wordplay: (HP - DH epilogue)
Made it through the lecture that was completely freaking me out, which is a welcome relief. The nice thing about giving the first lecture of a series is that you can get in on the ground floor and recycle the stuff you've been teaching in 101 classes for forever. *winz*

***

Friday night, [livejournal.com profile] smilie117 and [livejournal.com profile] danijo1 and Marc and I were driving home from seeing "Serenity" (which, by the by, my favorite Browncoat told me that night that he might be done with those, which is a little sad considering what I'm writing about here but there you are) and somehow we got to talking about the Potter book releases - oh, we we were talking about the HBP release, when Marc drove a van full of my beloved fandom folks ♥ home while we all read. And I was thinking about that ridiculous, giddy experience - the rush of getting the book; the happiness of being in my dark, quiet house with this new book and people I care about and reading late into the night; the weird breakfasts with everybody sitting around and slurping tea and making little noises when they get to an interesting part; the hurry hurry hurry of reading so we can get to the end and talk about it; the strange, holy quiet that falls over LJ, broken only by exclamations and the incoherent reports of people stumbling over the finish line.

I don't want to never have that again.

I don't need to have it every year (I don't think I'm quite recovered from last year's - it turned into quite an organizational thing for me and and it was great fun but, yeah, I could use another year to recover) but I could stand another few of those.

So. Anybody have a lead on a promising book fandom? Or am I wasting my time trying to recreate something so singular and unique and weird that it can never be captured or enjoyed again?
wordplay: (Reading)
Last week there was outrage in the HP fandom about a Guardian article about Lumos that the fandom broadly perceived as poorly researched, unnkind and unfair. At the time, I felt pretty blase about the whole thing; the article was pretty much what I expected from the random journalist assigned to cover a story.

But you know, forget the Guardian (I know, I know - not the first time we've had occasion to try to forget the Guardian, is it?), because there's a new book out about fandoms and passions and what they mean to us. It's called "Who Are You People" by Shari Caudron; there's an NPR story about it here and its website is here. Of particular note on the website is the blog, where at the moment she's talking about Aquaman on iTunes, a crackdown on Mayberry fanart, and why she loved Wordplay. Her tone throughout is fair, humourous and compassionate - she's clearly interested in the people she's writing about, she's genuinely TRYING to get it (look, she attends a furrycon and pushes through her initial sense of weirdness until she finds something she can relate to and understand) and although she often doesn't quite get the attraction of the passion she's examining at the moment, she always leaves plenty of space for others to get it. Very unjudgmental approach, for those who worry about those things.

I was going to write a long review of the book but I think it's experiential - the story she's telling is one of an experience, and you'll do better to go through it with her than with me. Very worthwhile read, particularly for fannish readers.

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