The Happiest Days of Our Lives (edition 2001)

A series of wryly humorous, thematically-connected vignettes - about childhood in the 70s and 80s, and about growing up geeky - which really resonated with me. ( )

Wil's third book (I've only read this and his second) is awesome. Like his other books it consists of a series of short true stories, generally based on blog entries. Some stories had me close to tears - particularly the story of the loss of his cat. Another, one of which I'd recently read an excerpt of, tells of his introduction to D&D. There's only one story that really relates to Star Trek (another sad story), so if you aren't a fan of Star Trek you don't have to avoid it.Wil is one of those authors who makes me green with envy. If only I could write half as well as he does. ( )

A collection of short vignettes that previously appeared on the author's popular blog or elsewhere online, this is a warm-hearted, evocative, and very readable little book. Wil Wheaton is roughly my same age, so we share many of the same generational touchstones -- Star Wars action figures and '80s music, hair, and clothes, for example -- and this lends much of his subject matter an instant familiarity. But even when he's writing about things I have little or no personal experience with -- Dungeons and Dragons, poker, or running a marathon -- Wil is a natural-born storyteller who pulls you in and makes you his accomplice in all that he's feeling and experiencing. He also has an irreverent, occasionally vulgar, but very funny sense of humor that ensures things only get heavy when Wil wants to make a point. The former child actor may forever be remembered as Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation, but he grew up to be something much more akin to Gordie LaChance, the narrator of Stand by Me.

My favorite segments were "I Am the Modren Man" (wherein he tortures his teenage son with the twenty-year-old Styx song "Mr. Roboto"), "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Geek" (a recounting of his personal history with D&D, culminating in the night before he introduces his boys to the game), "Let Go -- A Requiem for Felix the Bear" (about the death of a beloved pet -- I'm a sap for these sorts of things), and "Lying in Odessa," a poker story that I frankly expected to bore me to death (I'm not much interested in poker) but which turned out to be a suspenseful and very satisfying story of the night Wil took a walk on the wild side and almost -- almost -- won big.

This is a keeper. ( )

An enjoyable read, to say the least, is what you can expect from Wheaton's collection of moments in time. There is a sense of defining moments that are shared, helping a reader to learn who Wheaton was, is and who he hopes to be. ( )

I've been keeping up with his blog for a few years now, it fascinates me to read about the life of someone about my age but who's life is almost totally different than mine. It's the almost that keeps me reading, a shared affinity for geekdom and an appretiation for the things in life that matter. This chapbook reprints and updates some of his blog posts about the things he enjoys and loves: family, pets, geekdom, poker, Star Trek. It was a bit odd reading a book and knowing most of the stories, I really got the sense of buying a book by someone I know to support them rather than to read all new material. That said, it's an enjoyable read, and collects the posts in one place, no searching required. ( )