Since I use Pride and Prejudice as a foil for my novel, I loved his section on the book. Nugent makes the case that Mary Bennet, Elizabeth's younger sister, is a nerd. As he describes, in Chapter 5 she cooly gives one of the foundations for the book's title and theme, that "pride... is a very common failing." Indeed, she sounds Asberger-y, reflecting on human nature much as a high functioning autistic person (one category of nerd) might. Mary is also plain, bookish, "the smart one," pedantic and conceited. Mary is "comfortable with the technical but not the intuitive" and uses the language of scientific detachment. This kind of "fractured" take on a familiar classic mirrors what I am attempting in fiction, using the novel to get a radically different, surprising and pretty offensive view of society. ( )

I would have appreciated fewer childhood anecdotes and a more coherent and cohesive structure. (If you must include personal anecdotes and self-confession in an accounting of a sub-culture, just make the entire thing a memoir. The weird transition from the mostly non-personal beginning to the "please-forgive-me" latter half of the book is what makes this so irritating. Consistency is a good thing.) ( )

2 stars: An "okay" book, possibly draggy or too light, not my thing--

-----------From the back cover:

What makes Dr. Frankenstein an archetypal nerd? Where did the modern jock come from? When and how did being a self described nerd become trendy? As the nerd emerged, vaguely formed, in the nineteenth century and popped up again and again in college humor journals and sketches, our culture obsessed over the designation.

Mixing research with autobiography... Nugent embarks on a fact finding mission of the most engaging variety. He seeks the best definition of nerd and illuminates the common ground between nerd subcultures that might seem related; high school debate team kids and ham radio enthusiasts, medieval reenactors and pro-circuit Halo players. How are those people similar? How does the history of the nerd intersect with the history of ethnic stereotypes? This clever, enlightening history of the concept of nerdiness and the activities we consider nerdy will appeal to the nerd and antinerd that lives in all of us.

---------------

I suppose the best way I can describe this book is so meh it was forgettable. In that, about 4-5 months after I finished it, as I sit down to write this review, I can remember virtually nothing about it. The description above is correct. There is a bit of memoir and a bit of history. It wasn't terrible but it was also utterly forgttable. ( )

"The first parts of their bodies to touch is their voices." -William Deresiewicz, "Community and Cognition in Pride and Prejudice" (footnote, p. 19)

"Preference for code over spoken communication reflected a desire to rationalize language." -Kristen Haring (footnote, p. 43)

"...the machine age, especially the computer, has caused modern educated humans to define what is human as 'emotional,' in contrast to thinking machines, instead of just defining what is human as 'rational,' in contrast to other animals." (74)

"My mind is a dagger pressed against your throat." (104)

"You'd best get the views of others on my role in this partly good and partly unfortunate development; I'm not sure my own recollections would be the most objective available," [Laurence] Tribe wrote me (this is how all lawyers talk to journalists). (104)

"a...choice on the part of the privileged to identify with the outsider." (123)

"You pay the price [physical or social deformity] and you're given the power." -Ron Eglash, RPI (139)

"This [LASFS] is a social club for people who for the most part have no social skills." (170)

"...a coronation is a temporary relief from the paranoia of a deceptive everyday life." (182)

"The original American dream, for the pilgrims, for the immigrant hordes, was to construct a new country that gave them the respect and possibility the old one couldn't." (186)

"It occurs to me that many people who have withstood arbitrary punishment from life are not tough, in any conventional sense of the word." (230) ( )

Here's where I wish there were half stars.
The book was sort of interesting, but...well, not nerdy enough?
It didn't give me that "oh, this is awesome" that I was looking for.

I kind of felt like he was all excited about writing a book about the history of nerds, but he couldn't find enough material so he filled in with stuff about his own nerd years.
Or possibly he wanted to write a memoir and filled in with historical information.

Either way, it felt a little bit lacking somewhere. I did enjoy the historical portion, at least. Personally, I'm not much of a memoir fan. ( )