fanfiction

Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World
$25.00
I found this book on the new books shelf at the university library. It's a cross between a media studies/cultural studies expose of the study of fan culture. The different chapters in the anthology cover different genres tv shows (Sopranos), women in violent movies (_Kill Bill_) and the aesthetics of fandom.

The book was well-written, researched, and entertaining. I ate up this book and this says lots since I'm really in research and teaching mode. This book will be best served by a lay audience who is already interested in popular culture, media studies, communication, etc. A university audience will also find this book interesting in various courses in the humanities and social sciences.

I can't decide which chapter was my favourite---they were all great. But, I do think the Into, Sopranos, and Kill Bill chapters were the highlights for me.

Cyberspaces Of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online (Digital Formations, V. 25)
$29.95
This is an excellent view into two groups of women who met up online and formed a new type of society. Dr. Bury puts the study of these groups into a wider context by exploring the historical and sociological implications. I don't always agree with the authorities she quotes, but I find their viewpoints interesting, and the discussions between the women in the groups are humorous and stimulating.

The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context
$17.95
Pros:
+ Has some insightful and true observations about fanfiction.

Cons:

- Focuses too much on specific, little known fandoms.

- Focuses too heavily on fanzines.

- Uses incredibly specific examples to support incredibly broad conclusions.

No one seems quite sure how to approach writing about the topic of fanfiction since it is both so widespread and so new. It seems to me that the most reasonable way to approach a study is to either limit it to a specific genre of fanfic or a specific fandom or, if you attempt a general study, to stick to the big name fandoms which tend to set trends and to provide examples that are familiar to a larger number of people. Pugh does neither, approaching the topic in the unfortunate way that many other academics have done by focusing on a number of completely unrelated and not necessarily well known fandoms that I suspect are the ones that Pugh likes the best. This gives the book a disjointed feeling from the beginning which is only compounded by the fact that this book seems to be useful to absolutely no one. If it is meant to be read by literary critics, then the analysis is not deep enough. If it is meant to introduce people to fanfiction, then it plunges too deeply into issues that only a literary critic or a person already immersed in the world of fandom would care about. If it is meant to be read by people who read fanfiction, then it contains a awful lot of condescending definitions. My impression is that the author tried to cater to all these audiences and succeeded in pleasing none.

The real problem with this book, however, is that the author is trying to draw incredibly broad conclusions about the whole of fanfiction by looking at incredibly narrow examples. The fact that slash authors on one community that the author frequents write in a certain way and for certain motives does not convince that slash writers in general behave this way. In fact, the author seems to base much of this broad analysis upon the stories of three or four favorite authors and even sometimes draws these broad conclusions based on a single story. This is not even as useful as it would be in the world of published fiction because no one fanwriter has nearly the level of influence on fandom as a whole as well known writers can have on literature.

This is not to say that Pugh doesn't put forward some interesting observations. I found the wanting more of/wanting more from distinction to be a very useful way of thinking about different types of fanfiction and there were some points which were very well taken. In general, though, most of Pugh's assertions are overgeneralizations -- not surprising as the book uses a small amount of evidence to make broad observations on a variety of fanfiction subjects.

25 Classic Sherlock Holmes Detective Old Time Radio Broadcasts on DVD (over 12 hours 11 minutes running time)

This unique old time radio DVD collectible features 25 digitized reels of classic Sherlock Holmes Detective radio broadcasts and over 12 hours 11 minutes of total running time on 1 DVD. Take a journey back through radio broadcasting history with this large audio library of OTR memorabilia. The golden age of old time radio has been rescued, digitized, and packaged into a gift set that any classic radio lover can appreciate. The DVD opens and plays in a computer DVD drive and the collector can listen to the audio on a MP3 player, DVD/MP3-compatible car stereo, computer, MP3-compatible DVD player, or just compile favorites onto CD for greater user flexibility.