Smart Pop Books: This Week's Smart Pop Essays

What is Smart Pop? Smart Pop is this totally awesome website where they make, mostly, unathorized books that are full of hilarious essays that have to do with today's pop culture, books, movies, T.V. Shows, etc. They are the ones who made The Girl Who Was on Fire (on The Hunger Games), A New Dawn (on The Twilight series- terrific book), Demigods and Monsters (on Percy Jackson Series), The Psychology of Harry Potter (no further explanation needed I pressume?)... Just to mention a few of my favorites.

From their About Page: Smart Pop is a line of smart, fresh, funny books on the best of pop culture tv, books, and film, with a particular focus on science fiction and fantasy television and literature.

Our writers are New York Times bestselling authors, television writers, psychologists, philosophers . . . anyone with a love of pop culture and something worth sharing about it.

Anyways, I thought that you guys should be aware of the weekly essays they post online. Why? Cause they are freaking great and you should have the chance to try it out for yourself.

These are some of this week's essays:

My Three Dads
By Miellyn Fitzwater  //  on Gilmore Girls

Who's your daddy? The guy who cheers you on at your soccer games? The man who helps you with your homework? Your mother’s boyfriend? The sperm donor? TV doesn’t have just one answer anymore.

No way does Rory Gilmore need a dad to make her single parent home any sweeter. She’s got a kick-ass mom who can be her best friend one minute, watching classic movies and eating junk food, and seamlessly switching to the super cool, understanding, and supportive parent the next. At first glance this family unit of two is a perfect little insulated world. But upon closer… read more »

Available until next Monday

---

 

Lisbeth Salander, Hacker

By Bernadette Schell  //  on the Millennium Trilogy

The word hacker has taken on many different meanings ranging from a person who enjoys learning the details of computer systems and how to stretch their capabilities to a malicious or inquisitive meddler who tries to discover information by poking around, possible by deceptive or illegal means.

—Steele et al,The Hacker Dictionary1

I became interested in hackers in 2000, when I was part of a university research team determined to summarize the personality and social behavioral traits of computer hackers and separate the myths from reality. Our team, consisting of two professors and two students, wanted to understand whether… read more »

Available until next Tuesday

---

 

A View From the Bench

By Judge John Tatro  //  on Crank and Glass

I’ve been a judge for fourteen years and I’ve presided over both civil and criminal cases. Since I started, I have seen the number of methamphetamine-related criminal cases rise dramatically. In the beginning, I would see one or two cases a month. Now, there isn’t a day that goes by when I’m not dealing with at least one person, typically between eighteen and twenty-five years old, who is addicted to methamphetamine.… read more »

Available until next Wednesday

---

 

Why I Didn't Grow Up to Be Marvel Girl

By Christy Marx  //  on the X-Men

Before the X-Men came along, I wanted to grow up to be the Batman. I was devouring DC Comics at the time, the only large publisher around. My parents worried about me. It was the era of Fredric Wertham and his anti-comics crusade, the original blame-the-fillinthemediahere scapegoater. Worse yet, I was a girl, a little Midwestern girl in an average Midwestern town in an average middle-class family, and I had this … obsession.

I was obsessed with comic books. Not only comics, actually, but the entire sequential storytelling medium, a big name for what I only knew as comics and… read more »

Available until next Friday

---

 

I am in no way affiliated with Smart Pop Books, I just thought you guys might enjoy all this and I get their newsletter so =]

Remember to enter my Good Bye 2011 contest! The Link is on the top, but you can also just click here and it will take you to the post. I have about 40 books to give away, who wants them?!