One of my hobbies is being a part of media fandom online. If you have a clue what that means, I don't need to explain it to you -- you either think I'm partly nuts or you're right there with me. ^_^ If you don't know what that means, imagine online fan clubs devoted to your favorite TV series. That's kind of the gist.

I checked this book out of the library thinking I was getting a book about Buffy fandom -- the media fandom circling around the TV shows Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. Instead, it's a book about Allyson Beatrice (the author) and what fandom has meant to her, how she's engaged it, what sorts of experiences she's had because of it, and so on. Name-dropping of Buffy-related celebs litters the first half of the essays, and there's no sense of coherence or continuity to the stories -- they read like blog entries polished up and shoved at a publisher in hopes of looking important on the Internet. I kept reading due to the shared experience factor -- there really are a lot of things she talks about that are totally familiar to me -- but in the end, I wish I'd left this one on the library shelf. (On the other hand, it was a fast read -- start to finish in a few hours -- and it puffs up my book count for the year...)

All in all, this was not the book I was looking for, but it was very interesting to see someone's perspective on fandom in a printed format -- usually when I hear fen talking about fandom, it's on the screen to an audience of other fen.

Tags: fandom, reading