Speak Out With Your Geek Out: Book Lust

I read a #speakgeek blog post on www.jesshartley.com yesterday that considered a question many of my fellow geeks have likely been thinking about this week: "I wave my geek flag proudly every day; what's special about this?"

Well, I don't.


Being a geek is something I don't talk about in polite company: I don't talk about watching BSG, reading the Wheel of Time series, or - gasp - spending greasy weekends with my husband playing World of Warcraft. Up until about two years ago, only my geek friends even had a hint that I'm a supernerd. But that all changed when I changed jobs. I was unpacking my desk, and a new colleague - a girl I only knew a little - picked up the CD case for the Wrath of the Lich King soundtrack and shrieked, disbelieving, "You play WoW?!"

It wasn't a decision, more a reaction. I simply said, "Yeah."

And I got teased a little. I knew I would; that's why I wouldn't let my nerd flag fly, even when I spent my nights reading and my weekends gaming instead of shopping and, I dunno, doing yoga like the cool girls.

I'm 27, though, not 17, and I've come to terms with the fact that I do fit in, just not in the way I always expected to. After that girl, without any real malice, bugged me for playing a geeky game and listening to its geeky music, I decided that life's too short, I guess. Life's too short to hide who I am, to outwardly mock things I secretly enjoy, to try to fit where I don't.

So I tentatively took out my flag, gave it a little wave, and declared my geekery. My best friend was - is - aghast that I read so much fantasy. My colleagues have pretended to ignore my disappearing TARDIS mug and Deathwing mouse pad. My mother encouraged me to find some hobbies of my own, since I "wasn't like this before I met Ryan." That's okay. I enjoy my nerdy pursuits - but none more than I love reading, the first topic I'm touching on for Speak Geek Week.

Saying I love reading is like saying I love air: completely inadequate to describe my relationship with it. From the time I was little, I read everything I could get my hands on. And now that I look back on my reading habits, I can see that, even then, I liked books that had an element of fantasy. RL Stine and Christopher Pike kept me sated through middle school, but once I hit junior high, I began my love affair with Dean Koontz. To this day, I buy every one of his books in hardcover. But my mother was, as always, right. I wasn't exactly like this until I met my husband.

Like his father did to him, Ryan introduced me to some amazing fantasy (and some not so amazing fantasy; looking at you, Piers Anthony's Mercycle.) And now, I'm the one devouring fantasy, and every time I pull a few new books out of my purse during a visit with my father-in-law, he gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and says, "Thanks, sweetie. I've been all out of things to read for weeks."

That's the thing about books. They take you to another world, introduce you to characters you come to care for, make sense of a chaotic world - and allow you to share that magic with the people you love.

So this blog post is my attempt to share that magic with you, by sharing my favorite nerd writers and their books:

Robin Hobb. Unequivocally, Robin Hobb is my favorite fantasy writer - perhaps my favorite writer, period. Though I always find her endings bizarre (in a "What the Fitz is happening here?" way), her character and world development is without equal. Even if you hate her characters - and they can get obnoxious; I think she hates them too, if the way she treats them is any indication - even if you hate them, you want to know what happens to them, can't stop reading until you know what happens to them, care about what happens to them. She began developing her world of Farseers and Fitz and Liveships and Golden Fools in Assassin's Apprentice, and that three-book series (the Farseer Trilogy) sets the stage for the series that follow: the Liveship Traders Trilogy and the Tawny Man Trilogy - and each series is better than the one that preceded it.

Though another series set in the same world follows it, the Tawny Man books are the pinnacle for me; I cried like a six-year old girl when I came to the end of Fitz's tale. This isn't meant to be a book review; I'm not going to get into plot points. I can't tell you, really, what I like about the books and hate about them (well, I could, but won't). I only know how they make me feel, and they make me feel a lot. To me, that's the sign of a brilliant writer.

Tad Williams. Now, I have to admit that my love affair with Tad Williams got off to a bit of a slow start: when I first started reading the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series, I had to put it down within the first five chapters. I was bored. Ryan nagged and nagged and nagged me, though, until I picked it up again shortly before we got married - and I dragged all three of those brick-like books with us on our honeymoon roadtrip down to the states. We spent more time cozy reading in bed on that trip than we did sight-seeing. Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn has all of the elements of a great fantasy series: loveable characters, unique races, epic journeys, love and battle, a bit of a twist ending.

Even better - this series has a set trajectory. Beginning. Middle. End. It doesn't meander through 14 books just to set the writer up with a cushy retirement (that's the only explanation I have for the interminable length of Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series.) Well-written, well-thought out, well-ended, the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series is an epic tale that will suck you in...once you get past the first five chapters...

George RR Martin. Okay, okay, this one is a bit of a given ever since the Game of Thrones HBO series came out - but I liked his books before they were trendy. (Yes, it does make me cringe to say that.) I recently reread the entire Song of Ice and Fire series before A Dance with Dragons came out and was reminded why I loved those books so much when I first read them - and why I couldn't reread them any time I've tried over the past few years. It's a hard series to read, knowing what will happen, who will live and who will die. Despite that, and my dislike of the last couple of books in the series so far, I love the world Martin has built. His books were the first that introduced me to intricate politics - the game of thrones, as it were - in a fantasy setting. Well, at least I thought they were intricate, until...

Robert Jordan. Wow. I've never read so many names in a series of books, and I doubt I ever will again. I recently started reading Jordan's Wheel of Time series, and my friend was near giddy with excitement. He did, however, bestow a warning on me: write down every single name, every single character, Jordan introduces. I laughed at that. He wasn't wrong. I'm sure I've missed more intrigue in that series than I've caught. Despite his endless introductions of new characters, and boundless ability to come up with unique names and roles for said characters, Jordan crafted a beautiful series before his death.

His treatment of magic is unusual but not far-fetched; his development of races and their inherent traits is insightful; truly, his worlds, his characters, his details make sense. I got to book 10 and then had to give up on it for a while (everyone who's read it, including Jordan himself, thinks book 10 is terribad.) I'm looking forward to seeing Brandon Sanderson's work on finishing the series.

Sergei Lukyanenko. Russian author Sergei Lukyanenko wrote a series that made me drink straight vodka on the rocks. I hate vodka, and it should never be sipped straight - unless, of course, you happen to live in Russia like the characters in his Watch series. These books would likely not be considered high fantasy (and high fantasy is what I love), but sometimes, you just can't help but like a book about vampires and warlocks and shapeshifters doing battle in dreary Russia. There's something compelling about these books that I can't quite put my finger on: perhaps the structure, perhaps the fact that it's a translation from Russian, perhaps the story itself. Whatever the reason, they draw you in and keep you hooked until the very end. And the movies aren't half bad either.


Those are just a handful of my favorites. Of course, we also have the aforementioned Piers Anthony, CS Lewis, JK Rowling (yes, if you like Narnia and Potter, you're a geek,) Tolkien. The list grows ever ever on.

And I'm always open to recommendations from my fellow book lusters...