| Title | : | The Secret Loves of Geeks |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1506704735 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781506704739 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 204 |
| Publication | : | First published February 15, 2018 |
Featuring work by Margaret Atwood (Hag-Seed), Gerard Way (Umbrella Academy), Dana Simpson (Phoebe and Her Unicorn), Cecil Castellucci (Soupy Leaves Home), Gabby Rivera (America), Valentine De Landro (Bitch Planet), Amy Chu (Poison Ivy), Sfe R. Monster (Beyond: A queer comics anthology), Michael Walsh (Secret Avengers), and many more.
The Secret Loves of Geeks Reviews
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Starting out the last month of the year on the right foot with this follow-up to 2016 best-seller
The Secret Loves of Geek Girls. It's no secret by now that I absolutely adored said anthology when I picked it up last year. I even went back to reread
my review recently and got to experience all those feelings of fun rush back in, like when I had first read them.
So I was more than ready to dive into this new world, where cartoonists and professional geeks tell their intimate, heartbreaking, and inspiring stories about love, sex and, dating in this comics and prose anthology.
But the one thing I came to notice were how few illustrated stories there were compared to
The Secret Loves of Geek Girls. This follow-up paves the way for more essays and short stories to be included. That's not to say that I enjoyed the written tales less, as my favorites below will testify. Still, I wish we would've gotten a couple more comics thrown in the mix.
On a brighter note, The Secret Loves of Geeks had me wrapped in the storyline from page one. Starting with Cecil Castellucci’s piece about finding love while camped out for six weeks (!) in line for The Phantom Menace, reminiscent of Rainbow Rowell’s
Kindred Spirits.
“We were creating our own microsociety and it was all centered around this thing that we loved.”
And then moving on to the next story by Saadia Muzaffar on online (Tinder) dating and doing things different this time. It had me enthralled from start to finish. I was entirely invested to see if the whole “get to know me in a way only I knew me,” without disclosing any Google-identifiable details, would work.
I also came to notice how “The [isolating] feeling of otherness... of never quite fitting in, and of not knowing how to act, or how to be interacted with...” was ever present in this anthology, and I felt the core of it.
The last written piece I want to highlight was Hope Larson's story: “I wanted to be seen, and yet remain unknown.” She had me eating out of the palm of her hand while recalling her meeting someone “who lights up the night and slows down time.”
Finally, I'd like to highlight some of my favorite illustrated pieces:
The art style and colors are dreamy in the above.
Also, this panel from Bear With by Terry Blas:
I wasn't expecting to find a piece bringing me back to my days of loving Miranda, but I'm so here for this. Also, I cherish the tiny detailed shout-out to the iconic
“What have you done today to make you feel proud.”
And last but not least, to quote from the introduction, Cara Ellison and Maddie Chaffer rage against the hypocrisy of controlling women’s sexual fantasies in “Women Love Jerks.”
Overall, it was validating and so incredibly affirming to read through all the different stories presented in The Secret Loves of Geeks. I'm rooting for more anthologies like this to come out in the near future.
ARC kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Publication Date: February 13th 2018
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My rating is more like a 3.5, because of a few reasons. I read the first collection of stories and comics in The Secret Lives of Geek Girls, and easily fell in love with it. So when I saw that they put out another one I was really eager to read the new stories and lives these nerds had to share. However, it was a lot shorter and a few stories honestly didn't really involve any kind of nerdy/geeky stuff.
Instead of getting bogged down by the things that bummed me out I'd like to praise this book for the multiple stories and comics involving Ace/Aro, other queer and POC identities.
In particular, I loved "Being the Slayer Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Burden of Trans Girlhood" by Gwen Benaway, a really great and understandable comparison between the life of the Slayer and her struggle with the balance of that identity/responsibility juxtaposed with the desire to be just like a normal girl doing girly things.
There's a lot of really great stories in here, please check it out! -
I received a free copy of this book from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review
If you liked The Secret Loves of Geek Girls then you will probably like this volume as well. While I'm glad that they did a girls-only volume first, expanding this volume to include everyone made for some very interesting stories and a lot of new perspectives. I feel like this volume may have had more prose stories than the last one, which I don't really like in a comic anthology but was also more prepared for this time after having read the first volume, so I guess it all kind of evened out and I wasn't as upset about it as i was last time.
While I do find this series interesting and it's a great concept, I'm aro/ace so I really don't find a lot of the stories relatable in the traditional sense. There were I think a few more stories from asexual people in this volume though so I did appreciate that. But my 3 star rating comes from a place of 'this is incredibly interesting in a mostly academic sort of way to me because most of these 'universal' feelings / experiences are things I have no concept of'. Still it's a fun read and I think it would easily be 4 or even 5 stars for geeks that are allosexual.
Also I really enjoy this panel because it is literally me:
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this was a good anthology but not as good as the first one.
there's a disappointingly low number of graphic pieces, compared to the first title. some of the essays just weren't as interesting, as I ended up liking the few comic pieces a lot more. I especially liked "The Horror, The Horror", "Do You Feel It?" and "Cosplay". -
2.5
My favourites were “Deceptively Normal” by Dana Simpson and “We Will Never Be Back Here Again” by Saadia Muzaffar -
A sequel to The Secret Loves of Geek Girls, and not dissimilar except that this time boys are allowed in the treehouse, so long as they're not too smelly. Cecil Castellucci opens with a wonderful piece about meeting her first geek love in a six week queue for the The Phantom Menace. Which, oh, I remember so well the exact feeling she describes here, of sitting there watching it and the realisation suddenly dawning on you that you feel nothing at all...but imagine that after camping out there all that time, and having a relationship intertwined with it! Frankly I'm amazed she didn't bail on geekdom altogether and join whatever the mainstream equivalent of the Foreign Legion may be. Though of course, as she also notes, geek culture is much more mainstream now; back then they were mocked, and even in the camp there were insistences on protective colouration (no Star Wars t-shirts or lightsaber fights), where now there'd be much less of the former and the latter seems simply bizarre. The rest of the collection continues in similar fashion - memoirs in prose and comics, vignettes of geek life, stories of loves lost and found through this stuff, and of how books, films and comics helped people get a handle on their own identity. Many of the pieces, inevitably, are incredibly sweet. I felt particular empathy for the piece by someone for whom Lestat was the first time he realised he liked boys...and then felt almost as old as Lestat myself, because for this guy it was the film version, and on TV at that. Star Wars does seem a stronger presence this time - is it on some level still more a boy thing, or is this just the impact of the new films? - though often not in the ways you might expect; there's an absolutely hilarious piece by a guy who didn't want to admit to a boy he really liked that he disliked Star Wars, and not just the prequels (yep, them again), which small white lie spirals into a full sitcom nightmare, and heartbreak, and oh my. But elsewhere it runs the gamut from what can't be easy admissions - Gabby Rivera talking about how, as a closeted teen, she used to troll lesbian chatrooms, until one saintly denizen reached out to her - to the sort of stuff that's difficult to talk about simply because we don't have the vocabulary for it yet. Case in point, Gerard Way's brave attempt to talk about that notion many more experienced writers shy away from, where ideas happen. And on some level I suppose ultimately he bottles it, but it's still a brave attempt - which is true too even of the pieces here which appealed to me least. Because ultimately it's a document of some birth pangs from the start of a different world.
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I loved the first part (The Secret Loves of Geek Girls) and I also love this book. Honestly, they're so great.
There's both short stories and comics in this collection. While the first one focused on the stories of all kinds of geeky ladies and their experiences, we now also get the perspectives of cis m/f, trans, queer and nb geeky pals of different ages and sexualities.
The stories in the book are usually around 3 to 9 pages long. Not much space to create characters and any plot, but enough for geeky people to give little insights in their lives as very often but not always queer geeks, how they fell in love with geeky stuff or what they learned in a lifetime as geeks.
A special shout-out to the short story "What girls want" by Speranza.
It's one of the last stories in the book and I wanted to keep those last few pages for another day, but then I saw 'Tumblr' in the first line and the phrase 'Girls don't want boys, girls want high speed internet and dragons' and had to read it anyway.
This story is also compact, but still kind of different than the other pieces. It is a little piece about the development and possible meaning of a simple internet meme. And it is brilliant. -
i found this on overdrive and decided to check it out bc i just got a new library card and wanted to take advantage of it, haha. i enjoyed a lot of the mini comics in here, most of them were really cute and it was great to see so much intersectionality - there was queer poc rep as ewell as rep for things like being gender fluid, non binary, trans (i can't speak for the how well the rep was tho since i don't identify with it but i'm pretty sure all the ppl creating them were #ownvoices). the prose/vignettes/essays bored me a lot tho and i found myself skimming over nearly all of it. a lot of it was a bit pretentious at times. i love geek-y things and i would honestly class myself as one, but omg sometimes the culture around it can be SO ANNOYING. you're not better than someone because you prefer video games to clubbing. let's not shame women because their interests are different to yours. that is definitely not feminism /rant. tbh the only thing i really remember from this collection is gerard way's mini comic, which was easily my favourite.
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A fun blend of comics and prose that shows a wide range of geekdom, relationships, and identity. While some of the stories I could relate to more than others, they were all entertaining and wonderfully varied. I had hoped for a few more illustrated pieces, which might have just been due to the Secret Loves of Geek Girls....
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This was a fun anthology
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My favorite story was from Atwood but many of the others were inspirational, funny and sometimes even a little sad. It was a solid read overall.
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As dazzling as the cover!
(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Edelweiss.)
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I enjoyed The Secret Loves of Geeks even more than its predecessor, The Secret Loves of Geek Girls.
I had Geek Girls on pre-order, something I rarely do (unless there's a can't-miss deal involved), in no small part because Margaret Atwood's name was attached to the project. (FAVORITE.) The day the book arrived, I pounced on it, but my enthusiasm quickly waned when I realized that the "secret loves" referenced in the title were actual interpersonal relationships and not, as I assumed, guilty pleasures. I was seriously soured on relationships at that point. Well, relationships not involving dogs, anyway.
As a recent widow, I'm still not very keen on the topic (feeling hecka cynical over here), but the breadth of diversity found in The Secret Loves of Geeks won me over. (Also it probably helped that my expectations were adjusted accordingly.) In a mix of personal essays and comics, the contributors share their own stories and anecdotes (and even the occasional piece of advice) about love, in all its triumphs and tragedies. Most of the stories are about romantic love, yes, but platonic love and familial love and love of fictional 'verses also represent. There are coming out stories, and stories about grief and loss. Comics about trans headcanons and essays about how Buffy's journey parallels that of the author, a trans woman.
It's hard to point to a favorite or two; by the time I finished the anthology, I realized that I'd starred at least half of the pieces! There were only a smattering I didn't care for, and just two I skimmed through or skipped altogether.
Levi Hastings's "So Say We All" kind of broke me, and not just because I'm grieving too. I think the ghost dog is what set me over the edge.
"Trolling for Lesbos" by Gabby Rivera is also great, and boasts the best title of the bunch. America just jumped to the top of my wishlist.
Ivan Salazar's "The Walter Mercado Effect" is as informative as it is touching and entertaining, and Gwen Benaway's "Being the Slayer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Burden of Trans Girlhood" slayed me (sorry not sorry).But what is more feminine than fighting for your humanity? Men have their humanity handed to them. It’s preordained. Women are the ones who fight to make our way and work to have our partners respect us. People praise the sweet girl but they never acknowledge the bitch who gets shit done. So here’s to Buffy, a complex and powerful woman in a world of paper-thin girls. You’re my inspiration.
Some of the artists - Hope Nicholson, Margaret Atwood (duh!), Valentine De Landro, Amy Chu, Gabby Rivera - were already on my radar, but The Secret Loves of Geeks gave me a whole new roster to explore. Definitely a good thing.
http://www.easyvegan.info/2018/06/26/... -
CUTE AND QUEER! CUTE AND QUEER!
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4.5?
Great, diverse, humorous collection. :) -
A new anthology is here, sadly, I have to say it isn't as good as the previous book. :(
I was definitely excited when I saw there would be another Geek book coming out, I quite liked the previous one, and so I was looking forward to this one. And I finally had the chance to order it at Amazon, and yesterday (and today) I had the chance to read it. Sadly, I have to say I am quite disappointed with the book.
Not only is it shorter by quite a bit, there are less comics (my favourite part in the previous anthology) and there is just too many essays/short stories (my least favourite part in the previous anthology). Not only that, but the comics were more miss than hit for me this time. I had a few that made me very happy or had me nodding along in agreement, but some of them were just bland/not for me.
The stories/essays quite often were just not my cup of tea. This was also the case in the previous book, but I feel that it was even more in dislike in this book. Sure, some were really good and I enjoyed them (Cosplay, We will never be back here again, 50 weirdest things, Immortal Love), but with most of the stories I found myself bored or just not interested. I still tried to read them as I do want to give them a chance.
As I also heard others say and I totally agree, it just felt way less geeky/nerdy than the previous book. And I miss that.
I also didn't really find much recognition in the stories, something I had while reading the previous book. :(
So yeah, I think this one will have to go on the to-be-donated-stack in my home, and that I will have to check previews and reviews before I buy another book should there be a new one.
Review first posted at
https://twirlingbookprincess.com/ -
Cute, deeply personal and honest, I occasionally laughed out loud and almost teared up a few times. Often it felt like reading (illustrated) journal entries during periods of identity formation, regardless of age. Exploring love and loss through nerdom was brilliant and made things more clear and relatable (ex. Buffy the vampire slayer and being trans story = Whoa). I feel like I left this anthology with a deeper empathy for a broader range of people. I would recommend The Secret Loves of Geeks to anyone with even mildly curiosity about it.
Some entries could have been longer and others shorter (personal preference). Also a few times I switched to a new comic without realizing it.... but that might just be the style I'm not very used to.
It's hard to pick a favorite, and I enjoyed bits and pieces of all of the stories, but I really liked 'Harry Potter and the awkward coming-out story', 'trolling for lesbos,' and 'the white glove brigade', but that is in part because they were long enough to really get into. I'm also a big fan of Patrick Rothfuss and Maia Kobabe (which is how I found out about this book). -
It's interesting how so much of the conversation about sexual identity has changed within my own lifetime. Young people now have the words to describe who they are much more openly than twenty years ago. Beyond that, what struck me most about this book is the recognition of being comfortable in asexuality. It's not something I have thought about much at all.
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Queer and geek, this book turned me into a puddle of joy and awkwardness.
It made me feel valid and utterly happy with every page, even the ones a tiny bit sadder.
Worth every second.
ALSO THE ART WORK IS PERFECTION!!!
Also Doctor Who references.
POTTERHEAD LESBIAN COUPLE!!!
I'M DONE. LOVEEEE IT. -
I'll have to get back to this. Never thought I'd do a 'sneaky Goodreads visit'...
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I really enjoy this series of books. A nice mix of essays and short comics. A diverse group of creators. Some sweet moments, some really real ones.
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I love this book. I love it so much, I want to gift copies to everyone I know.
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Highly recommend. Probably best for nerds or geeks. It was heartwarming. It truly made me laugh and cry.
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Super queer! Nice mix of comics and prose, tons of trans themes and some POC inclusion too. Usually I hate romance topics but I’ll be keeping this.
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I loved this book so much!!! To read these different stories, these different relationships people have with fandom and media!!!! To read about new experiences but at the same time see myself in others, see myself in this idea of love!!!
It's a beautiful collection of comics and essays that I feel will resonate with anyone who sees themselves in the world of fandom :D -
As it happens with all anthologies, there were some good, heartfelt pieces, and some not so much. My favourite by far was Being The Slayer by Gwen Benaway, which is possibly the reason I might recommend this one in the future.
I liked that in several cases the concept of love was taken to more than romance or sex, I cringed real hard with some specific stories that felt like they'd come to haunt me from Tumblr's worst fandom hellholes, and I would pay good money to see some of these anecdotes as entire films or sitcom episodes. As a sum of its parts, it unfortunately fell a bit flat. Will look into some of the individual creators, though. -
An anthology that does even more and better than its predecessor! The variety of orientations and identifications amazed me. With few exceptions, this was an incredible look at love and it's many aspects and presentations.
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***this whole review is probably incoherent rambling (let's just factor in that im writing this at 10pm), but all i want to impress is that this book is worth reading. my review is prolly not gonna be the most riveting (im literally complimenting the book for the next couple hundred words), but if u want to read an actual bad review, there's some on my profile. ok goodnight, at least for me***
i personally don't consider myself a 'geek'. nothing against them (hence why this books is one of my favourites). like the most 'geekiest' thing i've ever done is read harry potter. what i appreciate from this book however is the humanity. lemme explain. i can relate to the stories and feel for the characters/authors when i was reading this book.
if you don't know the plot: the book is basically an anthology by geek creators. each story, either a personal essay or short comic, is about love. not only romantic love, but self-love, loving one's family, also sexuality and gender identity. the fact that the authors are diverse, you are sure to get a new take on this big motif.
i don't have the book with me right now so i cannot give actual proof. but, i would just like to say that this book made me feel a feeling that only occurs after i read an amazing book. a story that really stuck with me is the last one 'the multifarious monolith of love'.
all in all, you don't have to be a geek or a nerd or watch one episode of buffy the vampire slayer to relate to what the writers are talking about. if ur looking for a short read, READ THIS (if u wanna) -
I need to say right up front that I am one of the contributing authors of this book, so therefore quite biased. I received my advance copy yesterday and sat down to read the whole book in less than 24 hours. It was DELIGHTFUL. A lovely balance of prose and comics, each story highlighting a different kind of love or relationship- some romantic, some platonic, some asexual, some that end, some that last forever. It's due out on Valentines day (2/14/2018) and I highly recommend you pick up a copy!
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This was very good. I liked the mix of graphics and text pieces, though most of the ones I liked best were graphics. I also very much liked the many trans and queer voices. I would give it four stars, but several pieces toward the end of the book were a bit boring.
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I found it really hard to give this book a rating as all the stories in it were incredibly short. I'm talking 3-5 pages short. I appreciated the diversity it contained, from ethnicities, sexualities, gender identities, etc, to the diversity of the format, from short stories to comic strips. Some of the stories I really liked, some of them I really didn't like, but most of them just left me feeling kinda meh. Some of them were very clever commentaries which I appreciated. But also some of them were so short they felt like they were over before they began and didn't have anything much to say. I took each story and gave it a star rating (listed below) along with a few words which I came away from the story with (no spoilers, don't worry). I thought the last story was a weird one to end on because it never really had a conclusion, and so the anthology never really felt like it concluded. I think if I read more anthologies in the future I will be going for ones with fewer, longer stories.
My Phantom Menace (3/5 stars)
Cute story
The Horror, The Horror (1/5 stars)
Nice art but not my genera
Smudged (4/5 stars)
Nice art, right length
Being the Slayer (3.5/5 stars)
Interesting commentary but more examination than story
Women Love Jerks (2.5/5 stars)
Interesting concept but art style not for me
Do you feel it (3/5 stars)
Cute and nice art but too short
The Walter Mercado Effect (4/5 stars)
Interesting commentary with long narrative story. The right length
First Loves (2.5/5 stars)
Not very many first loves, too short
Deceptively Normal (5/5 stars)
Fun art, funny story
The 50 Weirdest Things That Happen in Nerdy Relationships (4/5 stars)
Funny, some were really relatable
Ace Pilot (3/5 stars)
Kinda meh
We Will Never Be Back Here Again (3/5 stars)
Um
Genderqueer (3/5 stars)
Very staccato but last two panels were good
Cosplay (4/5 stars)
Sweet and self contained
Wife (4/5 stars)
Nice art, gets its point across, sweet
Our Story (3.5/5 stars)
Cute but art style makes characters look like children which is a bit uncomfortable
Pros At Cons (3.5/5 stars)
Interesting commentary
Star Struck (4/5 stars)
Nice art, funny yet serious
Tinismessypast (3.5/5 stars)
Interesting way of validating peoples’ embarrassing pasts
Them Struggles (4/5 Stars)
Cute art, good message
The Tao of Ducky (2/5 stars)
Cringe, was it supposed to be a commentary on how nerdy guys get away with stuff because they’re nerdy or just another example of it
So say we all (4/5 stars)
Right in the feels
Immortal love, first edition (2/5 stars)
Her geeky interests were portrayed as almost unhealthy, I thought this was supposed to showcase geeky love
Bear with (4/5 stars)
Super cute
The white glove brigade (4/5 stars)
Interesting, brash
Josei (2/5 stars)
Nice art but no plot
Cool chick (1/5 stars)
The shoplifting made me uncomfortable
Trolling for lesbos (4/5 stars)
Good to see positive help from strangers
The new gods of the airwaves (4/5 stars)
Very welcome to night vale
Tell me about your trans head cannons (4/5 stars)
Cute art, you can make anything your own
Untitled (1/5 stars)
I don’t get it
Love in alderaan places (4/5 stars)
Never pretend to like something you don’t
Gaming is bad for me (1/5 stars)
Again I thought this was meant to showcase the wonderfulness of geek culture and fandom
What girls want (5/5 stars)
Brilliant, and all about a meme
Harry Potter and the Awkward Coming Out Story (3.5/5 stars)
Sweet and honest
Dear 1st Love (4/5 stars)
Interesting poem
The Multifarious Monolith of Love (4/5 stars)
Who knew I’d ever like a story about a baby
