Review: The Secret Loves of Geek Girls by Hope Nicholson

Genre: Comic, Anthology

Similar to: Like an old fashioned Annual but without the puzzles

Could be enjoyed by: Geeks!

Publication date: 9th December 2015

The Secret Loves of Geek Girls is a non-fiction anthology of prose, comics and illustrations from lots of different contributors (including Margaret Atwood and Marjorie Lin) about their own personal experiences of love. The contributors are super diverse, so there’s stories of queerness, asexuality, polyamory, unrequited love, love of fictional characters, friendships…pretty much every type of relationship that you can think of from people of all different backgrounds. With all of the contributors being self confessed geeks, the stories reference various nerdy pastimes such as fandoms, cosplay and online gaming, with overarching themes of not fitting in, not being interested in traditional “girl” stuff, being an awkward obsessive with a whole secret life that no-one else gets. Stuff that I think a lot of us can relate to.

However…

There was something that didn’t quite click with me and this book. I’m not sure if it was because I found it to be quite US/Canada centric or because I’d never had any kind of super intense relationship with a book/film/comic but I couldn’t see myself reflected in any of the stories. Yes, I could relate to some of the more general themes but because the contributions were so specific it was difficult to see my own brand of geeky weirdness being represented. 

I loved the diversity of the contributors and the attempts to be as broad in scope as possible but I did feel like this resulted in a bit of a mish mash of topics. I think the problem is that the world of geekery is so vast that trying to collect individual experiences and collating them without a strong central theme, or grouping them into sub-topics or whatever was always going to result in quite a jarring reading experience. 

Another issue for me was the short story format that was the basis of the book. Many of the contributions featured such niche interests that for someone outside of that world it could be a little confusing. Some of the terms used were unfamiliar to me and at times I didn’t quite understand what was going on.

Overall, I think that this is a classic case of great for you, but not for me. I’m sure that if you’ve got a particular geeky interest and you see yourself reflected in some of the stories then you’ll absolutely love it, but as someone who hasn’t experienced that world I didn’t quite connect.

Rating: Two and a half “wtf does that mean?” out of five.

 A mixed bag of stories made for a slightly jarring but nonetheless interesting reading experience. I’m just not the right target market for the book.

Review: Giant Days Vol.1 by John Allison

​Genre: Comic book/Graphic novel, YA

Similar to: Like a grown up Lumberjanes

Could be enjoyed by: Freshers, or people who want to reminisce about Uni

Publication date: 24th November 2015

I discovered Giant Days on my Kindle when I was poorly a few weeks ago. To be honest, I’d kind of forgotten it was there. I can’t even remember why I bought it – I think it was reduced and I was on a buying spree. So not really the best credentials – and when you look at the cover you can kind of see why. The title means nothing to me and doesn’t explain what the comic is about. The artwork looks like the kind of thing you’d see in a newspaper comic strip. There’s no context to the character depicted so no clues there either. Basically the whole thing is pretty forgettable but I wanted to read something light and non-taxing, so I gave it a go. 

I’m so glad that I did! Set at an unnamed UK university, the comic follows three freshers who are just becoming friends. There’s sweet, naive Daisy; acerbic, serious Susan and dramatic, boy-crazy goth Esther. They get up to all the usual uni stuff – drinking too much, getting freshers flu, lazing about in pyjamas getting to know each other. It brought back so many memories 😍

I found the whole set up totally relatable and laughed all the way from beginning to end. I’d almost forgotten how uniquely weird those first few weeks of uni are, where you make friends based on whoever you’re randomly living with despite having totally different backgrounds and interests. I loved how the characters were all so un-alike and yet still became friends – something that I could definitely identify with. 

It was refreshing to read about a UK uni experience (sitting chatting in bars, having your mother visit because you’re only a few hours away from home etc.) and nice for my poor virus riddled brain not to have to convert words like faucet and college into tap and university. I think that this definitely helped me to identify more with the storyline and made me forego my “no backpacks” rule – I often find that I’m too old to identify with YA literature so I was pleasantly surprised. 

I absolutely loved all of the characters in Giant Days but I especially identified with Esther – she was exactly like I was when I was 18 (she also reminded me of Pandora from Kerrang! magazine – that’s a reference literally none of you will get 😜). I loved the female representation and how their unlikely friendship thrived, with none of the usual in-fighting, bitchiness or generic mean girl tropes. It would have been nice to see more diversity, although I did appreciate how Daisy began to explore her potential queerness (which was handled really well and again felt totally authentic). 

Overall, I thought that Giant Days was a brilliant graphic novel – highly relatable, fun, hilarious and charming. I thought that it captured that whole coming-of-age, exploring who you are thing really well and the way that the characters and their friendship was represented was just great. What a perfect read for October – especially if you’re a first year student – and what a great going-away-to-uni gift! 

Rating: Four “stall my mum while I sober up!” out of five.

Funny, warm and charming, Giant Days is the most relatable story of being a fresher that I’ve ever come across – the nostalgia will give you all the feels. 

Please note that I read this novel as part of the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2018 #18 Read a comic that isn’t DC, Marvel or Image. 

 

Review: Tetris by Box Brown

“The games people play”

Genre: Graphic Novel

Similar to: Persepolis? I don’t read that many graphic novels.

Could be enjoyed by: Nerds 😜

Publication date: 7th November 2016

Now, if I were more artistically gifted and technologically adept I would draw you a little cartoon of how much I loved this graphic novel. Sadly I have neither skill so you’ll just have to put up with text 😜.

Tetris is the story of, well…Tetris. You may (like me) have fond memories of trying to get the oddly shaped puzzle pieces to tesselate on your Nintendo Game Boy, Game Girl, Game Boy Colour or knock off “Bricks!” walkman with LCD front display that your Mum bought you off the market (that one’s probably just me). However, you might not be aware that the creation and marketing of Tetris is an incredible story of politics, collusion, deceipt, theft, murder and bizarrely – Robert Maxwell. 

Tetris the book explains the complicated story with gorgeously simple illustrations (not easy to depict considering many of the issues had to do with dodgy licensing rights). It goes right the way back to when Alexey Pajitnov, a Russian engineer, invented the game in his spare time using the primitive computer technology in his workplace. It goes on to explain how the game escaped from behind the Iron Curtain to take over the world despite illegal business deals, communist state ownership and international scandals. Honestly, I couldn’t believe how much shit had gone down.

I loved the way that such a complicated story was told in such an unfussy, easy to understand manner. I loved the two tone simplistic line drawings and the easy to follow dialogue. I thought that the way that the novel was written belied the complicated nature of the story, mirroring Tetris itself as it’s deceptively simple style can require huge amounts of skill and concentration. 

I found the world that Tetris was created in utterly fascinating. I don’t know a huge amount about communist Russia in the 1970’s and 80’s so I was surprised to learn that the Soviets had absolutely no idea of how popular Tetris had become or how it was being marketed and sold without their permission. Ironically, if Russia hasn’t been so cut off the game would probably have been worthless as it was freely copied and shared throughout the country without license (I guess like the equivalent of a free download). 

It saddened me to learn that even though he was the creator, Alexey Pajitnov was cut out of business negotiations pretty quickly and didn’t initially receive any money from the games worldwide success – it all went to the state (obviously, that’s how communism works Lucinda) – although I was pleased to learn that he eventually worked out a way to get some recompense. I loved how laid back Pajitnov was about the whole debacle and how he went back to his ordinary job even after the game had gone global. It did make me wonder how aware he was of the success of his product, although his primary aim did seem to be making people happy.

I was amazed that such a simplistic game could cause so many problems and have such a bizzare story. I found it incredible that it came into being at all considering the technology it was created on and the fact that Tetris made any money at all when the creator himself gave away free copies that were easy to save and pass on is astounding. I really enjoyed learning about the complicated history of the game and I loved the way in which the story was told. 
Altogether now…

“Dum dum dumdum DUMDUMDUM dum dumdum DUMDUMDUM dum dumdum dum dum DUUUUUM DUUUUUM”
(That was the themetune, in case you hadn’t guessed)

Rating: Four and a half helpful cries of “put the line ones to the edges!” out of five.

Please note that I read this novel as part of the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2018 #4 Read a comic written and illustrated by the same person.

 

Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

Photo courtesy of http://www.goodreads.com

Monstress is one of the most beautifully illustrated graphic novels that I’ve ever seen. It’s the story of a young girl who is captured into slavery. As she breaks out, she discovers not only a dark secret hidden within her but also that a number of different groups desire her knowledge and abilities…at any cost. Can she trust anyone – including herself?

I think it’s goes without saying that I really loved this graphic novel. It’s absolutely stunning to look at and has a really captivating narrative. I loved the mixture of dark, DC, western style comics with a manga style twist. The level of detail is astounding and adds so much to the overall narrative. I do find that sometimes comics are easy to skip through but with Monstress I found myself spending hours pouring over the graphics.

I really enjoyed the way that the comic was very much female centric, with lots of strong women from various different factions. I also loved the way that the broader themes of friendship, betrayal, desire, hunger, bravery and greed were defined. The story manages to encompass all positive and negative traits of what it is to be human – even when dealing with characters who are anything but. 

Some of the old tropes are there – dreams, monsters, a mask, a journey with a forbidden object, a hapless friend whose bravery saves the day etc. However, it’s done really well, as its quite a complicated story with lots of different groups all fighting it out, deceiving each other and crossing sides to fulfil their own ends.

Also, as Neil Gaiman points out – some of the best cats in comics.

I really want to know what happens next. I will definitely continue to read this series, if only for the exceptional artwork. Stunning.

Rating: 9/10

I read this book as part of the Popsugar reading challenge 2017 #22 read a steampunk novel.