Set in a quirky-as-hell parallel universe in the 1980s where books are cool, cheese is sold on the black market and evil corporations can have you eradicated from your own timeline if you piss them off, Thursday Next is a SpecOps agent who works for a division of the government that ensures that cheap imitation, counterfeit books aren't being released on an unsuspecting public all while figuring out that she has the ability to jump between the book world and the real world, trying not to get killed by her arch-enemies and dealing with all of the crazy shit that her family members put her through. I cannot stress how awesome this series is and I'd say it is at the top of this list for the primary reason that not enough people have read it and I personally haven't met anyone else who has other than myself. If you love to read and you love pop culture and/or nerd culture, you will find page after page of references that will make you feel super smug about your canon of useless knowledge, as well as things that you might not have realized were out there that you should know at some point in your life. I can't do this series justice in one shitty paragraph, so just trust me on this one and pick up the first one (The Eyre Affair) and prepare to be hooked!
As the only girl in my first grade class who wore glasses and was one of the few kids who was reading chapter books for fun, seeing the cover of this book in the library forced me to glomm onto it right off the bat. The main character is a girl who is an outsider that doesn't get along with the other kids her age and ends up finding out that she has special powers that have something to do with her silver eyes. This is an awesome book for kids who feel alienated about anything in their lives and while it isn't the most detailed or well-written book ever, it is a good segue into the world of the paranormal and sci-fi.
Everyone knows him for writing A Clockwork Orange, but Burgess is one of my favorite writers because he puts his characters in so many different kinds of situations and then makes them deal with the moral, ethical and real-life consequences of their decisions. I'd say my favorite book by him is without a doubt The Wanting Seed, but some close favorites are The Doctor is Sick, The Pianoplayers and of course A Clockwork Orange (which you are missing out on if you've only watched the movie!).
Okay, I'm not gonna sugar-coat this one. This series is rather hit or miss. I received the first book, A Wrinkle in Time, as a birthday present when I was a kid. The first book had to be good for me to read the rest of them, right? Well, yeah. Plus, yet again, it was another book with a nerdy female main character who was in a situation that made her special. The whole series follows the Murry family and each book somewhat focuses on one of the kids. While it is mainly fantasy with a dash of sci-fi thrown in, it definitely has the Narnia thing going on with the biblical overtones. Wrinkle in Time is still my favorite in the series, but re-reading it as an adult, I found Many Waters to be a close second favorite and Swiftly Tilting Planet to be a pretty decent read as well. Sorry Ms. L'Engle, but books two and five kinda sucked. Still a good kid series though :)
If you have any sort of love for nerd culture or the 1980s, you must read this book. There is a lot of talk about them making this into a movie, so do yourself a favor and read it now before Hollywood gets its hands on it and corrupts your vision of how awesome this book is. It's the future and the world's gone to absolute shit, so damn near everyone chooses to live their lives in a virtual reality known as the Oasis, which is quite aptly named. Uber outcast Parzival and the millions of other people in the world are trying to solve a riddle that has stumped pop culture scholars for years and the prize for solving it is essentially control over the world as they all know it, along with the money and power that comes with it. The review on the front cover says it's Willy Wonka meets The Matrix and that is so spot on it hurts. If there was a list of required reading to become a part of nerd culture, this would be on it for sure.
This is a kid series that I actually started reading as an adult--because I've got no shame to my game. I'd say the best way to describe this series is... Hmmm... Think Black Butler but with fairies and leprechauns and such. As a matter of fact, if the creators of Black Butler didn't read this series before creating the manga/anime, I would be incredibly surprised. Artemis Fowl is a darkly-clad, Irish criminal mastermind/millionaire who is only a boy when he discovers that the supernatural world is a real thing and attempts to tap into it to use it to his own advantage--only to find that he probably shouldn't have stirred things up. The jokes are cheesy good fun, the brooding of the main character coupled with his disdain for nearly everyone around him is amusing and he even has a Butler of his own. I'd love to see this series made into a movie if it was done properly. Just a thought :)
Never in a million years would I think that I would be interested in an urban fantasy series. Most of the ones I've tried to read were unbearable Buffy ripoffs; Dresden Files, however, just gets a hold on you and doesn't let go. But that's okay, because he is still writing more of them, so we're cool. I actually found out about this series when I went into a bookstore and asked for a recommendation and the goth chick at the front said, "Do you like wizards?" I shrugged. "Do you like mysteries?" I shrugged again. "How about sarcastic wizards that solve mysteries?" And she had me there. The first two books are a little cheesy, but as Butcher goes on with the series the plot thickens, back stories come up that you have to figure out the answers to and he has interesting explanations for damn near everything that has ever gone bump in the night. Plus, Harry Dresden is this awesomely relateable anti-hero who randomly pulls out bad movie references while kicking ass. You can almost see the "WHAM" and "POW" pop right off the page! Oh, and before anyone tries to ruin this for you, yes, this was made into a television series for SyFi, but the show sucks ass and doesn't have a whole hell of a lot to do with the books. Don't watch the show (which is a very typical SyFi Channel program, not bad if you are mentally prepared for that kind of thing) unless you are prepared to compartmentalize your thoughts on the matter.
Well, I couldn't mention Harry Dresden and then not mention Harry Potter. That would just be stupid. Is Harry Potter mainstream? Yes. But does that mean that it is too popular to have any nerd cred? Nah. I'm not saying that reading the series will give you this huge insight into nerd culture, but it does give some and it has encouraged lots of kids to read and blah blah blah. We've heard it all before. It's not exactly the most original story because it uses the epic story formula but it is still noteworthy and entertaining and I'd say it's become a modern rite of passage for today's nerd kids. And it's better than them reading Twilight, right? My faves in the series are Prisoner of Azkaban and Half-Blood Prince.
I hope that the book gods don't strike me down for putting Lethem on the same list with Potter, but hopefully the other ones on here will even things out. Lethem is an awesomely dark, thought-provoking author whose novels and short stories of the strange and mundane make him a force to be reckoned with in the modern literary world. And now that I'm done sounding like some terrible book jacket fangirl, I'd like to say that there isn't really anything classically nerdy about his books, but they are just so sharp and smart that I would think that you'd have to be somewhat of a nerd to appreciate them, but you could just as easily be a wine-tasting, yuppie intellectual who occasionally indulges in "slumming it" and get the same effect. My faves are Gun, with Occasional Music and The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye.
10.) Bone by Jeff Smith
Number ten for you guys is one of my favorite graphic novels. Despite the kinda creepy cover and a title that can easily lend itself to some innuendo, Bone is totally kid friendly. I actually first encountered the world of Boneville [Yeah, that's really where they are from.] as a kid when it was featured monthly bit by bit in Disney Adventures magazine. I thought that all comics had to either be comical or superhero based, so this one totally surprised me with its tiny, oddly-shaped heroes that were just trying to make their way home. I was truly ecstatic when I saw as an adult that all of the books were finally available for sale in one volume, but was saddened when I found out it was only cell-shaded. So, of course after I dropped the money for that one, a full-color version came out (and it's absolutely gorgeous!) and that might just be on a future Christmas list for me. Stupid, stupid rat creatures!
If you like Chuck Palahniuk, Tom Robbins or Kurt Vonnegut, odds are you will like Christopher Moore. He writes about everything from vampires who work in grocery stores to whales that don't really exist to paling around with Jesus. He knows how to tell a great story and he is able to put a fresh perspective on things that you thought you knew everything about. Fluke is great, Island of the Sequined Love Nun is fun and A Dirty Job is great one about death, but the one I like the most from him is Fool which is Shakespeare's King Lear told from the pervy perspective of the jester. Pick up any one of his books and be impressed.
I am a terrible nerd and I have never read any of the Dune books. I mean, I've seen the movies and they are pretty cool, but I have never read the books by Frank Herbert that everyone likes to sit around and compare this author to because it happens to be his dad. That being said, I picked this book up when I was about thirteen and I found it to be quite interesting and sometimes kind of funny. It's about a society run by a computer who is dead set on having things done exactly how she wants them done and even "Bad Thoughts" can get you in trouble. The main story follows a father whose daughter falls in love with a guy who is a rebel/outlaw because he is a musician. It was a good sci-fi starter for me and you and/or your teenagers might enjoy it too.
Years after reading Cats Cradle, I'm still finding myself making my way through the mass amount of work that Vonnegut has produced. Not just because they are good and creative, or because they can delve into sci-fi, philosophy and humor all at once; I love making my way through his books because he does such an awesome job at creating a fictional multiverse and love to read a book that I am really into and then suddenly a random guy from another book pops up just walking down the street or in a television commercial. It makes my brain have to work just a little harder to remember where I heard about that character before and makes me want to keep reading the rest of his books to see if I can find each character's back story. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Player Piano are a few of his more "off the beaten path" books that you might not have picked up and Sirens of Titan is also an awesome read. If you get into his stuff, you have to get back to me and tell me: How many times have you found Bunny?
He is so full of win that I don't even know where to begin. The first book I ever read by him was Something Wicked This Way Comes in fourth grade and it just kind of took off from there. Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 and so many more are still nestled safe away in my bookshelf so that I can pull them out and read them again. He passed away last year, but is by far one of the most prolific writers out there, sci-fi or otherwise and he will be missed :)
When you read a book, I think the main point of it is to make you feel something: be it funny, moving, dramatic or whatever. I have read over a thousand books and this is without a doubt the most disturbing book that I have ever read in my life. The main character is pulled from her life with her husband and forced to take part in this creepy, fucked-up religious society where her main job is to produce an heir for a well-to-do leader. This is on my nerd book list because it's something that you wish was sci-fi, but everything that she has happen in the book could happen in real life if things went to hell. It will scare the bejesus out of you, but this is a must read for all nerd girls and any nerd guys that care for their own nerd girls.
This series is on a ton of "best of" lists, but there are a lot of people who still haven't read it yet. I like this series because it makes you think that you know what is going on and then out of nowhere it will turn you on your head. I have only read the first eight books that are in the series, but the weird/cool thing about this series is that there are several different ways in which it can be read. I read the four Ender books and then read the Ender's Shadow books, but because there are so many things overlapping and because the author is capitalizing on this thing as much as possible (yes, there's a movie coming out soon, sigh), there are different ways to read it as shown in this handy flowchart. Either way, it's about war and aliens and ethics and religion and sci-fi and then some more war. I like the Shadow books best myself, but you should get through the original four so that you know what is going on!
This is a collection of web comics from one of my favorite sites, xkcd.com, which you have probably seen all over the internet unless you have been sleeping under a rock or something. Yes, you can look at all of this stuff online for free, but I think that it is always a good thing to support independent authors so that they can write more cool stuff. So you should buy this because it's awesomely funny and insightful and makes a great conversation piece to have on your coffee table.
This is a very unique story told from the perspective of a young man who has autism and sees things happening in front of him but can't seem to put all of the pieces together. It's on my nerd book list because I think there are several times that we might get caught up in our own bullshit too many times and don't stop to take things at face value. For sure worth a read.
This is the last one of my nerd kid book recommendations. Fisk does an awesome job of creating a science fiction novel for kids on the subject of cloning! Yay! Basically, it's the future and all of the fucked-up nuclear stuff that we have used has ruined the environment and our reproductive systems, so they kinda start recycling people so that the human race can keep moving right along. This is a good intro to sci-fi for kids and a good one about ethics and science in society.
Responsible for several books that have inspired major motion pictures in the world of sci-fi (Blade Runner, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall, etc), Dick wrote novels that were way ahead of their time and not only showed a future that was advanced, but more often than not, gritty as hell. I'd say that my two favorites by him are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (which was eventually turned into Blade Runner, and once again, terrible nerd here who has never watched the damn movie, shame on me!) and The Penultimate Truth. If you like your sci-fi rugged, this is the guy to check out.
Soooo that is my list of twenty books/authors that every nerd should read at one point or another. There are so many more that I didn't get to put on here, but my main objective was to put things out there that many self-proclaimed nerds have never picked up. I hope that you were able to find at least a few things that you didn't know about before, but if you've read all of those then... Why aren't we already friends?
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