Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
There is one thing I absolutely can never, ever go on a trip without: something to read. All those hours on planes, trains, cars and bus stations can leave a person with hours of free reading time. Can’t let it go to waste. For my recent trip to Italy, I had a very special list of books I wanted to tackle. And thanks to one delayed train and some bad weather in Amsterdam, I got almost all of them read.
Here are the books solo female travelers MUST read on their next trip:
It Chooses You by Miranda July
This book by female director Miranda July makes me cry every time. It’s so funny and endearing, because it’s so human. It chronicles July’s efforts to buy things from the Penny Saver and learn about the people selling their belongings. It seems odd. It is odd. But it’s so lovely.
Tao Lin is just damn funny. SO DAMN FUNNY. And weird. I like funny and weird. And if you do too, you’ll enjoy this collection of crazy.
You’ve probably heard of the movie. But you know what? This book. This book is really where it’s at. If you’ve ever thought about doing something bold after a breakup or death or firing or anything - you need this book.
Alone with Other People by Gabby Bess
I love poems. People that know me well know that I actually wanted to be a poetry major in college, but it’s an art that not many publishers are willing to explore. Bess’s book is one of the few brilliant new collections of poems to be on the scene in the last few years.
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
A classic. An important crux of women’s history. It’s amazing how many women my age have never read this seminal text. Read it to see how far we’ve come. Read it gasp at how little progress we’ve made. Read it to understand what we must continue to fight for.
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
This book surprised me because it shouldn’t have been interesting to me: it’s literally about cleaning. Well, not entirely. It’s a series of essays that include cleaning references, but it’s really remarkable because it’s so human.
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
You may know this woman because of Beyonce. You just don’t know it yet. She’s the woman on Flawless who perfectly describes feminism. Yes, now you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, her writing is just as brilliant.
What are the books that make your heart pitter patter with feelings and emotions and woos and tears and bursts of laughter in inappropriate places?
Imagine a place where you could read books are the writer was writing them? Yeah, it sounds a little weird, but it’s actually incredibly interesting. And part of why it’s so interesting is because it’s a completely new concept being played out on WattPad. This is the future, people.
Here’s what I’m reading on WattPad right now:
150 Life Problems by Insane Demon
You have life problems. I have life problems. We have life problems. Life can kind of just be problems, you know? This ongoing story just keeps the problems coming. They are hilarious. They are sad. They are true. They are scary. They are life. Weird how life can kind of just… be everything and nothing? I know that seems entirely vague, so here’s an excerpt:
“When something goes wrong in your life…
Just yell, “PLOT TWIST!!!”
Then walk away and move on.”
If you want to dive into the world of reading a story as a writer is tackling it, I recommend this one. Especially for the single ladies. It’s about high school love, which can be dumb, but I really enjoyed the writer’s self-awareness of the dumbness of it all.
This story just wrapped up at the beginning of July, so you can totally binge it from cover to finish if you like. It’s silly and irreverent and will get you in a romantic mood, should you be so inclined. It feels a little like a memoir, but whose to say?
You know what else I love about WattPad? It’s the fact that commenters are part of the experience. Writers are getting to see what readers think as they go and readers can interact with each other as they read together. It’s so smart that I’m shocked it hasn’t been done before.
I was turned onto WattPad when they became a Geeks Go Glam sponsor at SDCC this year. We have a lot of love for the crew over there because they are so supportive of lady geeks online and elsewhere. If you haven’t checked out their totally free platform for finding great new reads, I really recommend it.
This post was brought to you by our sponsorship partner: WattPad! We love our sponsors because they help make Being Geek Chic happen through financial support. Being Geek Chic content is written and produced by real geeks and never comes from content mills. More than 40 million people have joined Wattpad, making it the world’s largest community of readers and writers. People use Wattpad to connect with each other while they discover and share millions of free stories. Wattpad stories are available in more than 50 languages and can be read or written from any phone, tablet, or computer. The company is proudly based in Toronto, Canada. Learn more and download their app on their website: www.wattpad.com.
Sometimes you just need your mind blown. It’s that sense of boredom that creeps into your soul and doesn’t quite find relief from a quick run with loud music in your ears or an hour of staring at a few beautiful YouTube videos.
No. This is the feeling like: I need to FEEL SOMETHING IN MY GOD DAMN BELLY AND HEART AND MIND. I NEED TO CONNECT. I NEED TO RESET. I NEED TO FEEL THE FEELS.
That’s what I’m going after. And these books always do it.
Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
It would absolutely be fair for me to say that this book changed the whole course of my life. I know, bold statement. The moment it came into my life and the person that gave it to me hold such a sincerely beautiful place in my heart because there has never, ever, before or since, been a book that resonated so deeply. This book chronicles a series of fictional dreams journaled by Albert Einstein. Each entry is a perspective on time, and it’s meaning and relevance if time were to be measured from that perspective. It’s easy to knock out in an afternoon and I promise you’ll routinely find yourself saying: “time COULD be a circle.”
Particularly compelling quote from Einstein’s Dreams: “If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.”
I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Reflections on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron
There is no shortage of genius in the Nora Ephron catalogue, but this collection of essays is one that I come back to time and time again. Why? Because Nora manages to hit the thing about being a person, specifically a human female person, right in the crosshairs of truth and pain and love and peace and rage and beauty and it sticks with you for weeks.
Particularly compelling quote from I Feel Bad About My Neck: “Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was twenty-six. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don’t take it off until you’re thirty-four.”
The Boys of My Youth By Jo Ann Beard
I love a 90s throwback in almost all areas of media consumption, but this particular 1999 best seller has stuck with me more than Clueless quotes. It’s especially compelling now in my late 20s, because each essay reminds me of a past love, a lesson learned from a man who I have since said goodbye too. Sometimes you need to be reminded that the deep emotional scars of love, while specifically each our own, are shared amongst so many of us. There’s a very good chance this book will make you cry. You have been warned.
Particularly compelling quote from The Boys of My Youth: “We sit silently in our living room. He watches the mute television screen and I watch him. The planes and ridges of his face are more familiar to me than my own. I understand that he wishes even more than I do that he still loved me.”
Editor’s Note: You may remember Natalie from her post earlier this year about the books she loves to read over and over again. As school gets underway, I asked her to think of the books a teacher assigned that turned out to be personal favorites. Here’s her list.
All of us have had our share of bad book assignments for school. In my experience, the books assigned generally aren’t bad, but they just aren’t very good either. However, every once in a while, the exceptional book comes along. Suddenly, you don’t dread the thought of “read chapter 4 by Tuesday.” Reading assignments are finished before they’re due, and notes fill with details. I’ve had a handful of good books assigned by teachers; they have a variety of great qualities: funny, thought provoking, inspiring, exciting, and the like. The books listed below are from very different genres, but they are each enjoyable in different ways.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
A semi-autobiographical novel about a Native American teenager living on a reservation, this book doesn’t have a page that is boring to read. Fourteen year-old Junior tells the story of his family, friends, and school through an illustrated diary. The book leads the reader through life-changing situations with razor sharp wit and an excellent voice. You really feel like you are in Junior’s head. This book draws attention to important issues like poverty, bullying, and discrimination. It also reminds us not to forget the young people in our community, as they are just as affected by problems as everyone else.
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury gives a fascinating and sometimes horrifying vision of the future in a series of short stories. The stories start in the year 1999 and continue into 2026. They depict the experiences of humans fleeing a dystopian Earth and its ignorant population. They go to Mars to escape from the troubles plaguing them on their home planet. I found this book to be thoroughly enjoyable and fun to read because of Bradbury’s beautiful writing and use of imagery, his understandable characters, and the stories’ lessons about respect and appreciation for the unknown. What I found especially great about this book was Bradbury’s use of an inter-planetary setting to explore issues that are still prevalent in our world today. The problems remain the same from Earth to Mars, and they also are unchanged from 1950 to the our world of 2013.
Liz’s Pick: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
I thought this book was so salacious when it was assigned in my eighth grade English class and the adult themes in this book about shame, guilt and the female body are as relevant today as ever. I’m also a huge fan of the film adaptions - but the book is a short and easy read that always delivers.
So what books did your teacher assign that you actually loved?
Post by Natalie El-Hai. Natalie enjoys science and all things theater. She spends her free time reading and snuggling with her cats. She will be a sophomore at Southwest High School this fall.
Meet Emily Farquharson (aka Frogmella, @frogmellaink on Twitter). She’s the co-founder of Geek Girl Pen Pals, a wonderful online community of geeks who write letters to other geeks. On the 15th of every month, Emily and her comrade Leslie match all participants with a pen pal so they can write, tweet, and bleat to each other.
Farquharson also makes up one half of House of the Fickle Queen, an über cute jewelry and accessories store inspired by pop culture. Using a combination of upcycled old jewelry she’s been collecting for years and armed with her wits, some pliers and access to a laser cutting machine and the Internet, Farquharson and her pal Ms. Firth create whimsical and charming pieces, totally fit for a chic geek.
So read Farquharson’s interview with Being Geek Chic and discover her passions, advice, memoir title, and geeky crush…
Q: What led you to your passion?
A: Oh so many things! From a very, very young age I read whatever I could get my hands on. By the time I was 8 I had read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Hobbit and pretty much everything Roald Dahl wrote for children, which set my imagination off and opened up so many other doors. I also loved art a lot as a young one, particularly Dali and Picasso, which lead me to painting, drawing and generally being crafty. I am very lucky to have wonderful parents who did nothing by encourage me to explore, learn, read and it is something I have taken with me through my life. I am passionate about so much, not just books and art, but music, fashion, films and television, comics, science, baking and food, travel, ancient history, animation and more. I could fill a book with the things I am passionate about, because they have all shaped me into who I am in some way!
