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loryndalar's review
5.0
Incredible. Read this as a part of... my 1st or 2nd degree? Dunno! But it made me look at my fan friends rather differently.
bookcrazylady45's review against another edition
5.0
I loved coming across a line about 'on the wall of my office hangs a print by fan artist Jean Kluge' only to realize that on my bedroom wall hangs a print by fan artist Jean Kluge'. I love connections to things I read. As a fan fiction reader, I found fandom in 1995 and became a beta reader for a very prolific writer plus a few others over time. I collected stories, I traded tapes, I went to cons, I joined egroups and I exchanged emails with hordes of women. Texual Poachers was the very first book I ever read about fandom that took it seriously and covered a lot of the ground I had explored myself. It was written in 1992 before the internet as it became for me even existed. My first fandom was totally online and never did get into zine production. The next two fandoms were among the oldest and had a huge paper circuit library and zines from as far back as 1978. As the book noted, as a fan who followed the characters, I found myself following the actor's careers which took me out of my comfort zone of interest into strange avenues of movies and television shows that I would never have seen otherwise and into the books from which some of those movies were adapted and then books about fandom itself. As I reread this one, I am underlining even more..using a different colour pen this time to distinguish today from the last time I read the book.
pussreboots's review against another edition
2.0
In the middle of my Patron 2.0 research I came across Fans, Bloggers, and Games: Media Consumers in a Digital Age by Henry Jenkins (review coming). Knowing his books from my previous life as a film theory student, I added the book to my research pile. As that book is in some regards a sequel to Textual Poachers, I also checked it out to compare texts.
Textual Poachers is an examination of fandom, or the fen as they sometimes call themselves. As this one was written in the days before blogs, it looks at the fan fiction shared in the days of usenet and before.
There are long chapters on slash and to my disappointment a recurring assertion that men and women are fundamentally incapable of reading the same text the same way. Apparently my ovaries make me want to see a homosexual relationship between Kirk and Spock. Um no. You know how I spend most of my time watching Star Trek? I spend my time wondering why the male actors are all wearing blue eye shadow. It seems so illogical.
So anyway, I read this book primarily for fun. It wasn't on topic for my Patron 2.0 paper. It was interesting but it felt dated. It also felt too simplistic in some of its conclusions. If, though, you are a reader or a writer of fanfic, you should read Textual Poachers.
Textual Poachers is an examination of fandom, or the fen as they sometimes call themselves. As this one was written in the days before blogs, it looks at the fan fiction shared in the days of usenet and before.
There are long chapters on slash and to my disappointment a recurring assertion that men and women are fundamentally incapable of reading the same text the same way. Apparently my ovaries make me want to see a homosexual relationship between Kirk and Spock. Um no. You know how I spend most of my time watching Star Trek? I spend my time wondering why the male actors are all wearing blue eye shadow. It seems so illogical.
So anyway, I read this book primarily for fun. It wasn't on topic for my Patron 2.0 paper. It was interesting but it felt dated. It also felt too simplistic in some of its conclusions. If, though, you are a reader or a writer of fanfic, you should read Textual Poachers.
yarnbard's review against another edition
5.0
I've been familiar with Jenkins' work for years, but this is the first time that I have actually sat down and read one of his books in its entirety. I decided to start with Textual Poachers because if you dig deep enough in the citations of any paper in the field of fan studies, you will find this text.
Honestly, I'm kind of glad that I waited to read this book. Textual Poachers was published when internet fandom was in its very early years, so the text primarily concerns the fanzine era of media fandom in the 70's and 80's. I have spent the past two years looking at fanzines and studying their history, and this has given me a much deeper appreciation of and familiarity with the fanzine medium.
The 20th anniversary edition also starts off with a conversation between Henry Jenkins and Suzanne Scott reflecting on Textual Poachers and the fan studies field twenty years later, which provides some further context for the book, and discusses some of the major changes that have occurred in both fandom and fan studies since 1992.
Despite the age of the original text, I think it is still a valuable and useful text for anyone who is interested in the field of fan studies, and is a fascinating read for anyone who considers themself a media fan.
Honestly, I'm kind of glad that I waited to read this book. Textual Poachers was published when internet fandom was in its very early years, so the text primarily concerns the fanzine era of media fandom in the 70's and 80's. I have spent the past two years looking at fanzines and studying their history, and this has given me a much deeper appreciation of and familiarity with the fanzine medium.
The 20th anniversary edition also starts off with a conversation between Henry Jenkins and Suzanne Scott reflecting on Textual Poachers and the fan studies field twenty years later, which provides some further context for the book, and discusses some of the major changes that have occurred in both fandom and fan studies since 1992.
Despite the age of the original text, I think it is still a valuable and useful text for anyone who is interested in the field of fan studies, and is a fascinating read for anyone who considers themself a media fan.
lizenfrance's review against another edition
4.0
This was fascinating 10 years ago. I would love to see Jenkins update it now that fanfic has grown so exponentially and has even spread to film, where it sometimes receives official accolades from the copyright holders themselves (see Lucasfilm's "Star Wars" fan film competitions). Dr. Jenkins, I'm waiting...
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