If you like popular culture essays, BenBella has launched their new Smart Pop Books site, where they’ll be offering free essays weekly and the option to order digital copies of essays individually.
Currently among the crop of free essays for reading are “Whimsy Goes with Everything” by Heather Swain from the Gilmore Girls essay collection edited by Jennifer Crusie, and “Darn Your Sinister Attraction!” by Carol Poole about the violent relationship between Buffy and Spike from a collection that analyzed the psychology of Joss Whedon’s television creations. SmartPop is also running a contest for essays on the Whedon show Dollhouse.
I wrote an essay about Grey’s Anatomy for their anthology “Grey’s Anatomy 101: Seattle Grace, Unauthorized,” and the other essay in that anthology are kickin’. I think the idea of being able to purchase individual essays is equally kickin’ and were I doing research on pop culture, this would be a huge help for me. The collection of authors who participated in the Pride and Prejudice anthology is amazing – I hope those essays are made available soon.
In other new site news, Harlequin has launched a blog that’s all about, well, Harlequin, the company who resides on the edge of everything new in the digital and social networking univers.
There’s the goofy, funny, company-wide silliness of Bobble Brent on Twitter, and Bobble Boss, and now the different departments have what looks to be an official blog outside of the genre-specific and line-specific blogs they run. If the silly humor of Bobble Boss reaches the entries on the Harlequin blog, that could be a corporate blog I sign up to read regularly – a rare thing indeed.
Wow, thanks for that tip on Smart Pop books. great find!
Thanks so much for linking to the Buffy/Spike essay. As a rape survivor, it was really hard for me to get past that particular scene toward the end of the series. This essay helped me see their relationship in an interesting new way.
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Thanks for the Smart Pop Books link.
I have been interested in several books of the Smart Pop series, but I cannot buy them all sight unseen. I have to special order them, too, since I’m outside the US and no bookstore carries them here.
This way, I can sample some of the essays before buying. Or, if I need just one particular essay, buy a copy of it.
Anti-spam word: pay75 – I would need 75times my current pay to buy all the SmartPop books I want.
Thanks for the Smart Pop link,ladies. I’ve enjoyed the Gilmore Girls collection and the P&P one as well. They also have a great one for Veronica Mars that was edited by Rob Thomas himself.
Browsing thru the site just now,I saw that they also have a Twilight collection of essays,one of which was written by a YA author I know,Robin Brande. Had to order that!:)
Best news this week.
And this keeps making me laugh.
Wonderful links!
Ran into this site the other day: http://glyde.com/
Instantly thought of fellow romance fans. I’m not even sure where to find a used book store to sell my never-will-finish pile anymore.