Over the few hours it took me (and that’s a generous estimate, spread over one evening and the next day’s lunch) to read Wil Wheaton’s The Happiest Days of Our Lives, I kept having this thought: “Slow down. It’s not a long book, and you want to enjoy it.”

    Thirteen essays in this new book, and after every one, I had trouble stopping. Couldn’t help it. Wheaton’s writing’s so conversational and enjoyable, and the stories struck so many familiar chords that I’d finish one and before I could take a break, I’d already read the first paragraph or two of the next was sucked in again.

    I started regularly reading Wheaton’s blog about two years ago, after I picked up his book Just A Geek from the library and was stunned at how it hit home with me. A big part of it’s the generational familiarity: He’s two years younger than I am, give or take, which still puts him right in the pop-cultural wheelhouse of hitters like Star Wars toys and Journey. And while there aren’t many people I think can truly understand the geek dad pride I take in the fact that my 10-year-old daughter hunts trilobites and knows how to get a fighter captured on Galaga level two in order to clear the Challenging Stage at level three, I get the sense that Wheaton would be a member of that group. 

    Just A Geek is a fun read, but Happiest Days is a much closer relative to the four short pieces Wheaton included in his first book, Dancing Barefoot. He ventures further from the oft-treaded Next Generation territory, for one thing, and for another, he’s simply a better, more comfortable writer this time around.

    There’s plenty of satisfying geekstuff in these pages, from comic conventions to Dungeons & Dragons, along with eighties pop music throwbacks and memories of being scared by Poltergeist.

    But Wheaton also manages to capture things like the all-too-familiar sting of an elementary school injustice, goofily bonding with his teenage sons, a casual runner’s race-day adrenaline and the death of his cat Felix the Bear with as much honesty as he does about the sanctity of his gaming dice and the Next Generation set.

    And the ear he’s got for his audience makes for good reading. For instance, even if you didn’t grow up coveting Kenner’s Star Wars toys, Wheaton’s absolute heartbreak at leaving a K-mart without a new figure might not quite strike home, but you’ll probably find your own echo. You might not know what a saving throw is, but that doesn’t make his recollections of role-playing games any less fun. In my case, most of the poker-talk in the Happiest Days closing piece is lost, since the last time I played for money was in high school – I confess, when he blogs extensively about his poker play, I tend to skip it. Sorry, Wil – but I was still drawn in enough to really enjoy the story of Wheaton’s first illegal poker tournament.

    The Happiest Days of Our Lives isn’t a perfect book: It’s a little short, for starters, and I wish there were some previously-unpublished stories in here to make it easier to relish the read. And in a couple places, there’s a tacked-on, lesson-learning feel to a sentence or two at the ends of essays, but they’re easily forgivable, since another good bit’s just a page away.