Review courtesy of my son Marc:


A few reasons really come to mind when I'm asked the question why I wished to read the novel Nerd Do Well written by Simon Pegg. The most prominent one is the amazing similarities between us. Simon and I are both extremely smart, witty, handsome and undeniably charming. Our bodies are also hot enough to fry eggs on. All joking aside, I jumped at the chance to read this novel because of the simple fact that Simon Pegg has been one of my all time favorite actors sinc More...

Simon Pegg is one of my all-time favourite comedy actors (and writers) after watching Shaun of the Dead a few years ago and marvelling at him starring in Rik Mayall's and Ade Edmondson's Guest House Paradiso. Now, I'm not a big autobiography fan. If it was written by a comedien or someone comic (with the exception of my alarming obsession for anything Cricket related) then there's every chance that it's going to be funny, and that is what the main point should be.

I'm not a nerd or a geek or a dw More...

If you have any idea who Simon Pegg is, you'll want to read Nerd Do Well. From Shaun of the Dead and the J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek to Paul and Hot Fuzz, Pegg has inhabited some of the most entertaining movies of the early 21st Century.

If you don't know who he is, you might want to read this book anyway. It's a light-hearted and self-aware glimpse at the autobiography of a very lucky man who thoroughly realizes (or, I should say, realises) his luck.

It's no more than a glimpse, though. Pegg More...

I am pretty sure this is the first celebrity auto/biography I've read in which the author has no crippling chemical addictions to overcome, appears to be genuinely gracious in his serious moments, and exudes no whininess about childhood adversity, yet it's still fairly entertaining.

Pegg tends to depict any of his traumas briefly in a matter-of-fact, they-built-character kind of way, and focuses instead on how seemingly incidental events, moments, or people shaped and guided him as an artist. For More...

I couldn't wait to enter into the controversy that surrounds this book, all due to someone's comment on the price.
(Check Amazon's reviews. You'll find an amazing amount of bickering over the price of the ebook.)
I purchase the hard cover print version, as opposed to the digital version, because of all the controversy. I'm glad I did, as there are pictures of Simon taken throughout his life. And I don't know if they'd be available in the digital version.

Shortly into the book, you get the idea tha More...

Read the original review here: http://justanotherbooknerd.tumblr.com...


Nerd Do Well is the first forays into the world of literature by Simon Pegg who is probably best known for his work in Spaced; Shaun of the Dead; Hot Fuzz and more recently in the Mission Impossible movies.

Pegg begins by pointing out that he didn’t want this book to become another soulless body to add to the many drones of lackluster celebrity biographies, saying instead that he wanted to produce a book that was both interest More...

I'd almost certainly knock a star off this review if I'd read the paper copy, but the audiobook really is well worth the money. Pegg's an excellent narrator of his own writing, putting quite a lot of energy and enthusiasm into the reading... until the last hour when he appears to flag a bit. If I had to guess I'd say this is another one of those celeb one-shot read-throughs (reads-through?) where they get called into the publisher's in the morning and just plough through the whole book in one da More...

I'll begin by saying that I love Simon Pegg. I enjoy the films he's been in and when I met him earlier this year, I found him absolutely great. My boyfriend and I attended a showing of "Shaun of the Dead" that included a Q+A with Edgar Wright with surprise guest Simon. After the show, we saw Edgar disappear into a room and were waiting for a chance to say hello, when we noticed that Simon was getting his picture taken with a fan. He was being called away, but he said he did have time for a quick More...

Nerd do Well isn’t your ordinary book. It’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in another mystery that’s very good friends with an enigma. Simon Pegg’s biography is a maze (also amazing) of moving tales of youth and growing up in Britain; entertaining hijinks and comedy jokes; and philosophizing on the merits of Stars Wars and the failure of the prequels. And then there is the other story, the fictional heroic epic of the rich, magnificent genius and renowned action hero who is Simon Pegg; w More...

“It was never my intention to write an autobiography. The very notion made me uneasy. You see them congesting the bookshop shelves at Christmas. Rows of needy smiles, sad clowns and serious eyes, proclaiming faux-modest life stories, with titles such as This is Me, or Why, Me? or Me, Me, Me. I didn’t want to do that. It’s not really me.”

So starts Simon Pegg’s autobiography, Nerd Do Well, and despite his best efforts Pegg never really succeeds in writing something exceptional. Pegg’s writing enga More...

Listened to the audio version. I didn't think I was going to like the sci-fi, super-hero adventure story that is woven in between the autobiography chapters but as it went along it turned out to be a funny, listenable, pulpyish, sci-fi story good for at least one listen.

In the autobiographical sections Pegg works on a circularity theme that starts out well but by the end of the book turns into a spirograph of confusing time-travel through his life bogged down by name droppings of industry insid More...

Simon pegg is the star of the british sitcom "spaced" which co stars his best friend Nick frost. Simon rises to fame and makes two films with nick, "shaun of the dead" and "hot fuzz" witch is dericted by edger wright, who goes on to create the film version of the series of graphic novels, scott pilgrem while nick and simon write and star in the film "paul". this explains simon's rise to fame, spoken directly from the master himself.

This is the autobiography of Simon Pegg. the british comedian an More...

Simon Pegg is an interesting fellow. He writes very well, at times even flooring me with the cadence of his paragraphs. He is, after all, known as an actor - and even though he's co-written quite a few of his best-known films, he generally makes his bucks reading the lines of others.

Whether he filled in the gaps or not, Pegg remembers a freakish amount of his childhood. Thinking back, I don't know that I could fill as many pages recounting the events of my happy youth as he did and he's a good d More...

I adore Simon Pegg. I happen to be lucky enough to live in one of the only 3 cities that he came to on his U.S. book tour. Therefore, I got to stand in a long line to meet him/get my book signed. He was incredibly nice and gracious, especially when you realize that he was signing around 500 books in a very short amount of time.

I confess to being slightly disappointed in this book. If he weren't such a gracious, kind man, I might give it less stars. I think my biggest problem with the book is tha More...

Someone convinced Pegg to write an autobiography, and so he has. But it seems like he's not sure why anyone would read it, or what he should include. As a result, it's a bit like four books jumbled up into one: How I Became A Writer/Actor, My Childhood, Girls Who Gave Me Boners, and A Peggtastic Space Adventure. I enjoyed the first type of story, thought the second type gave a bit of insight into his curent themes, skim-read anything like the third and skipped the fourth type after slogging thro More...

Mini Book Review: A delightfully touching, real and nerdy memoir from one of my favorite British actor/writers. You can really tell while reading it that he doesn't quite understand why anyone would be interested in reading about him, but was convinced to write a memoir in spite of this. His self deprecating humour makes reading it worthwhile and at times I felt a connection with him based on our similar nerdy ways. I got a kick out of him talking about listening to the Noah skit by Bill Cosby o More...

Not the most amazing life story that you will ever read, but it is a thoroughly enjoyable read non-the-less. True, he has not lived long enough to commit his life to paper and ink, but for fans of the Peggster, it is a must read.

Pegg oscillates between segments of a fictional story, and stories from his real-life adventures. It is a fun stylistic choice for telling folks about your life, and revealing a bit of your personality.

In this we learn that he is just a hard working kid that had a little More...

I like Simon Pegg. He's got nerd cred and has continued to gain and enhance his geek cred. Geeks love Shaun of the Dead because we all know the zombie apocalypse will be here any day now. All this was solidified when he played the young Scotty from the Engineering deck on Star Trek. Scotty is geeky in the best possible ways with his engineering know-how, risk-taking, and awesome accent.

For me, Nerd Do Well was just okay. The science fiction novel Mr. Pegg weaves throughout the memoir is actually More...

I like Simon Pegg, really, so I almost feel bad about giving this such a poor rating. He seems like the kind of guy I could listen to raving about Star Wars and other geekeries for ages (and I'm not even a Star Wars fan). Unfortunately, this book features very little of his passion for nerd fare, or even any of his typical funny, charming personality. It's so stilted as he tries to juggle writing about himself but not actually telling you anything. It's like an awkward first-day-of-class introdu More...

Pretty good! He is a wordy so and so and no mistake: man ain't afraid of a dictionary. Which I rather liked because it gives him a very clear voice of his own. Definitely the kind of chap you could enjoy a pint or three with, in the same way that I'd love to sit down with Wil Wheaton (who seems to be the American mirror-image of Pegg with added D&D and WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER), or Derren Brown (similar humour and wordiness) or Felica Day (also a lovely nerd).

Pegg is a true British nerd. He's More...

While attending the London premiere of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Simon Pegg was granted a unique opportunity, to meet with one of his idols George Lucas. In his book, Nerd do well, Pegg recalled his exchange with the master of Jedi. "He semed tired and slightly exasperated and in that second I regretted accepting the offer to meet him." Pegg had illustrated in a prior chapter his disillusionment with the Star Wars prequels. Introduced as a fellow filmmaker by Ron Howard, Pegg seemed to eli More...

I thought this book was fantastic, and I am not one prone to finding celebrity memoirs at all interesting. In fact, right after 99% of YA and most books written about soldiers, they're my least favorite genre.

While there's certainly enough inside scoop on his films to interest fact-finders, the main crux of the book is about his childhood. And not in a whingy way, I hasten to add. His writing is incredibly open, smart, quick, and of course funny. At times he's touching, at other times he's next More...

Simon Pegg is, in fact, a huge nerd. I don't think there is a better way to prove such than by dissecting the undertone of backlash against the Vietnam War represented in Star Wars: A New Hope, but if there is, then it's the beautifully horrible self indulgent fiction that is in no way derivative of everything that was ever cool. Pegg tells his story with charm, good humor, and the lesson-imparting retrospective of all worthwhile biographies, but it is the absolute curve of his nerditude that ma More...

I'm a fan of Simon's work since as far back as Spaced and although it has taken a while for me to get hold of copy (on my new Kindle), I was looking forward to reading this book.

People could be mistaken for thinking that this could be a biography of Simon's work since his early days on programmes such as Big Train and Spaced or his film work such as Shaun Of The Dead or Hot Fuzz. In fact, this book is more a memoir to what makes his nerd gene tick.

Remembrances of his love of Star Wars, Zombie Fl More...

There are very few television shows or films these days that I actually find amusing, most straying too far into lowbrow high jinks centered around arrested adolescence. Everything of Pegg’s I’ve seen, however, manages to strike just the right balance between intelligent and irreverent, clever and crass.

In Nerd Do Well Pegg gives readers a look at the upbringing and influences that shaped the sense of humor and talent we’ve all come to know and love through his work in films such as Shaun of the More...

I think Simon Pegg is a very funny man, and when I saw him in "Hot Fuzz," I felt like I had discovered him. And then I found out he had been in a movie before that. So maybe I'm a Johnny-come-lately, I don't know. But I enjoyed "Paul" and, to read the Internet, most people didn't, so screw you all!

This book is a memoir-slash-adventure-story (and the two are printed in separate fonts, so you can tell them apart, although I don't recommend it) in which Mr. Pegg takes pains to establish his "nerd" More...

(3.5 / 5)

Simon Pegg is one very talented and funny guy. I felt I could relate to a lot of this book as we're roughly the same age, grew up with the same nerdy interests and seem to view movies as more real than actual reality. This book, however, is a bit of a hodge podge.

Ultimately it remains enjoyable, but there are two things that let it down: the time jumping which makes it hard to figure out the timeline in your head and how it relates to other stories Pegg has been telling, and the fact th More...

Disclaimer: I'm inconsistent on ratings. I'm not firm on the question of whether to grade something by its real merit or as an example of its genre. Witness: Water for Elephants (which I gave a staggering five stars), which is only a good book because the rest of the genre is so bad. I've gotten into the habit of rating books based on the pleasantness or unpleasantness of surprise if the book turns out to be different from what was expected.

Fortunately for this exercise, my admittedly capricious More...

Favorite quotes -- and this first one could be about my job as much as it is about comedians: "Stand-up comics...are at the most severe end of this need to be liked. Such is their desire for affirmation, they stand before a group of strangers and risk hostility and disdain in the pursuit of their goal...Good stand-ups can go out in front of any crowd with an air of confidence and assertiveness that wins the crowd's attention before a word has been uttered. Even if, as sometimes happens, the gig More...

2.5 stars

Page after page of this really brought home why I don't read memoirs. Ugh, Pegg spent what felt like an unending number of pages on his formative years which would have been fine, I guess, if they had been even a little bit compelling (he seemed to have a very typical childhood - nothing exciting to see there). Also, it just wasn't written very well - it was too scattered and disorganized.

When he finally got to things I would have been interested in, not only was my attention span shot More...