Another of the Benbella Smart Pop books, Ardeur is a collection of essays about the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter novels by Laurell K Hamilton. The coup for this particular book is that they have scored the author herself as “editor” of the essays, a role she shares with the more discreetly credited Leah Wilson. Hamilton contributes an ‘introduction’ to each of the essays, though they are really more personal reactions and in some cases justifications for the themes raised by the essayists. I felt the formatting let Hamilton down a little here, as her pieces often don’t make sense unless you’ve read the essay, or at least looked at the title and beginning – they would have been better off to put her pieces on the left facing page, or indeed after each essay instead of before.

I did like comparing Hamilton’s reactions to the essays, though, the funniest being the one paired with the “Dating the Monsters” essay where the writer attempts to place Anita Blake in the context of the romance genre, and Hamilton undercuts this by discussing how she naturally fails at writing romance, because she’s completely uneducated in the tropes and traditions of that genre. Once again, the essayist might have had more of a chance to get her point across if the Hamilton introduction came after rather than contradicting her before she got started!

I enjoyed the collection, as a whole, especially for the perspective it brought not only to the Anita Blake novels as a body of work, but also to the urban fantasy genre, which I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I enjoyed the Nick Mamatas essay which lays out what Hamilton has achieved in her career – it was a good introduction into the book, though it’s an interesting choice as it means the collection begins by addressing the cultural cringe many have about Hamilton’s books. Surely the main audience for Ardeur would be fans of Anita Blake, rather than the more jaded readers who roll their eyes at all the vampire stripping and group smut?

(more…)

I fell in love with the idea of the BenBella Smart Pop Books some time ago, and between actually finding the Jane Austen/Jenny Crusie one in my library, and the free essays that BenBella put up every week, I became an absolute convert. I bought a couple of piles of the books directly from the publisher in December, mostly to give away as presents. But I kept a couple for myself, including the one that made me bounce with excitement when I discovered its existence – Neptune Noir, a collection of fun, thoughtful essays about Veronica Mars.

This is one of the best of the BenBella books I’ve read – the balance of topics is good, covering the writing structure, noir influences and themes, and relationships of the show. There are even a few oddball topics like – why is Veronica Mars so popular among conservatives? By about halfway through, I was desperate to rewatch my VM DVDs which is quite an achievement as I only did my last mass rewatch less than 6 months ago.

The biggest disappointment of the book is that it was released in 2006 – after season two, but before any of the essay writers had seen the third and final season. It makes sense that the book would have been released at the height of the show’s popularity, and that they didn’t know there was only one year to go before it would be cancelled, but with so much great insight and analysis about the first two seasons, the book couldn’t help but feel unfinished without reference to that. It’s a particular shame because season three did several things to break away from the formula and traditions of the first two seasons, and many articles read how left me with the sense of ‘to be continued’ without reference to that final act.

(some mild spoilers follow)
(more…)

I just finished reading Flirting with Pride & Prejudice, a collections of pop culture style essays on P&P, edited by Jennifer Crusie.  It’s the first of the BenBella Smart Pop Books I’ve actually read, though I was over at their website recently, geeking out at the range of books they have available and the free essays they are offering to promote said books, not realising that the cute Jane Austen book on my library pile was from the same range.

[I just looked again and omg Neptune Noir!  They have one on Veronica Mars.  And the Farscape one is called Sex, Drugs and Killer Muppets - how cool are these people???]

Ahem, back to Jane Austen.

It’s a fun, very readable book.  I like the fact that the essays are for the most part very short and conversational, though a few of them have great depth.  A range of topics are covered (two essays covering Bride and Prejudice, excellent to see!) so there’s a range of history, modern interpretation and adaptation, politics, academia and even to my surprise a goodly chunk of fanfic at the back.

The writers seem mainly to be – well, writers, mostly those of the chicklit/romance field from which Crusie herself hails.  The main theme of the book is the modern perceptions of Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice – and indeed the way that prejudice itself stops many people from engaging with the text.

By far the best essay is the final one, by the always-brilliant Karen Joy Fowler (“The Pelican Bar” is one of the stories of the year, have you read Eclipse Three yet? If not, why not?) who received mainstream literary acclaim for her The Jane Austen Book Club, and as a result has a wealth of anecdotal evidence about what people think about ‘dear Jane’.  I particularly liked her theme of the way in which people not only read Jane Austen’s various books differently as individuals, but also at different times in their life – Mansfield Park is a different book at 16 as it is at 40… it’s a stunningly sophisticated essay, also taking in the male preconceptions of Austen from publication through to present day, and in itself worth picking up the book.

There’s lots more to love in this collection, though. Its timely publication in 2005 (the year of the most recent P&P adaptation) means there is no mention of Keira Knightley at all, but plenty of reference to Colin Firth, Jennifer Ehle, Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier, Aishwarya Rai and Martin Henderson.  Good old Charlotte and her choice to marry Mr Collins obviously intrigued/bothered many modern readers, and Jennifer O’Connell’s essay “A Little Friendly Advice” is one of many that engage with that quandary.  There’s also lots of analysis about why Darcy is so hot anyway.  Laura Resnick’s essay on Bride and Prejudice pretty much echoes a conversation I once had about the clever use of Indian culture in the film, and how it’s about as authentic an adaptation as you can get set in the present day, and I like the way she has analysed the film’s successes and failings.  Sarah Zettel’s “Times and Tenors” looks intelligently at the way in which different eras have imposed their own cultural assumptions on film adaptations of P&P, and I particularly enjoyed her analysis of the Greer Garson version (my first introduction to P&P!) and how it swaps the importance of class vs. money, because American audiences were unsympathetic to the idea of money as a motive…

The book is full of humour and contradictions, itself proving time and again that Karen Joy Fowler & Sarah Zettel are absolutely right – everyone takes something different from Pride and Prejudice and at the same time, adds something of their own to what is there in the text.

Now to find out if my library also has a copy of Neptune Noir… sadly I suspect it does not!