Dancing Barefoot

Rating:
Summary: A great & quick read!
Review: I'm a big fan of Wil's writing now, thanks to this book and "Just a Geek". "Dancing Barefoot" is a quaint little selection of short stories, all cleverly and creatively put together. You can plow through this book in around an hour, and goes great with a tall cup of coffee.

Rating:
Summary: busybooklover says, if you have a pulse, "read this book!"
Review: This book is worth it if just for the dialogue between his "inner-selves" at an early morning (post late night) wake-up call. Previous glowing reviews have more than adaqualely described its charms. Just read it.

Rating:
Summary: engagingly irresistible
Review: Personally, I read the book because Wil Wheaton is one of my favorite people. I read his weblog almost every day. I really feel like he is "one of us." (thirtysomethings?) I enjoyed the book, from a very biased standpoint. Wil's writing always makes me feel like he and I are long-time, intimate friends. How does he do that? His writing has a certain disarming quality.

I figured only fans of his would be interested in the book, but a younger (24-yr old) friend of mine, whom I consider to be very cool saw the book on my nightstand and picked it up. He said he thought it was 'rad' that I had a book by "Wesley Crusher." I told him not to think of Wil that way, he doesn't like it. Anyway, my friend opened the book and proceeded to read the entire thing from cover to cover in one sitting. That amazed me. The book catches your attention and you can't help but read it and feel that you know the author!

Rating:
Summary: Better to read this one first before Just A Geek...
Review: Since I liked Just A Geek so much, I decided to read and review Dancing Barefoot (O'Reilly). It's a book of stories about Wil Wheaton's life as a person trying to place his former life as a teen actor on the Star Trek: The Next Generation in perspective. These are the stories that didn't make it into Just A Geek, but that Wil thought were still important.

Although I liked the book and his writing style, I think Just A Geek is much better. JAG tells more of a story, and you get to understand the feelings behind what it's like to be treated as a TV character instead of as an actual person. DB is more along the lines of isolated vignettes that are fun to read but don't really take you anywhere much. It's real short (like 115 pages), so it's not like there's a huge time commitment. My recommendation would be to get the books together, cruise through this one quickly to get a flavor of his writing style, and then dig into JAG. You'll probably like this book better if you do it in that order...

Rating:
Summary: Engaging Style, Universal Themes
Review: Dancing Barefoot contains five touching, autobiographic short stories by Wil Wheaton, author and actor. Four are very short and focus on the magic found in the everyday. The fifth is a longer journey through a Star Trek convention and the memories it invoked. It ranges from laugh-out-loud funny to surprisingly soul-baring. All of the stories share universal themes of love, family and finding yourself.

The style is informal, emotional, and very real. You're left with the impression that Wheaton is someone you could hang out with and talk to about anything, and also someone that could make you laugh hard enough to snort beer out your nose. It's easy to finish this short collection in one gulp, and it will leave you wanting more. Luckily, there is more out there to keep you satisfied - his web log gets updated frequently, and there's a new, longer book: Just a Geek.

Rating:
Summary: A Monkey Chiming In
Review: I found out about this book, Dancing Barefoot, and the next book, Just a Geek, from Wil's website, which I found surfing one day. After cruising through the blogs on the site, I was instantly hooked. I joined his forum almost immediately (hence the Monkey in the title... *waves* Hi Guys!!!) and was pulled into that as quickly as the books. The fans that surround him are as funny, as open, as "real" as the man himself.

Wil's writing is engaging (yes, I know, bad pun), witty, honest, and at times, bitterly poignant. Though it's hard to relate to the life of an actor and the ups and downs that go with it, Wil found a way to draw people in to his life and to explain those pains, pangs and associated temporary joys in such a way that I ended up spending most of my time nodding and muttering, "been there, Wil, I know that feeling".

I found myself sucked into the stories - weeping with him over Aunt Val, watching the kids play in the front yard and stepping into the Time Warp of youth, sitting at a booth in the surreal surroundings of Vegas and even more surreal moments known as a Star Trek Con. In a way, it became less a book and more a conversation with someone I grew up with, a mirror to look at my own life in a different perspective.

The stories aren't about anything *that* exciting, and you won't hear a lot of great "on set" gossip from the TNG days, but they are a peek into what it's like to be a Gen Xer - stuck between childhood and adult responsibility, watching our beloved relatives pass, our children grow up, worrying about bills and relationships, looking back at what we've accomplished (or not accomplished), the self-doubt, and finally, that settling in to realize that we actually *like* the person that's looking back from the mirror.

Granted, a lot, if not all of the material can be found on the website if you look hard enough, but it's cool to have it in a bound form. I was willing to pay the $$ just for that. (The drawings were fun too!)

It's a fast read. I think I sat down and finished DB in about an hour. I couldn't put it down.

Say what you will about Wes Crusher, but this Wil Wheaton kid can WRITE!

Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful, introspective, happy, sad....
Review: These stories really touched me. I grabbed my copy of Dancing Barefoot right before O'Reilly picked up Wil's works for publishing. I have since bough an O'Reilly copy just to complete the set. I loved this book so much. Wil's writing is so accessible. It is as though you're reading a letter from a friend. His website contains more of the same.

I am in my 30s and the stories of losing the elders in my family, as Wil lost his Great Aunt, ring very true. The hopeful tone to his stories leaves me feeling much better after having read them.

All of this gushing and I didn't even really like the Wesley character as they wrote him on Next Generation.....Wil's that good.