acknowledged the poor taste of his original blog entries pretty much covered it.
I will admit that I skimmed through a lot of the additional blog posts that he included. The ones that I read were really good and I enjoyed reading them. The ones I skipped - well, I can't speak to whether or not they were good because I didn't read them. They didn't catch my interest I suppose.
Overall if you are at all interested in Wil Wheaton's history and experiences this is well worth the read. It also gives you a pretty good insight into how his mind works (although, if you follow him on social media or read his blog now at all, you probably have a good idea already). If you've read Just a Geek you may want to skip this though - I don't know that the annotations add all that much to the original text if you've already read it.
Once I got a rhythm going I breezed through the book. I've never read the original Just a Geek before, so most of this was new. Some of it I have read on his blog before, either in original form or in reposts, or retellings over the years. But the "narrative" portion between blog posts was wholly new to me and I found it interesting.
As for the annotations - the first chapter was very much full of Wheaton apologizing for making homophobic or misogynistic jokes. I appreciate that he is able to recognize his mistakes in past writing and acknowledges he still needs to be better, I found it distracting how many times he pointed out the bad jokes and apologized. I think his one-page introduction that acknowledged the poor taste of his original blog entries pretty much covered it.
I will admit that I skimmed through a lot of the additional blog posts that he included. The ones that I read were really good and I enjoyed reading them. The ones I skipped - well, I can't speak to whether or not they were good because I didn't read them. They didn't catch my interest I suppose.
Overall if you are at all interested in Wil Wheaton's history and experiences this is well worth the read. It also gives you a pretty good insight into how his mind works (although, if you follow him on social media or read his blog now at all, you probably have a good idea already). If you've read Just a Geek you may want to skip this though - I don't know that the annotations add all that much to the original text if you've already read it.