The BBook of Geek: The Only Geek Humor Book You'll Ever Need Paperback – October 28, 2008

Brian Briggs is a geek's geek, a man's man, and little girl's little girl. Hairy-chested and brawny, he wears a pink gingham dress and picks flowers for his mommy. He brands cattle in his spare time, yet still thrills to the feel of an occasional tentacle under his kimono.The book: all that and more (or less, depending). It skips merrily from subject to subject, while stomping over factoids like Godzilla over Tokyo. You'll find yourself weeping, laughing, and moaning softly, often simultaneously.While this book has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in the category of Literature, it is more likely to win the Nobel Peace Prize, due to its ability to eradicate war and suffering.Buy this book now and end war forever!Brian Briggs has not paid me for this review. At least not with money.

I've also been reading the BBspot for years, so I had high expectations for the book. Boy did it deliver. I was laughing out loud so much I had to stop to explain some of the jokes to my non-geek wife. The book arrived 4 days before the official release date (aka the Chump date from now on) and I finished it before I was supposed to receive it. Yes, I actually cut down my World of Warcraft play time in order to read a book :)The book is very well organized and follows a consistent structure. It would make excellent episodic reading, if you can put it down.I'm buying two more copies for my geek friends, but I think it would be an excellent purchase for non-geeks interested in learning about what makes us tick.

This is essentially what this book consists ofbunch of allegedly geeky topics * 2 true facts + 4 lame (untrue, unfunny) facts * half a page of nonsense vaguely related to the topic at hand * creepy picture of the author(?) and friends doing their rendition of said topicThe content is really slim.Read : size 16 font and tons of white space.The jokes aren't funny.Essentially, the author just pulled some random word-associations out of his ...For example,Emacs :* Emacs only runs on ImacsSpider Man :* In 'The Amazing Spider-Man #56' Peter Parker learns that he is heir to his Uncle Ben's enormous rice fortuneBattlestar Galactica :* Dirk Benedict, the original Starbuck, was a founding investor of Starbucks, the coffee giant, and helped name it.This is my first negative review on Amazon in over 5 years.This book has 0 entertainment and educational value.I highly discourage anyone from purchasing it.

Brian Briggs has long been a talented, innovative writer for the Internet age. This book compiles many of his best "web-icles" in one breezy book. If you remember the "Books of Top Ten Lists" from David Letterman and his writers, this is similar, only it's tailored to those who work and live in the current Internet, online-gaming, and general Geek culture, including everything from computer gurus to academic mathematicians. Grab this book. It's a load of fun that you can read any time, and in any order.

Do not buy this book. Facts are not true, and humor just is not that funny. It's a waste of time and money...

I received this book as a Christmas gift several years ago, but only just bothered opening it up again to find out why I put it down in the first place. I'm not sure if the five star reviews are from paid reviewers, or if they're just fans of the now quite dead website that this book spawned from. In any case, the "BBook of Geek" is completely devoid of humor.The book consists of a series of chapters each containing a number of somewhat related topics. The topics are all something moderately "geek"-related, the type of things you might expect to hear a bad joke about on The Big Bang Theory. Two pages are given to a topic. The first has the name of the topic ("Civilization"), a picture of someone -- presumably Briggs -- dressed up in a way somehow related to the topic (a guy in a terrible Abraham Lincoln hat and beard), a very brief description of why a geek might be interested in the topic (it's a popular computer game), some "facts" about the topic (two real, four unfunny. Actual quote "In the French versions of the game, players were required by law to choose France as their starting Civilization". I'm only presuming these fake facts are supposed to be humorous, I'm not actually positive). The opposite page has some random thing related to the topic, like a quiz or nonsensical parody news article (e.g., "Top 11 signs you've been playing this game of Civilization too long", including "11. Your computer starts begging for mercy". Haha?)The entire book is structured this way. The text is in fairly large point font, with generous line spacing, and still doesn't even extend to the bottom of most of the pages. There's not only a serious lack of humor, there's a serious lack of content in general. This feels like the last dying breath of some terrible hold-over from the internet of the 90s.

The Bbook of Geek is definitely a well-rounded book, covering topics like TV, movies, the Internet, software, hardware, science, gaming, and literature. From D&D to WoW, from Gates to Jobs, from The Twilight Zone to Firefly, this book will keep you laughing and remind you of all those years of terrible technology. I am so very thankful I wasn't born until the 80's.This book is a delightful mix of truth and fallacy, much like Briggs' website. See: "BBelievers". Each entry in this book contains a blurb of the topic, a list of "facts", and a hilariously funny picture featuring Briggs.I was pleasantly surprised with some of the topics, like Rube Goldberg machines, manga, and Metropolis, but was also surprised at some of the things not included (like Magic the Gathering and They Might Be Giants).All in all I thought this book was great. It's funny, it's sentimental, and hey, you just might learn something.If you have an ounce of geek in you, and we all do, check out this book!