“OOOH. My kind of cute. Geek cute, with an emphasis on the cute part. Yes, siree,” opines Jessica Darling - the narrator of Second Helpings (Megan McCafferty) - of, it turns out, her classmate Len um Levy um. Jessica doesn’t of course realise it’s Len; he’s transformed over summer and she makes a bit of an ass of herself in the ensuing scene.

The point being, geek chic is in, and it’s in in YA literature, too.

1. Two Parties, One Tux and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath, Steven Goldman. I loved this book, especially the chapter with the subheadings in haiku. Mitchell’s social awkwardness is remarkable at times, especially in the episode involving the tux, which is, like, straight out of one of those 1980s Molly Ringwald teen movies that they don’t make any more. Thank goodness, you might say (the tux scene in Two Parties… is not for the faint hearted).
2. An Abundance of Katherines, John Green. Colin Singleton is a geek-on-steroids really, in social no man’s land until he’s rescued by Hasan who points out what’s “not interesting”. Lots of people need Hasans, I think; there are lots of uninteresting conversations out there (I’ve placed an order for my own Hasan). Anyway, Colin does surprisingly alright with the ladies, even when turning love into a complex mathematical theorem.
3. King Dork, Frank Portman. Tom is “brainy, freaky, oddball kid who reads too much, … so bright that his genius is sometimes mistaken for just being retarded”. So it comes as no surprise to learn that Tom is an outsider at school. Outsiders often make the most engaging narrators though, and you get a double dose of this in King Dork, as Tom is somewhat obsessed with The Catcher in the Rye and Holden Caulfield.
4. Fat Kid Rules the World, K L Going. There’s an unlikely duo in here; Troy is an “overweight social leper” and Curt, who stops Troy from making the biggest mistake of his life, is a “skinny punk guitar genius”. When Troy is recruited to Curt’s band as drummer (no matter that he can’t play) it is possible that, for the first time in his life, Troy just might be cool.
5. Little Brother, Cory Doctorow (he calls himself w1n5t0n, you see): Ender’s Game Orson Scott Card. Computer geeks can save the world.
6. Feed, M T Anderson. A dystopian novel by the frighteningly intelligent M T Anderson (he wrote The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing). The concept here is geeky (which, I’m trying to point out, is not a bad thing): in a future dystopia everyone has a computer chip implanted in their brain which links them to the global network (the Feed). Titus meets Violet, who has been home-schooled and received her “feed” late, enabling her to be more aware of what’s going on. Just to be different, the oddball geek here is a girl.
7. Black Swan Green, David Mitchell. Jason Taylor is a 13 year old geek, no doubt. More than a little autobiographical (an educated guess), this novel is proof that geeks can become multi-award-winning-critically-acclaimed-international-bestselling authors and all-round nice guys. I shouldn’t plug David Mitchell’s books so much, but they’re so good.
8. Spider-Man. Peter Parker: geek and superhero; and on the DC side of things you’ve got Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter and Superman.
9. Harry Potter series, J K Rowling. Is it Harry who started the geek is good trend? It just might be. Thanks, Harry!
10. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4, Sue Townsend. To finish, here’s a geek who is not chic at all (sorry Adrian). Adrian Mole thinks he’s an intellectual and attempts to diarise his intellectual awakening, misinterpreting things left, right and centre: v funny.