Saturday 23 February 2013

Geek Girl Blog Tour: Holly Smale's Top 5 Geek Boys!

I'm lucky enough to have the amazing Holly Smale here today, author of the brilliant Geek Girl. It's her debut novel and is one of the most brilliant contemps that will be out this year - it's real, fun, fresh and funny. What more could you want?

Now, til you get your hands on the book, check out Holly's Site and Twitter account. And look at Geek Girl's Goodreads Page - check out all the amazing reviews of it!

Anyway, the awesome Holly has whipped up a brilliant post for us - all her fave geeky boys! Squee!! :D



1. Peter Parker
Unlike other superheroes, Peter Parker doesn’t change when he gets his powers: he’s geeky all the time, even when he’s Spiderman. A science-whiz, Parker is shy, lacks confident and is frequently bullied by his peers; he agonizes over decisions, is prone to accidents and sews his own superhero kit in his bedroom; he constructs his own shooters so that he can shoot webs from his wrists. He even gives himself geeky little pep-talks while he’s flying through the air. In the world of superheroes, Spiderman also feels the most real, the most interesting and the most vulnerable: making him, in my opinion, the best super-geek of all time.

 
2. Adrian Mole
Does Adrian know he’s a geek? Apart from brief moments of vague, painful clarity, not really: he thinks he’s a “misunderstood intellectual” on the brink of fame, riches and an incredibly active love life. One of the funniest comic heroes ever created, the unpopular, awkward and oblivious Adrian gets no cooler with age: he is as much a geek and misfit thirty years later as he is at 13 and 3/4. He may not be the smartest Geek Boy on the list, but he’s by far the most hysterical and my favourite.


3. Piggy
Arguably the most tragic geek of all time, Piggy in Lord of the Flies is an overweight, asthmatic, incredibly intellectual little boy with a tendency to point out other people’s mistakes, avoid physical exertion and dissolve into total fury whenever anybody takes his glasses. A bullied outsider from the beginning he’s not even allocated the dignity of a name, and when the other boys finally lose control completely it’s poor Piggy that bears the brunt of it. The saddest, most heartbreaking geek ever, this book hits at the heart of human cruelty and never, ever fails to make me cry.

 
4. Milhouse Van Houten
Milhouse is the scapegoat of The Simpsons: if somebody needs to be wrapped in stickers, put in a shopping trolley and rolled down a hill, it will inevitably be him. Insecure, unpopular, gullible, whiny and almost always irritating everybody else, Milhouse is the archetypal geek: he thinks his own jokes are hilarious and is allergic to “honey, wheat, dairy, non-dairy and his own tears”. His unrequited love for Lisa is relentless, and his devotion to the infinitely cooler Bart unquestioning. He’s also easily one of the most adorable characters on the show, and I love him to pieces.


5. Neville Longbottom
You could reasonably argue that if there was ever a book that represents the Rise Of The Geek, Harry Potter is it: almost everybody is an outsider until they get to Hogwarts, and the only characters that aren’t are either the repulsively ‘normal’ Dursleys or Slytherins. Thus it says something that even amongst characters like quiet, glasses-wearing Harry and book-worm Hermione, Neville stands out: always the butt of the joke, always making mistakes, quiet, insecure, teased even by his friends. He could be a “great wizard”, but his lack of belief in himself constantly holds him back. When he finally triumphs spectacularly - possibly even more so than Harry, given how much he has to transform to do it - it’s Rowling’s final way of saying: Geeks Rule.


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Previous Stop on the Geek Girl Blog Tour: Ya Yeah Yeah

Next Stop on the Geek Girl Blog Tour: SisterSpooky

Thank you so much Holly!
Hope you enjoyed the post as much as I did!  And don't forget to get your hands on Geek Girl as soon as poss - you won't regret it, trust me!!  It's an awesome book!  
Geek Girl is out 28th February, published by HarperCollins (orchestrator of this awesome tour) in paperback and e-book forms. :D
Happy reading everyone!

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