Here’s a nice find. Smartpop publishes fun and thoughtful essay collections about mainstream TV shows. You know, Buffy, Lost, Simpsons, Star Trek, etc. Mostly, they publish print books. Essays by psychologists, professors, etc. Fun stuff.
On their free PDF ebook download page, they’ve apparently released three collections of their pop culture essays as free pdfs. Plus, there’s a free download about the Making of the Trouble with Tribbles episode on the original Star Trek. I’ve looked at PDF previews of some of their volumes and find them appetizing to the eye.
Volume 1 (PDF) features essays about Buffy, Serenity, King Kong, Narnia and Matrix (by Ray Kurzweil!!!) Volume 2 PDF features essays about Harry Potter, Star Wars, World of Warcraft, etc. Volume 3 features essays about House, Gray’s Anatomy and the Simpsons. Volume 1 is 200+ pages. Volume 2 and 3 are slightly shorter.
For those of you who think essays about pop culture are boring, remember that they were a source of endless fascination for certain writers. (Check out for example, Umberto Eco’s essay about the film Casablanca.) TV depictions can cause today’s youth to view traditional professions in a different light; GraceAnne DeCandido argues that the only positive role model for librarians on TV has been Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. One pop culture phenomena I think worth investigating is increased levels of vomiting on TV (taste alert). Perhaps I’ll write a book about that.
On a somewhat related note, I’ve been using Cybook more often and have been pleasantly surprised at the zoom capability for PDFs.
