• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Century
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1846058112
• ISBN-13: 978-1846058110

Synopsis:

Zombies in North London, death cults in the West Country, the engineering deck of the Enterprise: Simon Pegg has been ploughing some bizarre furrows in recent times. Having blasted onto the small screens with his now legendary sitcom Spaced, his rise to the UK’s favourite son status has been mercurial, meteoric, megatronnic, but mostly just plain great.

From his childhood (and subsequently adult) obsession with Star Wars, his often passionate friendship with Nick Frost, and his forays into stand-up which began with his regular Monday morning slot in front of his 12-year-old classmates, this is a joyous tale of a homegrown superstar and a loval boy made good.

What I wanted to do was write fiction about a suave, handsome superhero and his robotic butler. The story of a tricked-out vigilante, with innumerable gadgets, a silver tongue and deadly fists; like Batman without the costume and a more pointed ‘gay subtext’. Sure, it’s not particularly original, but it’s far more interesting than my life. I don’t even have a robotic butler. Not any more.

I’m fast becoming a fan of memoirs, my fellow Mafiosi. Seven pages into Simon Pegg’s auto-bio Nerd Do Well I read the passage above and I knew that this was going to be one sweet ride. The book is an introspective work where Pegg speaks of his life before the spotlight, and about the experiences, people, and pop-culture that made him into the man he is today. He doesn’t hold anything back, either, talking about his time spent in the theater life as a child, to his first awkward forays into sexual experience with the fairer sex.

There was never a country in more desperate need of a blow job than the United States of America: enter George Lucas.

I’ve always liked Pegg; I’ve been a fan of his brand of cinema on both the big and small screens, but this book was a surprising departure from the Simon Pegg I thought I knew. Nerd Do Well takes a hard look at not only many aspects of nerd culture, but art, cinema and life; it’s funny, it’s insightful, and wickedly witty. Reading this book has made me want to experience a lot of art and entertainment, with Pegg’s thoughts in mind. He spends a chapter focused on Star Wars and how it effected his little nerd mind, but the real fun of this rant how it’s important to pop culture; he makes the most convincing (and original) argument I’ve heard in ages, and from now on it will be my de facto “Star Wars is important because…” argument.

Like a lot of auto-bios out there, Pegg writes it like he speaks, which can be a little, “from the hip” with a tendency to go off on tangents. Luckily, Pegg is funny and loveable so these slight deviations from the topic at hand are always fun, and usually segue back into what he’s talking about anyway. One of the most fun aspects of the book is that Pegg has “snuck” that fictional story about a suave superhero and his robot butler into the book between chapters, and it’s as fun and funny as the rest of the book.

Nerd Do Well is an incredible read; Pegg is as funny, charming, and humble as ever, and ridiculously intelligent beyond my own expectations; my respect for his work (and frankly his opinion on anything) has risen higher than I thought possible.

I give Nerd Do Well: A Small Boy’s Journey to Becoming a Big Kid Five out of Five stars.

 

 

Grab a copy of Nerd Do Well: A Small Boy’s Journey to Becoming a Big Kid from Amazon today.
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