Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir by Wil Wheaton

Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir Reviews

• 
  Jenn

  Wil Wheaton is a national treasure. Not just for being in one of the most popular science-fiction shows of all time. Not just for being in Stand by Me. Or Big Bang Theory. Or The Guild. Wil Wheaton is a national treasure because he has spoken openly and fearlessly about his experiences of child abuse, depression, and anxiety. He has made countless survivors, including myself, feel less alone, less afraid, and more hopeful. And I will always grateful for that. Thank you, Wil.
  
  This book has a fascinating structure. Essentially, it is a reprint of his 2004 memoir, JUST A GEEK, which he has annotated in order to reflect upon his experiences with more distance, to demonstrate his growth and changes in perspective, and yes, to tell silly jokes. Though I am in the library world now I am an academic at heart, and I love a good footnote apparatus. It's really fun to flip back and forth between the TNG days, the early aughts, and the present. Wil is an entertaining, thoughtful, and insightful narrator of his own experience, and it is a whole lot of fun to watch him interact with his past selves.
• 
  Jenn

  DNF...but please don't take that as a condemnation of the book, as a whole. Read on, if you're interested.
  
  I still have Just A Geek on my bookshelves, though I haven't read it in ages. And while I read a ton, I don't actually keep a lot of books. So I was excited when I got the ARC for this from Edelweiss. But it is just not fun to read digitally. I read relatively quickly, and it took me over an hour to get through the first chapter. At the end of that, my Kindle tells me it will be 17 more hours to finish this book. The original is not a long book! I've not read a book where the footnotes at clickable and it opens a small window, which you read, then close before. Turns out, that severely increases the amount of time it takes to read this book and it's trying my patience.
  
  For the actual content, I'm enjoying it. It's a bit repetitive, but I do appreciate the introspection and the humor.
  
  So, do what I'm going to do: wait until this actually comes out and buy a real, dead tree copy and enjoy. And buy it from an indie book store, damnit!
• 
  Amber

  As an academic and a writer, I understand all too well Wheaton's lifelong wrestling match with imposter syndrome. He bares his soul in this memoir--get the audiobook, it's so, so well narrated--and what I love is that he is deeply aware of his own imperfections. Unlike most celebrities who want to present only the best versions of themselves, Wheaton looks back on the writings of his younger self, fleshing out his own stories from a more mature perspective. I do have to take off a star for some of the cringe-y, redundant "mea culpas" for the insensitivity of his past self (the "fast forward 30 seconds" button on Audible was very helpful for that), but overall I was immersed in his story. I even got a little teary at a few points, such as the story about leaving his great aunt's house for the last time (anyone who's lost an elderly relative will be affected by that one). His story of child abuse on a film set later in the book broke my heart—it was tough to hear the raw, unfiltered pain in his voice. No other audiobook narrator I know of has taken such a risk. Overall, his life story can seem quite tragic--the memories of someone who spent their 20’s attempting to recapture something they lost before they knew what they had. But it's high time someone spoke out about the trauma of being a child star, and the long-lasting impact that makes on a person's life. I liked him as Wesley Crusher, I liked him as a blogger, and I continue to like him now.
• 
  Alan

  Rec. by: Version 1.0
  Rec. for: Works in progress
  
  

  "I never should have knocked."
  —Lucas Sinclair, Stranger Things, S4E9.

  
  
  There are some celebrity autobiographies that were obviously written by someone else—sanitized, ersatz works, "as told to" the real writer.
  
  This is not that.
  
  
  Wil Wheaton's annotated, updated memoir
  Still Just a Geek is raw and open—even more so than its beta release. This is not a bad thing, not at all. Wheaton also, still, has a lot of work to do on his issues (as he acknowledges in the Afterword to this iteration).
  
  This is not a bad thing either.
  
  What follows is my original review of
  Just a Geek from 2011—just annotated. The new stuff, like the above, is in italics.
  
  
  Neil Gaiman, who seems to pop up all over the place these days, says in his Introduction (page xiii) to this autobiographical work, "In an era of people blogging as pseudo-celebrities, this is the story of a celebrity blogging as a person."
  
  This is precisely correct.
  Wil Wheaton stands out among former child stars and other Hollywood types: he's grown up, not just grown older.
  
  This remains as true in 2022 as it was in 2004. If anything, Wheaton's even more mature and forthcoming in
  Still Just a Geek... he acknowledges and apologizes—sincerely, I believe—for faults ranging from his misuse (and overuse) of the word "lame" as a pejorative to the many times he tried to placate his parents in print, despite what really does come across as their systematic gaslighting and emotional abuse.
  
  For those who may think of him only as the character Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, or as one of the principals not named Corey in the film Stand By Me, let me tell you that he's developed into much more than that. Witty, honest, passionate and articulate, this transcription of entries from Wheaton's weblog in the early 2000s shows a man with a wife and a family, whose triumphs and crises of confidence could be anyone's.
  
  I like his taste in music, too. As soon as Wheaton started the first chapter with a quote from a Pixies song I was just listening to, and then name-checked Portland, Oregon and Powell's Technical Bookstore on the very next page... I knew I was gonna like this book.
  
  He still has pretty good taste in tunes, by the way...
  
  Turns out I was right. I burned through
  Just a Geek in just a few hours, in fact, eager to see what Wheaton would talk about next. And although the book ends before Wheaton's more recent career resurgence in series like
  Leverage, it's easy to see the roots of that newfound success in his straightforward self-assessment here.
  
  It took me a lot longer to get through
  Still Just a Geek. The footnotes are tagged with tiny symbols that I often found hard to locate, and there are a lot of 'em. And, on the plus side, it's a much longer book, and a significant improvement on its predecessor.
  
  
  Wil Wheaton's blogging continues at
  WIL WHEATON dot NET: 1.5 (up through 2006) and then at
  Wil Wheaton: In Exile (which is currently current, as I type this)... that latter link, at least, should probably be on your blogroll, too...
  
  Ahem. Those older links are still resolving as of the date of this review, but they're not the most current way to meet your Wheaton needs. As of 2022, you can find Wil's current blog at
  http://wilwheaton.net/. Things change fast and often, online.
  
  I will note that if Wheaton does revisit this project in another 20 years or so, as he mentions wanting to do, I think the ideal title for his next update would have to be:
  

  Stil Wil
• 
  Leah

  I should've loved this book, or at least liked it, but I didn't. At all. In fact, I hated it. All of it.
  
  Here is why:
  
  THE BOOK
  
  This isn't a new book. This is a previously written book published in 2004, based on blog posts started in 2001, and now said 2004 book was re-published in 2022 with annotations (more on those later). So basically there are 3 timelines here: 2001 Wil Wheaton, 2004 Wil Wheaton, and 2022 Wil Wheaton. And if you think it was always easy to differentiate between the three Wils, it wasn't. I had to pause frequently to think, 'oh is this new text? Or was this from the first book? Which Wil is saying this: 2004 or 2022?' It's like the first season of Westworld with the overlapping timelines and no one has any idea what the f. is going on.
  
  The aforementioned annotations added very little, if anything, to the original story, or the new story, or any story. Most of them were (a) endless, needless apologizing (more on that later) by Wil on behalf of his younger self; (b) overused cultural references (Clerks, The Simpsons, The Big Lebowski); (c) a lot of back and forth with his editor over the word 'cool' (literally, no one cares); and (d) explanations of things that needed no explanations (who does Wil imagine his target audience to be that they don't know what a record or a palm pilot were, or who Beavis and Butt-Head and Carson Daly were??).
  
  Also, the annotation symbols were small and easy to miss. This made for such clunky, uneven reading. I had to go back and reread so many freaking times because my brain won't let me skip even just one.
  
  And how bloated was this book? We had 3 introductions, a note to reader, an author's note, a long-ass epilogue, 2 appendixes, 2 acknowledgements, a further reading, an afterword, and an about the author page. In between all that business was a ho-hum story about how Wil's family wronged him, how he hates acting, no he loves acting, how he hates Star Trek, no he loves Star Trek.
  
  There wasn't a lot of storytelling here for someone who supposedly loves writing and storytelling. There was a lot of telling and not showing, though. A lot of jokes that fell flat. A lot of filler (that speech to Mensa, Wil? Chef's kiss on the self-congratulatory, pompous cringe. So happy you included that for us little people).
  
  THE MAN
  
  This next part won't be fair.
  
  Do I have to like a celebrity to enjoy their memoir? Well, no. But it helps. I had lukewarm feelings on Wheaton before I read this. He existed, but did I care? No. But I loved, loved Wesley Crusher when I was nine-years-old. My parents watched TNG when it first aired, and--as we had one television in the house--it was either watch Star Trek or watch nothing. I liked Wesley because he was a kid like me. And he was cute. Now as an adult, I tend to skip the Wesley-centered episodes, but that's not Wil Wheaton's fault. As he points out many, many times: he was just an actor reading words off a script.
  
  But god damn, after reading this book, I don't really care for Wil Wheaton. Some of that may not be his fault; he is who he is, you know.
  
  In one of the many prologues, Wil prepares us in his most serious adult tone that what we are about to read next will shock and offend us. That he was a casual bigot, that he was hateful. And I'm clutching my pearls, thinking 'dude, were you a skinhead or something?' Atlas, no. Not even close. Not even laughably close. All that apologizing, all that bending-of-the-knee to the gods of political correctness, and for what? For using the word 'lame'? For being a little bit weirded out by homosexuality? Jesus Christ.
  
  But fear not! Wil knows now the correct language to use and the right words to regurgitate to keep his career afloat: something something white privilege; something something cis gender; something something the patriarchy.
  
  Here's where it gets personal (for me). After spending several paragraphs on why he likes space and space travel, Wil later on refers to Elon Musk as "garbage", and I lost it and also any respect for him. Dude, it's one thing to dislike someone as a person for whatever brash personality quirks they may have but to dismiss someone entirely who has done more to ignite interest in space and space travel and engineering than anyone else in recent decades is so short-sighted and willfully ignorant and incredibly rude. You're garbage, Wil Wheaton. You're a freaking actor.
  
  And one last thing, The Big Bang Theory sucks. I've never met a nerd who likes that show. It's nerd cosplay. The producers or writers or whoever were like, "how can we make a show about nerds? Oh, I know, we'll just shoehorn in some Luke Skywalker references ('cause nerds like that shit, right?) around some unfunny jokes and throw a laugh track over it." Watch Silicon Valley, instead.
• 
  Doreen

  4/13/2022 Full review tk (maybe even later today!) at
  TheFrumiousConsortium.net.
  
  4/13/2022 I make it a habit of avoiding memoirs published by men in their 30s, so never got around to reading Wil Wheaton's Just A Geek, despite it seeming squarely in my wheelhouse. Reading this annotated version drove home to me how wise that policy continues to be, despite the many interests the author and I share, including but not limited to Star Trek, sci-fi, acting, blogging, tabletop games and parenting.
  
  The trouble with the vast, vast majority of autobiographies written by men in their 30s is that the authors cannot properly view the trauma they've undergone -- which is what largely compels men like these to write these books at this stage in their lives -- without managing to sound both trite and obliviously self-important. The luckiest of these authors at least have an inkling of how much therapy they still need, but almost none of them realize that time (at the very least, and even without the benefit of actively working on your spiritual/emotional well-being) almost always grants a very necessary perspective. Mr Wheaton was, unfortunately, no different. I can absolutely see why Entertainment Weekly succinctly if harshly called the original book whiny. There's a lot of unprocessed trauma on display and a lot of attempts at edginess that just come off as douchebaggery.
  
  So it's a fascinating enterprise to see Mr Wheaton tackle his book once more almost two decades later. His annotations are almost all correct, both in exploring the deeper truth behind what he said at the very turn of the 21st century and in apologizing for unfortunate language and narrative choices, with one caveat: I do think that he's actually a little too hard on his younger self, particularly in his adoption of projected optimism as a coping mechanism. Sure, he says now that the confident pronouncements that he made back then were in service to placating the "Prove Everyone Wrong" voice in his head, but there's still value in making positive affirmations about yourself and your goals, and it seems weird to kick his younger self over what was essentially a helpful, if not outright necessary, way to deal with life's disappointments.
  
  That said, wow, it's so much better reading this book from the perspective of a dude who's about to turn fifty. I mean, the covers alone evoke the wildly differing atmospheres: the original was incredibly emo while the present version is far more self-deprecating and self-aware. Which isn't at all to say that Mr Wheaton was a bad person when he was younger, or that the angry, self-absorbed essays he wrote at that time have no worth. As a historical snapshot, they're actually a really great look into that era of celebrity and the Internet; as reading material tho, they are 100% Not My Thing. And that's fine: not every book is for everybody. I'm just glad that I came to this version at this age, so I can gain a newfound appreciation for Mr Wheaton instead of being all "JFC, this is what happened to the guy who played Wesley?"
  
  Because the Wil Wheaton of recent years can see past the anger and assumptions of his younger self to the scared, sad kid behind the words. He and I don't necessarily have the same perspectives on everything, but I very much valued his present-day thoughts on abuse and mental health and the importance of education and kindness (and greatly appreciate his commitment to good parenting throughout.) The only thing that really stuck out to me was the fact that no one seems to have pointed out to him that his Dad's bullying likely stemmed from an insecurity at no longer being the family's main breadwinner. Which doesn't excuse Dad's really shitty behavior, but definitely makes his abuse and his clear preference for the younger brother seem less inexplicable, IMO.
  
  Overall, this was the kind of chronicle that rarely makes its way out of nonfiction: honest and thoughtful, if occasionally uncomfortable for everyone involved. There were parts reading the older version that I thoroughly understood the popularity of the "shut up, Wesley" catchphrase, but I do think that Mr Wheaton has grown to be the kind of good, genuine person that he always thought of himself as being (and hopefully continues to work on being.) It was also really nice to learn that the main cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation get along so well, both then and now. As fun and salacious as it can be to read about backstabbing primi, it's really so much more affirming to read of nurturing and warmth in action.
  
  I do recommend getting this book in physical format tho. I'm sure the digital versions will be properly formatted, but I was forced to read this as a sideways pdf on my phone, which had me absolutely seething. Extra irony points for Mr Wheaton being a champion of digital liberty -- not that the formatting was in any way his fault. Sometimes, profit-focused goons screw all us creatives over.
  
  Still Just A Geek: An Annotated Collection Of Musings by Wil Wheaton was published April 12 2022 by William Morrow & Company and is available from all good booksellers, including
  Bookshop.
• 
  Melissa

  Contender for favorite book of the year.
  
  In my lifetime I’ve read a lot of memoirs and a lot of mental health books and I believe this is one of the most unique approaches to both I’ve ever read. I loved that Wheaton took his original memoir and annotated and added to it. I appreciated the insights about inappropriate behavior and gaslighting. I loved the transparency about mental health and childhood trauma. And I connected so much with the authenticity and growth.
  
  As a kid, I watched Star Trek, largely at first because of Wheaton and LeVar Burton. It gave me a place to escape when my world wasn’t so great and it wasn’t something I shared with anyone because none of my friends watched it.
  
  As an adult, I’m even more thankful for that show because without it and The Big Bang Theory’s Wil Wheaton, I don’t know if I’d have picked up this book. And I’m so glad I did. From the stories like the one about women’s access to health care to the William Shatner anecdote, this book is an absolute must read (or must listen in my case).
• 
  Brett Plaxton

  I’ve been a fan of Wil Wheaton since I first saw him as Gordie Lachance and Wesley Crusher. When I first got Twitter in 2011, I started following him and began to follow his blog. It was cool to see some of those blog entries in this book. I hadn’t read the original Just a Geek before, but I like the idea of this book being an annotated version of that book. I’ve seen a few people say they thought him holding himself accountable for his cringe writing to be long-winded, but I went the audiobook route on this one and it worked for me. Hearing about the abuse he endured was so upsetting, it’s not cool how people are exploited like that at such a young age.
  
  Also, love the fuck you to JK Rowling he throws in this book!
• 
  Susan Tunis

  I wanted to give this four stars, because much of this was interesting and entertaining. And I especially enjoy listening to celebrity memoirs read by the celebrity. I should probably mention that I'm not a Wil Wheaton fan. Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against him, but I never saw his Star Trek show, and I didn't know much about him.
  
  He was interesting, in that recovering-child-actor sort of way, but there were more than a few things I had problems with. The annotation of a previously published memoir format was super confusing in audio. Wait! Was this part written in 1992, 2002, or 2022? I frequently had no idea without something really concrete to anchor the text. The subtle variations of how he pitched his voice just didn't cut it.
  
  Throughout the book, Wheaton goes on at length about how much he loves to write, and how it's really his primary job now. If so, why not write something fresh, rather than recycle the same content from a decades old blog, to a decades old book, to an updated book?
  
  The non-linear format did nothing to help the storytelling. And there were some truly unfortunate redundancies. This would be a lot more forgivable were the book not so long! The average audiobook is about 9 or 10 hours long. This one clocks in at a whopping 24 hours! Less is more, Wil, less is more! That said, there is definitely new content from the old version of Just a Geek. So, if you just can't get enough Wil Wheaton, today is your lucky day!
• 
  Kieran McAndrew

  Wil Wheaton proves he is much more than Wesley Crusher in 'Just a Geek' and although this updated and annotated edition may appear to be a retread of a book written at the turn of the century, the notes add insight and clarity on events which were still raw or hidden at the time of initial publication.
  
  If readers have already bought 'Just a Geek', the notes themselves are worth the price. If this is the first encounter, buy 'Still Just a Geek'. It's not necessary to buy both titles, unless you want to reward Wheaton twice.
• 
  Kerrie

  This has been such a profound and meaningful read. I threw my head back and laughed at his nerdy references, I've cried with him over trauma, I even suffered a few minor panic attacks as he's described his anxiety and depression. It's been a wild ride. I know I don't know him, but I'm still so proud of him. I'm proud that people like Wil Wheaton are out there, thriving despite many hardships and making the world a better place.
• 
  Berni Phillips

  I would not recommend this book. It is an overly footnooted vanity piece.
  
  Evidently, some decades ago he published "Just a Geek," which was a story of mostly his struggles as an actor after leaving Star Trek: the Next Generation. He complains that people called this whiny, but it is. He has gone back and excessively footnoted this book, which makes up half of this book. It was an embarrassment to read. Rather than annotate it (many times a page in most cases) to show how he has matured, he should have just let it sink into well-deserved oblivion.
  
  I watched St:NG when it was new. I didn't care for his character on the show. That wasn't his fault, it was the writers. I did enjoy his appearances on Big Bang Theory, playing a fictionalized version of himself. (He served as nemesis to Sheldon, one of the main characters.) I also like his narrations on John Scalzi's audio books. He's a good voice actor. I don't think he's a good writer.
  
  I can't imagine why they published this. Many of the annotations are repetitious exchanges with his editor who objects to Wheaton's constant use of the word, "cool."
  
  If you do read this, I would recommend skipping the whole "Just a Geek" and starting in the second part with the essay about his wife's medical emergency. Even the later sections have far too many unnecessary footnotes. They became really, really annoying, disrupting the text and making it feel choppier than necessary. I finally stopped reading the footnotes and it was a much smoother read.
  
  I would also skip the speeches, which cover things he had spoken of previously. And the appendices which are also embarrassing.
  
  I would like my money back. Don't waste yours.
• 
  Kris Tyler

  It took me a few day to process this book before I could write my review. I have been a fan of WW since ST:TNG. Call it a middle school crush. He kinda fell out of my radar for several years until I started Following Jenny Lawson- The Bloggess. She wanted a picture of some other celebrity doing some task, but ended up with a picture of WW collating paper! It was genius and had me scouring the internet for more on WW. Then he showed up on Big Bang Theory, and my favorite SciFy network shows, then he had his own SciFy network show…..I was in geek girl heaven!
  I knew from his blogging that he was thrown into acting by his parents. I knew he was a HUGE advocate for mental health awareness. I knew, from Facebook he was also an advocate for rescue animals.
  But this book… oh wow. It gave me a little anxiety. The depths of his sadness and fear and self-doubt were palpable. The fact that he has been overcoming all his traumatic experiences and healing himself is inspiring. The love he has for his chosen family is beautiful. The relationship with his TNG family which he welcomed back into his life is beautiful. The ferocity with which he discusses the de-stigmatization of mental health issues is admirable.
  He may not have had the fame and celebrity of some of his peers, but he did not allow the horrible fates of some of his other peers to happen to him. He seems to be in a very genuinely happy, balanced place.
  And that’s exactly what you would want for an “old friend.”
  
• 
  Amanda

  I sooo wanted to like this book. I started listening to the audiobook and realized I simply couldn't do it. Every footnote was read and it got repetitive. And it's long - 24.5 hours long. I appreciated Wil's honesty and he's an excellent writer but the constant apologies got to be a bit much. I switched to an ebook via my library hoping it would get better. Nope. The essays at the end could have (should have?) been a separate book or scaled down. I basically skimmed the last 150 pages because I was tired of reading this long memoir. Also, in some, not all, but some of the essays - it was the same message. Again, could have been scaled down. The book did have some good points and being a fan, again, appreciated his honesty. Overall, this book just didn''t do it for me.
• 
  Elysa

  Wil Wheaton revisits his book "Just a Geek" and annotates it and adds content to create "Still Just a Geek." If this type of memoir became a whole subgenre, I'd be all in. It was fascinating to listen to someone basically speaking to himself from 20 years ago and acknowledging how he's changed, learned, and challenged his own beliefs.
  
  Wheaton reads the audiobook, so it's a visceral experience. He laughs, cries, and adds a bunch of audio-specific asides.
• 
  Bryan

  I have never seen Star Trek the Next Generation. I did force myself to watch the first season of the original Star Trek series. It was OK, but I am by no definition of the word a Trekkie. I first encountered Wil Wheaton on Slashdot many years ago. I knew he was known for acting in Star Trek, but he was just a geek back then who was on the website Slashdot where I got most of my tech news. He later popped up again on the Big Bang Theory. I thought his character on that show was pretty funny. He is also one of the kids in Stand by Me, which is a film based on the Steven King book The Body. I explain this to set the context for why I read this book in the first place.
  
  This is not an amazing light hearted book about geeks. Although Wheaton is actually a very witty author. He continually tosses light hearted inside jokes to the computer geeks and board game geeks out there. The first part of the book is an apology for his original book. He published a bunch of his blog entries quite a few years ago under the title "Just a Geek". He had some incredibly insulting and misogynistic takes back then. He clearly has grown up quite a bit (haven't we all). He takes the brave move to not remove any of the really insulting thing that he wrote in the original book. He owns them and sincerely apologizes that he ever felt that way or said those things. It doesn't make up for having said them, but it is the best he can do after he learned to be better.
  
  Honestly, parts of this book are difficult to read. He talks about how his parents exploited him and his sister and how they basically spent all of the money he earned as a child actor and made him take loans from them on the money that he earned. His mother and father exploited and abused him over the course of his life. He has now severed ties completely with them. It sounds like he is in a happier place now, but it hurts to see any human go through that sort of thing.
  
  There are times when reading this book that you wish you could just give him a hug and assure him that there are other people out there that will love you and take care of you. He is very open about his mental health struggles, and he has been a positive voice for mental health advocacy.
  
  I liked this book. If you have ever compiled your own kernel, or if you used to get your news from Slashdot, then this book might be worth it for the nostalgia trip. There is a decent amount of foul language in this book. If that is not your thing definitely pass on this one.
• 
  Sarah

  All I can say is that it was an absolute privilege to read this book; to be given a glimpse inside Wil's head. This is an annotated and expanded edition of his original book (*Just a Geek*), and it is so refreshing to see someone, celebrity or otherwise, take ownership of the horrible things they said or wrote, to apologize for them, and to strive to be better. Finally, I believe this book is a triumph in the goal to destigmatize mental illness (and he says it *is* an illness, because illnesses are not our fault) and promote ways to lead your best possible life, despite battling these inner demons every day. (He also adds trigger warnings where appropriate.) He doesn't sugar coat it. It's real and it hurts and parts of it were tough to read because I wanted to reach through the pages and tell him it was going to be okay. But it was *honest* and *real*.
  
  Despite not knowing him personally, having read this book, I am so proud of the man he's become. He's been through so much - he *continues* to battle his brain every day - and yet he says he's happy and living the life he wants. I really hope that whoever ends up reading this finds it as inspiring as I did.
• 
  Sara Platt

  DNF... I just... don't care
• 
  Sherrie

  I am in awe of and admire Wil for his ability and willingness to speak and write about childhood parental trauma and abuse, mental health and therapy, and about learning, changing, and evolving. He is able to speak to, and for, those of us with similar experiences who can’t communicate like he can. We see him and he sees us. I am beyond delighted that Star Trek and Star Trek Picard finally got it right for Wesley Crusher and Wil Wheaton and righted some of the wrongs.
• 
  Lady Mockingbird

  I took my time with this one. Being that is is an annotated reprint of Just a geek. I needed time to re read each essay and then do it again, pausing for the annotations. It was well worth taking the time to do it this way. Will Wheaton's look back on his earlier writing shows huge growth for him as a human and as a writer. This book is a keeper.
• 
  Laura Starzynski

  I had a crush on Wil Wheaton when I was 13. Thinking back to my early teenage crushes, he is actually one of the few who survived into middle age instead of succumbing to drugs and suicide. His insight into his life at the peak of his fame and then after was agonizing to read, so it made sense why so many others didn't make it in that business. In this book, he annotates his earlier memoir, walking back his "edgy" jokes and contextualizing his perspective at the time. And it can be funny, but also rough. He has a lot of insight into his mental health and trauma today that he didn't have in the original book, and it was interesting to see that growth.
  
  At over 24 hours of audiobook, this was a LONG read. I definitely liked some of his essays better than others, but it is safe to say that he's a good writer.
  
  And to speak to the man behind the childhood star, I hope he continues his healing journey. The raw emotion in some of these essays makes me still a little worried for him. He was open and honest and earnest almost to a fault. He seems like a genuinely kind person, though, and I wish him well.
• 
  Jaimee

  I'm actually pretty glad I didn't read the original Just a Geek and got to only experience this annotated, updated version Wil Wheaton's memoir. He revisits his 29 year old self and can give a more grown up and educated perspective on things. He apologizes for offensive stories, terms, and language he used previously and shares the many breakthroughs he's made in therapy and his life in general since the first publication. This is packed full of humor, wisdom, raw emotion, passionate world views, and both fun and more intimate stories. I really enjoyed getting to know Wil Wheaton better and connecting with a lot of what he had to share. I think it was really brave of him to put this all out there and it's a must read for any Star Trek fans!
• 
  Denise

  Fascinating read! Despite the annotated sections are in tiny type, I pushed through because it was so interesting. I've been a fan of Wil Wheaton since first seeing him in Star Trek Next Generation and its nice to hear how well he and his family are doing.
• 
  Ryan Case

  I'll admit to being a HUGE fanboy of Wil's - I've enjoyed his blog for years, I've enjoyed his other writings (the original form of this book included, pre-annotations), his acting work, and his audiobook work... and even with all of that in place, I never truly got the gravity of what all Wil was dealing with in his personal life. This memoir deals with some HEAVY topics - some fun too - but I truly think those that struggle to understand the life of celebrity, or even what people go through with anxiety and depression, could really stand to read this. I can't fathom weathering half of what Wil went through and turning out half as well-adjusted as he is today in 2022 (I don't know him personally, but he certainly has an online presence and have met at Conventions before).
  
  I can't recommend this book enough - whether you're a Star Trek or BBT fan or not, this is certainly worth the read. If you have the time and desire for an even MORE enjoyable experience with the book, I'd suggest listening to the audiobook, of which Wil himself is the narrator - and you get some special/extra bonuses.
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  Gabriel Mero

  I was very excited when I heard this was coming on. I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention, because I thought this was a sequel of sorts to Just a Geek, not a reprinting of JAG with annotations. The original material itself is worthy of 5 stars, not counting all the bonus material this edition features. I found myself rolling my eyes every time Wil apologized for an old joke that would be deemed offensive today, and/or apologized for saying guys as it isn't gender neutral/inclusive of non-binary people. Aside from that little nitpick there was a lot of material I wasn't already familiar with, my favorite being the story behind Wil's movie The Curse. I went with the audio book, so hearing Wil read these difficult parts and audibly cry added an extra weight.
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  Derek

  I enjoy most memoirs and autobiographies, especially if the author narrates the audiobook. I wasn't sure how an annotated memoir would work, especially in audiobook form, but clearly a lot of work has been done to make it easy to follow while listening. I didn't read Just A Geek, but this book makes it like two memoirs in one, and Wil's reflections on his younger self just adds depth to the entire thing.