“Forever Nerdy: Living My Dorky Dreams and Staying Metal” by Brian Posehn [Book Review]

Forever Nerdy: Living My Dorky Dreams and Staying Metal is a comedic memoir from comedian, actor and writer Brian Posehn. The memoir is a typical coming of age story to which a great majority of people can relate.

He was a kid growing up in a suburb of the San Francisco Bay area during the seventies, dealing with the loss of his father at an early age and a tenuous relationship with his mother. To escape the issues at home, a nerdy, young, and at times lonely, Posehn throws himself into reading and eventually develops obsessions with many of the popular icons of the decade such as KISS, Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, and Saturday Night Live, even developing a crush on actress Gilda Radner.

As a kid growing up in the seventies, I could relate to quite a few of the stories Posehn recounts, but the one that stood out the most was a story of how he brought a KISS poster to a youth group meeting and the pastor went nuts. As a youth-group-attending teen, I could relate wholeheartedly and actually could have seen myself writing the same story.

Posehn talking about the book on Build in NYC.

In his twenties, he figures out a way to turn the loneliness and the feeling of being an outsider into a comedic routine that, unknowingly at the time, launched him into a career as a stand-up comedian and actor. Now in his fifties, Forever Nerdy: Living My Dorky Dreams and Staying Metal seems more like a long overdue celebration of having been that nerdy kid alone in the lunchroom and maturing into a well-adjusted and successful adult in the entertainment world, not to mention a husband and father.

This light, easy read gives the reader an intimate view into the life of a nerdy, metal head kid turned celebrity.

Written By: Brian Posehn
Publisher: Da Capo Press (October 23, 2018)
Format/Length: Hardcover, 304 pages