Sunday Shoutouts: All Things Nerdy

My life is always nerdy, but somehow I ended up reading a lot of nerdy stuff this week.

Harry Potter: Batty Mamzelle asked some interesting questions she had while rereading the first two Harry Potter books. Is the answer to everything, "Well, it's magic, so there"?

Historical Fashion: I totally reblogged this look at overlapping historical time periods and their respective fashions. Mad props to the blogger who added artwork and photos of women of color to the original piece.  

Book-Inspired Fashion: I would like all of these, please. But seriously, who doesn't want cute jewelry about books?!

Book Recommendations: Molly at Smart, Pretty, and Awkward has compiled all of her book recommendations into one list!

What did you read this week?

Sunday Shoutouts: May the Fourth be with You!

Apparently I got married and stopped doing Sunday Shoutouts every week. My last one was three weeks ago. :( I'm sorry! I've been distracted!

As all good nerds know, today is Star Wars Day. May the Force be with with you... May the Fourth be with you... Yeah, it's fun. Beau and I celebrated by buying a few items off ThinkGeek. A baby shirt that says "Size Matters Not" on it for some friends and their baby. A Death Star tea infuser for me. And while not a Star Wars product itself, we rounded out our order with an unofficial Harry Potter wizarding hat charm for my Pandora bracelet. 

My tea will be the strongest in the Empire!

But enough about all our nerdiness! Let's take a look at what I read last week.

#BringBackOurGirls refers to the schoolgirls in Nigeria who were kidnapped by religious terrorists several weeks ago. While I have read some good news coverage from traditional sources, two blog posts on the tragedy really humbled me and inspired me. Melissa Atkins Wardy, who writes my favorite feminist parenting blog, wrote the piece "Where Are Nigeria's Stolen Daughters?" She reminds us that this particularly horrific act is part of a larger culture that devalues girls and women. 

The other blog post is one that I found on twitter, and I'm not familiar with the overall blog. "Everyone is an Expert on Nigeria Now" points out that even in our (American/European) outrage at the lack of (American/European) news coverage, the way we discuss this massive kidnapping perpetuates our feelings of superiority. Reading this blog post was a needed reminder even to me to check my privilege and to remember that the United States is not the center of the universe. The writer points out the continuous news coverage in Nigeria and in other African countries, along with the local efforts to find the kidnapped girls. 

That was depressing. Let's talk about Star Wars again. I don't have the emotional or mental energy to focus all my attention on the horrors of the world. 

If you are anything like my husband and me, you are dreading the upcoming Star Wars movie. You know, the one that you plan to attend at midnight in costume. 

The principal cast was just announced. The six original stars are returning to reprise their roles. Seven new actors will join them. A principal cast of thirteen! Awesome! 

Guess how many are women.

Two. Carrie Fisher will be back as Princess Leia, and Daisy Ridley will play a new role.

This article explains why exactly the gender disparity is so disappointing and why we need more kickass women like Leia in our sci-fi/action movies. 

Finally, not that I really need to blog more on blogging, but I loved this post by Bonnie on criticism. It's definitely hard for me to accept criticism, even constructive criticism, so I admire Bonnie for recognizing the different forms of criticism and learning how to respond to them in a healthy way. 

What did you read this week? Did you write something extra-awesome that might be worthy of a shoutout? Share in the comments below!

P.S. Did you know that virginity is now a four-letter word? Yeah, I had no idea either. Read my post from yesterday on how Facebook and Bloglovin have both tried to censor me. 

Book Club Friday: The Nerdy, the Quirky, and the Downright Bizarre

More than a month after my honeymoon, I'm finally recapping the last few books I read. In contrast to my other honeymoon reads, these books are all e-books. So instead of reading them at the beach or by the pool, I read these at the airport and on the plane.

And as usual, these were all priced at $3.99 or less when I bought them!

     

Collections of short stories helped me get through undergrad, when I still desperately needed fiction, but when my time was dominated by textbooks and French literature. I could read just one or two short stories and get my "fix" for a few days.

But even though I have more time to read now, I still enjoy collections of short stories. It's a great way to discover new writers.
 

The Last Girlfriend on Earth 

and Other Love Stories

From Amazon: In "Center of the Universe," God struggles to balance the demands of his career with the needs of his long-term girlfriend. In "Magical Mr. Goat," a young girl's imaginary friend yearns to become "more than friends." In "Unprotected," an unused prophylactic recalls his years spent trapped inside a teen boy's wallet. The stories in Simon Rich's new book are bizarre, funny, and yet...relatable. Rich explores love's many complications-losing it, finding it, breaking it, and making it-and turns the ordinary into the absurd. With razor-sharp humor and illustrations, and just in time for Valentine's Day, Rich takes readers for an exhilarating, hilarious ride on the rollercoaster of love.

This collection of sci-fi love stories is hilarious. Like there's one story where women trade their boyfriends like sports teams trade their players. The title story is takes place in an alternate universe with only one woman left alive after some epidemic. The story about the goat, listed enough, brilliantly mocks Nice Guys. Basically, if you like wit and biting social commentary wrapped up in sci-fi and romance, then you should read The Last Girlfriend on Earth and Other Love Stories.  

We Had Stars Once

From Amazon: Join a girl discovering her true, supernatural origins. Follow a famous babysitter into space.  Journey through dystopia with a man who has lost everything, and experience the exhilaration of finally making it home. Aliens, cocky knights, and superheroes do battle with inner darkness and things that go bump in the night. From the writers of Thursday Tales comes an imaginative anthology of darkness, adventure, betrayal and mystery. From sixteen minds come sixteen tales of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. A world of worlds awaits.

On Twitter, I know that I casually mention GroupThink occasionally. It's the group blog/forum associated with the website Jezebel. Each of the Gawker Media sites has its own group blog/forum, and one of the groups self-published a collection of short stories submitted by members! Each story is very different, and some were so good, I wanted them to be expanded into a novel.

The Rosie Project

From Amazon: MEET DON TILLMAN, a brilliant yet socially challenged professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. And so, in the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers.

Rosie Jarman is all these things. She also is strangely beguiling, fiery, and intelligent. And while Don quickly disqualifies her as a candidate for the Wife Project, as a DNA expert Don is particularly suited to help Rosie on her own quest: identifying her biological father. When an unlikely relationship develops as they collaborate on the Father Project, Don is forced to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that, despite your best scientific efforts, you don’t find love, it finds you.

Okay, so this is not a collection of short stories, but it's still nerdy and quirky, if not science fiction. The Rosie Project was AMAZING. It's narrated by Don, a professor who has Asperger's, but is completely clueless about this. There are several hints that his friends are trying to enlighten him, but he never connects the dots. He likes order in his life, but Rosie disrupts all of that... in a good way. It's really adorable how he awkwardly and cluelessly tries to figure things out between him and Rosie. 

All of these books are quick reads, and I highly recommend them!

Linking up with Book Club Friday!

*Those pictures? Amazon Affiliate links.

True Love Means Liking the Same Food

In honor of this year's Valentine's Day, I want to gush about how much I love Beau and why we work together so well as a couple.

Beau and I collaborated on this together over skype, which is basically one of our bullet points. He was ready to go to sleep, but I insisted on a quick brainstorming session first.

• We are children at heart, but adults when it comes to important stuff. We enjoy being silly together.
• Bacon.
• Beau loves to drive, and I love sitting in the passenger's seat, live-tweeting our road trips.
• Biscuits and gravy.
• We both like Star Trek, cuddles, and gummy bears. Bonus points for naked cuddling while eating gummy bears and watching Star Trek.
• Wings and beer.
• Beau writes guest posts for me, and he gives me ideas for my blog. Like answering my questions to this post. Plus he's totes cool with appearing in a documentary in which we discuss not having sex.
• Steak.
• We interrupt our list of reasons of why we work to over-analyze the scientific aspects of having a double-blind taste test of steak, pan vs. grill, including a debate on how to measure the seasoning properly so it's a fair test. This is completely normal.
• Sometimes Beau surprises me with flowers, but he also understands why I like to buy myself flowers.
• I have great boobs and a great butt. Beau likes my boobs and butt.
• We're both very practical and good at keeping a budget, but our budget includes room for splurges and spontaneity. 
• Pizza.
• Beau doesn't mind when I tell him the same childhood story for the tenth time.
• Basically, we love each other, and we respect each other, and we have similar goals, and we like books, and we're nerdy, and we have a lot of fun doing lots of things or doing nothing.

 

Virgin Myths: Nerdy Virgins

Cherry graphic via

Apparently I completely forgot about my blog series on virgin myths.

Looking over the seven myths I've already tackled, I discovered my problem. I ran out of myths that were not true for me as a virgin, and since the vast majority of my blog is based on personal experience, I temporarily ran out of material.

But I am not like all other virgins, and they are not all like me. So I googled "stereotypes about virgins" and found myself some new material for my first blog series!

Myth: Virgins are nerds.

Beau and I are both nerdy and proud of it. We've been to two Comic Cons at this point--in costume. Our favorite dates include going to science museums and the zoo. We dressed up as characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation last year for Halloween. I can answer any question about any Harry Potter book, I have written Harry Potter fanfiction after years of reading it, and I went to the midnight showings of movies GoF, OotP, HBP, and DH2, in costume for all except OotP (I was living in France when DH1 came out, and my city only played the dubbed version). And Beau is an engineer, which is possibly the nerdiest of all professions.

Grown-up Hermione at the Yule Ball.

But our nerdiness isn't connected to our virginity. We're not virgins because we're both huge dorks who can't get laid. We haven't had coitus yet because we decided to save it for marriage. And before I met Beau, no man had ever seen me naked nor had I ever performed fellatio because I was saving those actions for trust and for love.

Most of my friends fall somewhere on the nerdy spectrum. Some are definitely nerdier than others. But there's no correlation between nerdiness and virginity among my friends.

So am I a nerdy virgin?

Yes, and proud of it.

But are all virgins thus nerds?

Nope, not even close.

MYTH POPPED!