From the back cover:<\/b>
\nReaders of Wil Wheaton’s website know that he is a masterful teller of elegant stories about his life. Building on the critical success of Dancing Barefoot<\/i> and Just a Geek<\/i>, he has collected more of his own favorite stories in his third book, The Happiest Days of Our Lives<\/i>. These are the stories Wil loves to tell, because they are the closest to his heart: stories about being a huge geek, passing his geeky hobbies and values along to his own children, and painting, as vividly as possible, what it meant to grow up in the ’70s and come of age in the ’80s as part of the video game\/D&D\/BBS\/Star Wars figures generation.<\/p>\n
In all of these tales, Wheaton brings the reader into the raw heart of the story, holding nothing back, and you are invited to join him on a journey through The Happiest Days of Our Lives<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Review:<\/b>
\nThe Happiest Days of Our Lives<\/i>, a collection of stories by actor, writer, and blogger Wil Wheaton, focuses primarily on childhood and adolescent memories as viewed through the nostalgic lens of an adult and experienced parent. In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Blue Light Special,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for example, Wil tells the amusing story of how he ended up with a Lando Calrissian action figure. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Portrait of the Artist as a Young Geek\u00e2\u20ac\u009d charts his entry into the world of gaming. And in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Butterfly Tree,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he recounts the story of how he got in trouble at school for the first time, and manages to perfectly capture the painful moment when a child first discovers the fallibility of adults, as his teacher punishes him unfairly and his parents fail to defend him. Having had a similar experience myself once (though, happily, with much parental defense), I thought he nailed the feeling precisely. <\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a regular reader of Wil\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s blog, so nearly all of this material was new to me. Sometimes this worked to my detriment, though, as there were references to other stories\u00e2\u20ac\u201done about a homemade Star Wars toy and the other an in-joke shared between Wil and Jonathan Frakes\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat I just didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get. Still, growing up in the ’80s myself, there was much with which I identified, like watching Poltergeist<\/i> and being scared silly (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Close Your Eyes and Then It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Past\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) or forever being tempted to equate raspberry sorbet with a certain song by Prince (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Exactly What I Wanted\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). <\/p>\n
I also enjoyed stories like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Suddenly It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Tomorrow,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which is about Wil\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s desire<\/strike> need to spend more time with his family. The story that resonated with me the most, though, was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Let Go – A Requiem for Felix the Bear.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This story, about the efforts of Wil and his wife to prolong the life of a sick and beloved kitty, had me in tears. It also made me love Wil quite a lot, not only for the efforts he made to help Felix, but for how profoundly affected he was by his death. <\/p>\n
There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not much negative to say about the collection. A couple of the stories aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really stories, but are more just snapshots of recollections, like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Beyond the Rim of the Starlight,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which is about Wil\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s experiences attending Star Trek<\/i> conventions, and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My Mind is Filled with Silvery Star,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in which Wil puts the ’80s music on his iPod on shuffle and writes about the memories that each song conjures up. While I preferred the tales with linear narratives, I still found both pieces to be entertaining. The only real sour note is the final story, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Lying in Odessa,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which has nothing to do with being a geek or being a parent. Instead, Wil writes about an illegal poker tournament that he participated in. Since I am not a poker aficionado, there were many terms that I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand and I questioned the choice to end with this story and not one of the warm and fuzzy \u00e2\u20ac\u0153family togetherness\u00e2\u20ac\u009d ones.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure the experience of reading The Happiest Days of Our Lives<\/i> will convert me into a faithful blog-reader, but it has at least sparked an interest in reading Wil\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s other books one of these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the back cover: Readers of Wil Wheaton’s website know that he is a masterful teller of elegant stories about his life. Building on the critical success of Dancing Barefoot and Just a Geek, he has collected more of his own favorite stories in his third book, The Happiest Days of Our Lives. These are … Continue reading “The Happiest Days of Our Lives by Wil Wheaton: B+”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,5,7,52],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-m","category-review","category-the-happiest-days-of-our-lives","tag-memoir"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}