reading lately: nerd love

I'm calling this latest set of books “nerd love” because all of them have some element of romance/relationship between characters you might consider to be a bit nerdy, but more so because the books revel so much in the nerdy loves of their characters - whether that’s programming, Star Wars, comics, books. And I can get on board with that! (English major nerd alert.)

When Dimple Met Rishi
Dimple has just graduated from high school and can’t wait to leave for college to get a break from her mom’s constant quest to find her the “Ideal Indian Husband.” She considers it a dream come true, if not a bit out of character, when her parents agree to let her go off to San Francisco for an intensive web development course in the summer before she starts college - but when she arrives, she realizes why: Rishi. He knows all about their parents’ plans to set them up in marriage and comes with the intent to woo her, not knowing that her parents have kept her in the dark about the whole thing. They get paired up to work on their app ideas, and Dimple finds that despite her best intentions, she might be falling for him… This book definitely has a lot of the YA romance tropes that make me roll my eyes a bit, but it really was quite charming, with cute and quirky charaters, and I loved the areas where it did go above and beyond the usual - with a more culturally diverse cast of characters, girls involved in things like programming. Definitely recommend if you want to be wrapped up in some bubbly YA rom-com type of fun for a few hours (it's a quick read!). 3.5/5 stars


The Impossible Fortress
Part coming-of-age story, part ode to 1980s nostalgia, this story is a feel-good read with a YA feel. Fourteen-year-old Billy Marvin and his friends run a little amok while his single mom works the night shift, innocent kind of fun until they hatch a crazy plan to steal from the corner shop the newly released edition of Playboy featuring Vanna White. As part of the plan, Billy is supposed to befriend the shop owner’s (supposedly) nerdy daughter to get the alarm code - but his own nerdiness comes out when they realize they are both trying to program computer games for a competition being judged by their idol. They decide to work together on a game and start to develop a relationship, until the planned heist goes down… This is kind of the 1980s, more chaste version of When Dimple Met Rishi, in a way, with the kids and their dreams of developing a computer game/app that will catch the attention of their hero in the business. And if you like books like Eleanor and Park or Ready Player One with their 1980s nostalgia, you would probably enjoy this one too - I liked it a lot but just didn’t find it to have quite as much charm as these (or When Dimple Met Rishi), so: 3/5 stars


Kindred Spirits
A Kindle Short from one of my favorite authors, Rainbow Rowell, this is a delightful little read that you could easily fit into a lunch break (and costs less than your sandwich). The story takes place outside of a movie theater, where the biggest Star Wars fans are camping out, waiting to get in to the first showing of the new movie. Except that when Elena shows up to get in line, she realizes it’s less of a camp and more like just two guys and some bad weather. She decides not to let it get in the way of her dream though, and sticks it out, eventually forming a bond with these guys and learning the ins and outs of camping out in line. I will say that I really don’t care about Star Wars (though I do have specific fond memories of my introduction to the original movie versions in middle school), but this is the kind of story where it doesn’t matter if you’re as nerdy about the thing that the characters are – it’s about their passion and their relationships, and through those, you do actually kind of end up caring about the nerdy thing on their behalf. If you like Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl or Eleanor and Park, this is in the same vein, and it’s a lot of fun. Usually I hate short stories because I’m left wanting more - I’m a novel reader through and through! - but this one was just right for me. 4/5 stars


Startup
You know how people like to say that the nerds in high school are the ones who are eventually going to come out on top? This book kind of illustrates the culmination of that, where all of the tech nerds make it big with their startups, raking in money from venture capitalists, and live the life in New York City with their fancy loft apartments and their Google office-like work perks like free fancy smoothies and meditation rooms. This social satire follows several characters through one app company’s attempt to gain major funding, from the startup’s founder with his over-the-top swagger, to a late 30-something social media assistant trying to navigate this “new” tech world and balance it with her home life, to a tech reporter trying to break a big story (spoiler alert: it has to do with that app company founder!). It’s a very of-the-moment kind of book, with all the specific references to various social media, clichés regarding the tech/app/social media world, and how modern life runs on all of these things, so I don’t know if it will stand the test of time, but it was a fun read for now! Often this kind of story stresses me out a bit to read, because you can see the bad choices the characters are about to make (gahhh! Don’t be sexting with your boss!), but I found this one surprisingly hard to put down. Kind of like how you can’t look away from a train wreck reality show… If you enjoy listening to How I Built This, or books like The Knockoff or Everybody Rise, you might want to check this one out. 3/5 stars


Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore
And now here's the one for the book nerds - aka me! I'm always a sucker for a book set in a bookstore/library, and one that has a mystery as part of it?! Sold. Lydia Smith is a bookseller who specializes in helping the most eccentric of customers at the Bright Ideas Bookstore; one day at closing she happens upon one of them, a troubled young man named Joey, hanged in the upper floor. This suicide sets her off on a path of trying to decipher clues Joey has cut from books, and it also brings her back to her long-hidden and repressed past, when she was the lone survivor of a never-solved murder. This cold case and Joey’s death end up intertwining in interesting ways as she investigates both… There’s some dark subject matter, but the tone is lighter, sometimes quirky - reminds me of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore in tone for a bookstore mystery. Really enjoyed reading this one. 4/5 stars


Here's where nerds come out on top - these stories about them are winners of books! Some others that I would put into this category have already been mentioned, but they deserve another because they're so good: Ready Player One, Eleanor and Park, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. Also, The Rosie Project.


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