Review: "Glasses" by Adam Geczy

Glasses by Adam Geczy
Published July 2026 via Bloomsbury Academic
★★★

Back to my favorite nonfiction series! This Object Lesson is about (you guessed it) glasses, an object that I know both quite well and not as well as I ought to. Did reading this inspire me to figure out where my poor neglected spectacles are and tote them with me to an evening class? Yes. Did they help? Arguably. Did I them immediately put them aside and go back to my glasses-less life? Yes.*

But I digress. In Glasses, Geczy traces the phenomenon of four-eyed life, delving a bit into the physical history of glasses (which, all things considered, haven't been around that long) and quite a bit more into the cultural history—who has historically worn glasses in TV shows and movies, what the implications are for character development, etc. It will probably surprise nobody to hear that glasses are often a stand-in for nerdiness or undesirability, though Geczy also discusses the role of sunglasses as symbols of mystery and privacy.

A couple of missed opportunities here. Geczy says that, looking at Pixar films, he can find only two uses of glasses, in "Inside Out" and "Turning Red." But...what about "The Incredibles"? Edna wears glasses, and the entire family wears masks at various points (not glasses but might be an interesting discussion point). I haven't seen most Pixar movies, so I took a quick scan of a Wikipedia list and immediately turned up "Up" and "Soul" as well; there might be others. Now, the inclusion of Edna would not weaken Geczy's broader point about the portrayal of characters with glasses, and I'm guessing that neither would the inclusion of the characters in "Up" and "Soul" and whoever else a more detailed look at Pixar movies turned up. That said, I tend to want more research than vibe in this series, and when I can so easily refute something the author says, I'm disappointed. (I also hoped for significantly more about glasses and the Khmer Rouge—it's something that Geczy brings up late in the book, but only in passing, which is too bad when it's something that makes such a strong point about the assumption that people with glasses have an intellectual bent.)

Although this isn't memoir, Geczy also tends to extend his own (unhappy) experience of wearing glasses as a child to what he assumes glasses-wearing is like for all children. I don't know that there's anywhere where more kids are impressed than unimpressed by glasses, but as someone who was very excited to get her first glasses at the age of eight (and for whom they were, socially, a nonevent), I think there's more nuance there, probably tied to location and gender and generation, among other things. I'm resisting (valiantly) the urge to poll my college alumnae about their experiences wearing glasses (or not) as children, and I'm only hanging on to that resistance because it would be an extremely unscientific poll (mine always are), but...this might have been a good opportunity for a more scientific poll.

More pressingly: Geczy makes several comments about eyewear sometimes being used to hide deformities or facial oddities, not just for the sake of the wearer but for the sake of the viewer. His comments about this are generally tangential (he doesn't go into this in any depth), or perhaps just flippant, but the implication throughout is that it's a good thing for people to not have to see people's disabilities or differences, and...well, it did not sit well. It reminds me of ugly laws, and surely we have come beyond those? It's a small part of the book but brought the whole thing down for me.

All told them, some interesting points and a lively voice, but since these are short books maybe not enough room to go into depth on all the things I would have liked to see. Not my favorite of the series so far, but I'm excited to see what else the series brings.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

* The eye doctor told me that they were my driving glasses. I don't drive, I said. Then they're your not-reading glasses, he said. But that's never, I said. He thought I was joking, so I still don't really know when I'm meant to wear them.