Review: Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho

I picked up Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho on a whim as I was just about to walk out the library. Within a few pages I realized that Geeks was in fact written during my Good Old Days - back when Altavista was the search engine of choice, Linux was brand spank'n new, Doom and Quake were the ultimate in gaming technology and broadband access was an unusual luxury. Ahhh, the mid to late 90's. Good times.

It was actually a bit hard to remember back to a time when the Web so young that it wasn't the goto source for all information on the planet. What a risk the heros of the story took in picking an Apartment complex based only on online data. Nowadays, you'd be taking a far larger risk not using the web.

So yes, the book is a bit of nostalgic reading for me. None the less, the storyline pulled me in and I found that I couldn't put it down. By the end of the book, I realized I had just read The Blind Side, only for a pair of geeks instead of gootball player (of course, Geeks was written 9 years before The Blind Side). In the end, this story isn't so much about geeks or new beginnings, but about the power of mentoring.

Read it. And then check out your local foster care resources. It sounds crazy, but you can actually be the one that makes a difference in a child's life. Not promising you'll get a book or moving written about you, but hey, it could happen.