Book Review - "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" by Wil Wheaton

I submitted the following review to geezergamers.com for the front page, and I'm putting it here for anyone that reads this and isn't part of gg...

I want to preface this review with a little explanation on how I got to this point. I don’t remember if it was in the GGSE forum or if it was on Twitter, but a conversation was had about following famous people on Twitter. Someone (I won’t call him out here, but he changes his gamertag more than his toothbrush and it always includes the letters M, O, J and O…) mentioned that they followed Wil Wheaton on Twitter and enjoyed his tweets.

I made some snide comment about Weaseley Crusher, and then immediately searched for and followed @wilw, because "inRL" Wil is a cool guy. From his tweets, I eventually made my way to Wil’s blog. As it turns out, Wil is only 2 years younger than myself and we have a lot of the same interests. He is also an excellent writer. I added his blog to my Google Reader subscriptions and entered the world of a father, husband, struggling author and fellow geek. Wil occasionally updates his blog with excerpts from his current project, as well as pieces from his previous books. He has self-published a short collection of writings, titled Sunken Treasure in non-DRM pdf format which is available for download at Lulu.com for the low, low price of 5 bux. He has also published audio versions of two of his books, Just a Geek and The Happiest Days of Our Lives, available in non-DRM mp3 format from 10quicksteps.com. This is great for me because I love to listen to audio books on my 90 mile round trip commute everyday, but DRM usually renders them useless to me in one way or another, so I rely on my music mp3s, talk radio and satellite radio. So, when I found out that I could download these and copy them to my Archos 705 with no problems, it was a no-brainer. Truthfully, I hesitated over the “Proceed to Checkout” button because Just a Geek tips the scales at $35, bringing the total to $54.72, and I was a bit hesitant to spend the cost of a 360 game on audio books :), but in the end, it was a good choice.

So now that I have you up to date… the review.

In The Happiest Days of Our Lives, Wil Wheaton weaves together some genuinely good narrative storytelling centered around his childhood, his wife and children, family pets, and working as an actor.

--I want to break in here and say that I am glad I purchased the audio version because the version is “super-annotated”, which is Wil's term for “unedited”. :) Well, it isn't completely unedited, but there are conversations between Wil and his friend/recording-engineer/self-publishing-site-host David Lawrence that were left in, and provide some interesting commentary about each story.--

Listening to Wil read his stories, I couldn’t help but think that this must be how the generation before me felt as they listened to Jean Shepherd narrate the adventures of Ralphie in A Christmas Story (a purposeful similarity as admitted by the author later in the book, and he does an outstanding job). Only these stories go beyond your childhood memories and your current memory-making life events. They thrust you into the world of a child/teenage actor. A world to which you couldn't possibly relate, but somehow Wil tells it in a way that you do; completely. I think it is because, no matter if he is telling a story that could be plucked straight from my biography or a story about life on the Enterprise D, he remains himself, Wil Wheaton.

If you are like me and “grew up in the seventies and came of age in the eighties” as Wil writes, this is a set of stories that will move you in one way or another. As you listen, I dare you not to lose yourself in your own memories of browsing the Star Wars figures on the toy isle in K-Mart. I dare you to not genuinely laugh out loud when he addresses the 'damn kids today'. I dare you to not crack a smile when he takes a trip to Cold Stone with his kids and gets exactly what he wanted. I dare you not to squirm a bit as he does a pretty good Dennis DeYoung impression. And I dare you not shed a tear as he says goodbye to Felix the Bear.

--Do NOT listen to “A Requiem for Felix the Bear” as you drive to work...or anywhere except for home, for that matter...--

The Happiest Days of Our Lives clocks in at just over 3 hours and 26 minutes. A bargain at $19.72, in my opinion. Why $19.72? If you can't guess, I'll let you go to Wil's blog and find the answer(s) for yourself. Perhaps it'll spark your interest in his writings as well, if my ramblings here haven't done the trick.

Now I can't wait until morning, when I can begin listening to Just a Geek.

--Did I just imply that I am looking forward to my morning commute? :~ --