The Fangirl's Guide to the Galaxy by Sam Maggs

The Fangirl's Guide to the Galaxy

by Sam Maggs

This fun and feminist girl-power guide to the geek galaxy gives lady nerds the lowdown on everything from fanfic to cosplay to attending your first con. Fanfic, cosplay, cons, books, memes, podcasts, vlogs, OTPs and RPGs and MMOs and more-it's never been a better time to be a girl geek. The Fangirl's Guide to the Galaxy is the ultimate handbook for ladies living the nerdy life, a fun and feminist take on the often male-dominated world of geekdom. Author Sam Maggs brings some serious geek cred to guide readers through the in(ternets) and outs of geek culture, with tips, play-throughs, and cheat codes for everything from starting an online fan community to planning a convention visit to supporting fellow female geeks in the wild. With useful sidebars and never-before-seen interviews with geek girl icons like Felicia Day and Tamora Pierce, this book is loaded with interesting, unexpected and hard-to-find facts, all in the common language of nerdery. Best of all, the author takes a stand for geek girl empowerment, urging girls to let their freak flags fly and stand up for themselves when haters gonna hate, with chapters like Support ALL the Ladies!
Why Feminism in the Nerd World is Key and The Fake Geek Girl is Here to Destroy Everything You Love-LOL JK She Doesn't Exist. The Fangirl's Handbook is, at its heart, a celebration-of obsessing over fictional characters, finding the tribe that shares your ships and feels, rooting on other ladies to kick butt and take names, and doing it all with pride.

Reviewed by Nessa Luna on

4 of 5 stars

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Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley. This has not changed my opinion on the book in any way.

I have to be honest, when I first heard of the title - I thought it was a fictional story based on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, about a fangirl traveling through space or something. I was so wrong. This book is an actual guide for actual fangirls, and I have to say I liked reading it very very much!

The Fangirl's Guide to the Galaxy is meant for beginner fangirls. It explains all about how to become the ultimate fangirl, how to make fangirl friends, how to survive conventions, how to deal with annoying trolls on the internet and so forth. It has pictures, handy tips, links to awesome fangirl websites and lots more in it. As a person who has been a fangirl for a long time already, even I found this book interesting - I even learned a couple of things from this book, something I hadn't really expected.

The book has only about five or so chapters, but they are filled with information about each subject and just very nice to read. Between the chapters are interviews with awesome ladies; authors, actors, artists (like Beth Revis, Erin Morgenstern and Victoria Schwab). There is also an entire chapter about Feminism which I enjoyed reading. But I think the chapter I enjoyed reading the most was the one about conventions. (Because I just love conventions, and I love reading about other people's experiences!).

Personally, I agreed with most of the things that were described in this book. There was only one thing that annoyed me a bit, and that is the whole 'Superwholock' thing. Because it will probably make new fangirls think that that's the only option. That you are supposed to like all three shows in order to be 'it'. But that is not true. Yes, a lot of people are fans of all three shows (myself included), but it's okay to like just one or two of the shows. SWL is a thing made up by Tumblr and it's just really really annoying in my opinion. (FYI, Superwholock is Supernatural, Doctor Who and BBC's Sherlock; three completely different shows, which each a completely different fandom).

But hey, I just decided to ignore it, even though it annoyed me, and I still enjoyed the book!

The writing was easy to read, and also easy to understand. There were pages that explained the words often used by fangirls (such as 'feels', 'gpoy', 'canon/headcanon', 'otp' and so forth). I flew through the book at high speed and was kind of sad when I realised it was over already. Unfortunately, because this is an ebook (and an uncorrected proof at that), the awesome images were all cut into pieces and on different pages, which made it impossible to see the full images. (There were also some tiny mistakes in the writing, especially involving the letter 'f', but like I said - ebook + uncorrected proof). I am actually planning on buying a physical copy of the book as soon as it's out, because it's a really handy book for fangirls!

So if you are a (beginner) fangirl, and you want to read more about the fangirl world, you should definitely check out The Fangirl's Guide to the Galaxy!

My opinion on this book in one gif: 

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 2 March, 2015: Finished reading
  • 2 March, 2015: Reviewed