My Best Friend is a Wookiee (A Book Review)



Adams Media

Packed to the gills with Star Wars references, metaphors, and the battle of the internal love/hate relationship nerds everywhere have with George Lucas, My Best friend is a Wookiee: One Boy's Journey to Find His Place in the Galaxy was quick and an entertaining read. While not my favorite memoir I've ever read, the message of finding and being true to oneself is an important one and coming from the perspective of a fellow geek helps drive the point home.

I originally bought this book for Boyfriend. He read it and seemed to enjoy it well enough, and I was on a bit of a memoir kick after reading Let's Pretend this Never Happened, so I picked it up too. While  'Wookiee' was a nice way to pass the time on my commute to work or on my lunch break, I wasn't in love with this book. Tony Pacitti has a youthful goofy quality to his writing and his humor which can be delightful, but even at the moments where he had the opportunity to be very poignant and semi-serious, he seemed to go for the easy joke or pun, or cheesy Star Wars metaphor. Now, I realize that Star Wars is part of the theme of the book, but there were many times while reading that I felt Tony tried to shoe-horn Star Wars in where it didn't quite fit. It was almost like he or his editor were thinking, "You know what this part needs? More Star Wars."  (Tony Pacitti's memoir is to Star Wars what Christopher Walken is to cowbell.)  I used to be a firm believer that you could never have too much Star Wars, but sadly there were times when reading this that I was thinking, "Enough already! Please get on with your story, and stop reminding me of why Episodes 1, 2, and 3 sucked, you are beating a dead horse."

All that said, there was still a lot of Tony's story that was relatable for anyone growing up with the stigma of geekdom-bullies, feeling awkward in school, the euphoria after first watching the original Star Wars, etc. Most of the time the phrase "Never judge a book by its cover" is thrown out to remind us to give something a chance before you dismiss it, but I found with this book, it goes the other way too. Just because a book has endearing cover art and an intriguing title, doesn't mean you're going to love it. As a whole, it was a pleasant and occasionally emotional read, and something I would recommend to an avid Star Wars fan, but probably not to the casual reader.

On my patented* rating scale of five nerdy things, I gave My Best friend is a Wookiee: One Boy's Journey to Find His Place in the Galaxy 3 out of 5 Wookiee the Chews

Art by James Hance

*Not actually patented