piperclover's review against another edition
I got this for an essay I was writing and I was really excited to listen to It but I don't think it's written well. I'm a huge fan fiction fan so I know all of the slang/terminology and the ends and outs of fandom and fanfic sites but this was hard to follow.
naguayo's review
2.0
Yes and no. Thank you for your effort but, no thank you. I'm not big on writing very long, in-depth reviews so just a few thoughts; take it or leave it. The HP part was over so quickly. I was expecting a lot more elaboration on this subject given its immense online presence. Then she started praising the Twilight fan fiction and books.......YIKES. She completely lost me there. Clearly in favor of publishing fan fiction works as original, and although yes I have read some ff stories that are original enough that they completely deserve to be published as original work (i.e. Turn by Sara's Girl), I got the feeling that she's just pro things like City of Bones (Draco Trilogy anyone?) and, good GOD, 50 Shades of Grey being published. Do NOT even get me started on that disaster of a book...just...no. I must admit after a while I found myself flipping pages and not really reading it so I can't say I read all of it. I suppose I read enough to know that it wasn't my cup of tea. I don't think she has spent enough time in fan fiction at all to really know what she's on about. All in all...I was expecting a lot more from this book. I like that she touches on slash a bit but...*sigh* she got so much wrong. As a slash reader myself, I feel that it fell short. Big time. Also...self-identified men? B**** please. Perhaps I was expecting too much from this book, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't excellent either. There are MUCH better essays and podcasts online explaining and delving into the history of fan fiction than this and they're FREE. Long live net-neutrality and a "free" internet.
marobbins's review
4.0
Some parts of this book intrigued me more than others, but overall, I found it interesting, fun to read, and helpful. I initially read it more so for fun and to help me get ideas for my own fanfic work, but some of it will also be helpful for my dissertation writing. I learned a lot about the history of fan fiction and fandom in general. Fan fiction writing used to be in the form of Zines, which I very much want to look at. Since I now write Buffy fan fiction myself, I particularly enjoyed that part of the book. I do think fan fiction will continue to influence the literary and popular culture worlds, so this book is an important one.
colorwriter's review
informative
reflective
slow-paced
2.75
I had high hopes for this book but had different expectations from what the content ended up being. I personally did not enjoy the huge focus on sexual content within fanfiction. As someone who rarely writes or reads fanfic smut I felt unrepresented by most of the book. The last part was what I was most interested in reading about.
crtsjffrsn's review
3.0
I've been doing a bit of reading in the area of fan studies lately, so as someone involved in fandom and fanfiction communities, this was certainly a book I needed to pick up. I was really interested to see an approach focused on fanfiction from an academic perspective. And for the first third of the book, I feel like that's what I got. But past that, the in-depth and objective feeling seemed to fade. A number of major controversies in fanfiction are highlighted, often without a full perspective, and the weighting of examples is heavy in two specific fandoms (which, with fanfiction being a very large panfandom activity, it would have been good to bring in a wider array of examples or case studies, I think).
Overall, the book does provide a good overview of fanfiction for someone who may not know much about its history, but I'd be hard-pressed to call this 'the definitive text' on the subject.
Overall, the book does provide a good overview of fanfiction for someone who may not know much about its history, but I'd be hard-pressed to call this 'the definitive text' on the subject.
amcloughlin's review
4.0
A wonderful history of fanfiction, especially early zine distribution and recent works in the Internet age. Much fandom scholarship focuses on the early days of ficcing, and while that is useful for historical and educational purposes, those of us who got our fix through dial-up rather than mail-order zines can't relate personally to that era. Jamison's Fic is the first wide survey of fandom to the present day that I have come across, and I loved the chance to relive my own first years in fandom in the early 2000s. A recommended read!