Calendar Girls July: Favorite Book with a Geeky Character

July is heeeerrrreeeee! I don’t know why this is so exciting to me, usually I dread July, but this year I just am. So happy July all. 2020 is more than halfway over.

Our Calendar Girls theme this month is Embrace Your Geekiness Day: Favorite Book with a Geeky Character. Will you be surprised to hear that I picked this theme? This is *so* in my wheelhouse. The number one best way to guarantee I pick up a book is to make it about a nerd, especially a YA book. Though I’m looking through my list and I don’t see many nerds of color, so if you’ve got a recommendation for that, hit me up in the comments.

And I’d like to give a quick shout-out to Geekerella by Ashley Poston which is like, the ultimate feel-good nerd fiction.

Now then, my very FAVORITE is…

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Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

I connected with Fangirl on the deepest possible level. Though I was not super into fan-fiction the way Cath was, so many other things about her college experience reflected my own. Things that, even though I read this book well into my twenties, I was still trying to deal with emotionally. Your best friend (in Cath’s case, her twin sister) not responding to your calls/texts. Alchohol ruining … everything, even when you’re not the one drinking it. Mental illness in a parent. The themes in this book struck so many chords with me. The fact that Cath was as deeply entrenched in her fandom as I was in mine, albeit by different avenues, was icing on the cake. And, for the record, I have had my own spotty forays into fan-fiction, though I read more than I wrote.

This month’s theme is about characters, though, and I adored Cath as a character. She is sweet, innocent, kind, earnest, and (this is the kicker) nobody hates her for it. My own experience, in college and after, has been that my nerdiness and earnestness put people off or annoy them. Not so for Cath. People find her earnestness charming and her nerdiness adorable. I admit I envied that. I love her commitment to her family and the vice-grip strength with which she attaches herself to her friends. And I’ve said it before on this blog, Rainbow Rowell has a knack for writing about people that (for me) feels SOOOO real. Like magic almost.

I adore Fangirl. It’s the book that got me back into Young Adult fiction after swearing it off for a while.

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Thanks to Dani, Adrienne, and Flavia for hosting this month. You can check out their posts to see other folks’ picks. 🙂

P.S. Reminder, in the comments, books with nerds of color. GO!