The Geek's Guide to Dating

by Eric Smith

You keep your action figures in their original packaging. Your bedsheets are officially licensed Star Wars merchandise. You're hooked on Elder Scrolls and Metal Gear but now you've discovered an even bigger obsession: the new girl who just moved in down the hall. What's a geek to do? Take some tips from Eric Smith in The Geek's Guide to Dating. This hilarious primer leads geeks of all ages through the perils and pitfalls of meeting women, going on dates, getting serious, breaking up, and establishing a successful lifelong relationship (hint: it's time to invest in new bedsheets). Full of whimsical 8-bit illustrations, The Geek's Guide to Dating will teach fanboys everywhere to love long and prosper.

• ISBN10: 1594746435
• ISBN13: 9781594746437
• Publish Date: 3 December 2013
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Quirk Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 208
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781594746437

Reviews

[Angie]

The Geek's Guide to Dating is a quick, funny, and educational journey through the world of relationships, but geek style! It uses lots of references to various aspects of pop culture, and draws parallels between them and dating, which surprisingly made a lot of sense. Thinking about finding your own Player Two as a videogame quest was actually quite helpful and put things into an easy to understand perspective. I'm a single geek and the idea of getting out there and dating is quite cumbersome, but after finishing this little guide, it seems more fun and doable.

The target audience of The Geek's Guide to Dating is straight male geeks, but I do think many of tips are applicable to women and even gay geeks (although non-geeks may be out of luck). There is a blurb within the first chapter to address "gal geeks," so that was nice, and it's true that you only need to switch around a few pronouns to make it relevant to you if you are not in fact a straight male. Although I do think this could have been better and even more helpful if the advice had been gender and sexuality neutral, with a few specific sections for women or non-straight people. Geeks come in all types!

In general, I found the advice given in The Geek's Guide to Dating to be good and organized in a logical manner (geeks love logic!). It starts with addressing yourself first, which is great, since of course, you need to know exactly what you want and have to offer in a relationship. Then it goes through how to meet a potential partner, asking them out, first date ideas, and taking it to the next level. There's also a chapter on dumping and being dumped, and how to get back out there after a failed relationship! The one section I had a problem with was on what to wear on the first date. I do agree that you should you look your best, but there were too many clothing don'ts. I think you should look presentable and wear something appropriate for the date activity, but you also need to be yourself! I was kind of annoyed that hoodies were on the do not wear list, since I literally have a closet with just hoodies in it. I'm a geek gal who loves her hoodies (zip-ups not pullovers).

The Geek's Guide to Dating was pretty great. It's packed full of a lot of straightforward advice, and I loved the use of videogame lingo to explain the different aspects of relationships. I didn't get all of the references, but I doubt many geeks will be well versed in every single game, comic, movie, and TV show out there. A lot of the tips are common sense, but I do think the way it's presented makes it feel fresh and more usable in real life.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.

[inlibrisveritas]

I know…you’re looking at this and you’re not sure you even want to read the review. A self-help guide to dating…yikes! But hear me out because this one is actually really fun and actually contains helpful advice, and the best part is it’s speaks our language: Geek.

This book uses the word ‘he’ a lot but fear not geek ladies, if you have common sense you are equipped to switch out those pronouns and use the advice yourself. Also you’re probably wondering if a book nerd will relate to something that looks pretty video game based, the answer is yes it does. In fact none of this is exclusive advice and even if you don’t understand all the references I bet there will be some that at least get you to chuckle a bit.

Now on to the actual content. If you know me then you know I’ve been in a relationship for over 6 years and if you really know me then you know I never did much of the dating thing. I was one of those super lucky people who hit it off immediately with the person I plan to spend the rest of my life with, in high school no-less. BUT if I did have to do the dating thing I think this would have been helpful, especially since I’m one of those people who is painfully “shy” (social anxiety) and is bound to screw up sentence structure when under pressure. It starts off with getting to know who you are as a person and a geek, gives you advantages/disadvantages of each niche and tells you how to apply them to real life situations. It even gives you tips on where to meet people, geeky and on, and how to get to the point of asking that person out. You get a ton of tips: tips for the more mature situations, how to keep things fresh, tips on how to prep yourself for a date, and how to handle when things get serious or fizzle out. In fact I’m a bit surprised how much ground it covered in just over 200 pages and that is definitely a good thing. No one wants to spend weeks reading a text book sized dating guide.

So if you’re like me and already out of the dating game you can still enjoy this. It has some really great lines in it and a ton of fun references that had me laughing out loud. You can even get some really great ideas for date night with your boyfriend/girlfriend/hubby/wife (*phew*). Not only is the book fun to look at, it’s fun to read.