Every day, Monday through Friday, we post a new free essay from our Smart Pop series. But catch them fast—one week later they’re gone!
2 Comments Our A Taste of True Blood poll went so well, we wanted to do it again—this time for our upcoming book on Glee.
Part of me feels like this is a no-brainer. But I would have picked the cover that lost (by a lot) last time around . . . so that shows how much I know, right? Let us know what you think!
11 Comments Our Anita Blake Vampire series anthology, Ardeur (edited by the series creator, Laurell K. Hamilton), is set to hit shelves early next month, but a few lucky readers won’t have to wait quite that long to get their hands on a copy.
We’re giving away one copy to three random commenters.
To give you a taste of what to expect from our newest title, here’s a passage from Heather Swain’s essay “Girls Gone Wild”:
Hamilton has taken a fair amount of flack (from critics and fans) for turning Anita books into soft-core monster porn, yet she retains a huge devout group of fans…
» Continue Reading “Ardeur giveaway: Win it before you can buy it!”
No Comments As of a few minutes ago, the big blue “BETA” is gone from our banner. But that’s not the only thing that’s been changed. We’ve done some polishing up of the site top to bottom, responding to your early comments as well as finally launching things we’ve been thinking about and working on since last summer.
Some new things to watch out for:
1. A more streamlined design. You’ll notice this all over, from our main page all the way to our blog pages, but the place it’s probably most obvious is on our individual essay pages (see today’s essay, for example).
2.…
No Comments I said it before and I will say it again. Lost Season 6 feels totally energized because this is the first time in the show’s history where we do not leave groups of characters just totally unaccounted for, basically. Even though we did not see Kate, Sayid and Sawyer, their group was represented by The Man in Black, Jack and Hurley were around, and so were Ben, Lapidis, Miles and Illana.
The summary: Miles exposes that Ben killed Jacob and Illana puts him to digging his own grave. The Man in Black tries to recruit him, and when he escapes and…
2 Comments Once upon a time the people of Europe lived in fear of strange human-appearing monsters who came in the night to terrorize the community. These dread creatures were known by various names—the elves, the fae, the Fair Folk, the Sidhe.
Elves would creep into your home at night and steal your child, leaving one of their own inhuman spawn in its place. If not appeased they would blight your crops, sicken your livestock, and sour the milk. According to some, they paid a tithe of human souls to Hell every seven years. They could appear beautiful and alluring, but were soulless…
No Comments If you’ve glanced a few inches upwards here at Smartpopbooks.com, you may have noticed a banner change: from our black Dollhouse contest banner to a (fittingly bright!) green banner calling attention to our upcoming Smart Pop on Glee—and your chance to be a part of it.
We’re asking Glee fans to share your Glee: to tell us how Glee has impacted your life, from the silly to the sublime. We’ll publish your stories alongside the book’s essays and special reference sections. (The book’s scheduled for release this fall; more details to come!)
We have another month to wait before we get more…
4 Comments In the Yahoo! TV blog today, Television Without Pity writer Angel Cohn gave a list of reasons why The Vampire Diaries is TV’s “most addictive show.”
Including this :
“It’s Scary and Creepy. A supernatural show shouldn’t be all talk — it should have its share of terrifying moments, which this one delivers via freaky scenes underground and in the dark woods, filled with blood and unnatural evildoers.”
(Check out the rest of the list. It’s a good read.)
The Vampire Diaries has had a great first year and is, arguably, getting better and better with each episode. New episodes are back at the…
No Comments We have a three-in-one post today, from Demigods and Monsters contributor Elizabeth Wein and kids, 12-year-old daughter Sara and 9-year-old son. They all share their thoughts on the recently released film, The Lightning Thief.
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From Elizabeth Wein
My daughter Sara, age 12, is a HUGE Percy Jackson fan. She was 10 when she discovered the books, and we fought over them while I was writing my essay for Demigods and Monsters. She’s now lost count of how many times she’s read The Lightning Thief but she reckons it’s about 10, and she can actually recite the chapter titles without looking. She’s also…
» Continue Reading “Demigods and Monsters: More Contributors’ Thoughts on The Lightning Thief”
4 Comments The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie for a pretty obvious reason: as the second act of the story, the bad guys are winning. As Dante learned writing the Divine Comedy, it is always more fun to hang out with bad guys than good guys. This far into season 6 of Lost we are clearly in the second act of the final season, and, right on schedule, the bad guys are in glorious form. I can only assume that while I am writing this a series of Youtube clips are being thrown together, scoring the final moment…
5 Comments The Oscars are this weekend, and that (of course) means one of the ten nominated movies will be crowned Best Picture of 2009. But, I bet some of us can agree the Academy doesn’t always get it right. (coughTitaniccough) So, tell me, what was the best movie you saw last year?
I’ll go first (granted, I haven’t seen many, many that would probably inch their way to the top of my list):
Away We Go or Up in the Air.
Your turn.
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