Customer Reviews

How Xena Changed Our Lives: True Stories by Fans for Fans

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I perchased this book, and was pleasantly surpised by how much I enjoyed it. Of course this book isn't stricktly for fans of the Xenaverse. It has some wonderful stories from the fans on how the show changed thier lives. Some are funny, some are very touching and personal. Xena was a show that transcended it's cheezy mythology setting, and introduced the world to two characters (brilliantly played by Lucy Lawless & Renee O'Connor) that broke so many new grounds with the journey they took us on. This book celebrates the effect it had on the fans, and does so wonderfully.

Now, first, I promise I'm not just giving this book 5 stars because Nikki is a good pal of mine, nor because I have a segment in it (Forget Eden, Give Me Adrienne).
Nikki Stafford has passion for the books she writes/edits. From her first book "Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor: Warrior Stars of Xena" to this one, Nikki never fails to grasp the fandom. "Warrior Stars" to this day is the best compainion book for "Xena." "How Xena Changed Our Lives" was created when Nikki had trouble getting fans to write for "Trekkers: True Stories by Fans for Fans" and it was suggested to her to make a "Xena" book. Though the "Trekker" book has some great stories, "How Xena Changed Our Lives" has all the passion. People can finally read WHY a tv series can change a person's life. Whether it helps you out of a rut, is the cause for meeting new people or inspires you to volunteer, this book captures the heart of Xenites. There are stories that will make you laugh, ones that will make you jealous, and ones that will truly make you cry. An Xenite will love this book, and I recommend it for non-Xenites as well (especially if you know a Xenite) as an invation into our world.

I am not now nor have I ever been a hardcore XENA fan. I enjoy the show and appreciate how important the characters of Xena and Gabrielle were -- along with Dana Scully and Buffy -- for ushering in the modern era of heroic women on television. Although XENA was never as popular as THE X-FILES nor as critically acclaimed as BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, for a host of people Xena and her constant companion Gabrielle were the archetypes of the heroic female, a character amazingly absent in the first fifty years of television. But XENA did not change my life nor the life of anyone I know. I do know that she, along with Buffy, Max Guevara, and other heroic female characters provided my daughter with examples of strong women at a time when strong women were being presented on television for the first time.

Interestingly, this was the second of two books that I have read in the past week on television fandom. I've read a fair amount about fandom, but I've never been much a part of it. I post on a couple of boards, but I'm not a great community member. None of my social life revolves around celebrating a television show, even though I'm a fairly serious student of television and much of my writing and research centers on specific series in particular or the medium as a whole in general. But I've never been to a convention for any show or to any event (apart from a TV Guide sponsored preview of an episode of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) connected to a TV series and probably am never likely to do so. I have published essays on specific TV series and plan to write additional pieces in the future. So while I'm completely familiar with the series the fans in this book talk about, I'm really not a participant in their world.

Unfortunately, nothing in the book really makes me want to go to conventions. Much of the activity described in this book simply doesn't appeal to me. Out of sheer curiosity I have read a tiny bit of fanfic (BUFFY and BSG) but quickly quit. I found the writing to be of pretty low quality and, to be honest, a tad embarrassing. Most fanfic seems to me to be pretty bald fantasy projection and the examples I experienced fell into the category of "too much information." Nor do conventions interest me. I can't understand standing in line to get someone's autograph or wanting to exchange three or four lines of conversation with someone. I've seen a fair number of celebrities in my life, but apart from a long conversation I had once with Charlton Heston (initiated by him -- I would never have started a chat with someone just to talk with someone famous -- he was, his silly politics aside, an incredibly nice man) and a briefer one with jazz great Sonny Rollins, who asked me where he could get some decent carry out, I've never exchanged words with any celebrity. So I don't "get" why someone would get so excited because they met and talked with Renee O'Connor's mother or exchanged words with Hudson Leick in an autograph line. It is behavior that I neither admire nor envy. It is, in fact, behavior that generates a certain "ick" reaction in me. I personally like my stars exactly where they ought to be: onscreen. This not to say that I wouldn't talk to someone famous out of principle. It is to say that I'd only talk with someone I encountered during the normal course of my life (which happened with Charlton Heston), not because I sought them out at a fan convention or pestered them on a sidewalk or saw them eating in a restaurant. I just don't understand wanting to luxuriate in the presence of someone you don't know, just because you've seen them on TV.

But this is why we read books, to understand and to be exposed to things that are not a normal part of our lives. I'm not a celebrity chaser, but perhaps it is good to read the remarks of people who are in order to understand why they do. Most of us don't read fanfic, so it can be good to read about people who do or people who write it. Most of us don't go to conventions, but reading about the experiences of people who do will expand our horizons a bit. In short, you can learn about the behavior of others by reading this.

The people who will most enjoy this are, however, those who are a part of the XENA fandom. This book truly is created with them in mind.

I did find it interesting to read that the opinions of many others meshed with many of my own to the series. For instance, I found both the second musical episode of XENA and the absolutely horrendous "Married with Fishsticks," which might be the single worst episode that I have seen of any show ever made (it makes the notoriously awful "Beer Bad" of BUFFY look like CITIZEN KANE). I did get a kick out of reading the "subtext" opinions. Here is the truth about the "subtext": the show wanted to tease the fans with the possibility without making it an actuality. They could easily have made it definitive in one direction or another, but they deliberately chose not to. But there is no question that it is the most passionate friendship between two women that we've ever seen on TV. And whether they were physically intimate (I suspect they were not, given Xena's closing line in the episode where Michael Hurst's reporter character bluntly asked them whether they were lovers -- Xena starts to answer but gets out only the one "Technically . . . " before technical difficulties cut off her reply, but the only thing that makes sense would be something like, "Technically no, but we love each other." But even that could be a tease. Truth is, they didn't want to tell us.) or not, they obviously and truly loved one another. I've never quite understood (along with other things that I don't understand) why we had to nail down the kind of physical relationship they had.

So, I'm not sure what kind of recommendation to make here. Casual fans of the show should probably pass. Rabid fans will enjoy it. 'Tweeners like me could either take it or leave it. I needed to read it for something I'm writing, but not many can claim that need. The only other consideration is that there are shockingly few decent books on XENA. There are virtually no serious guides to the show and no critical discussions in book form apart from essays in a couple of books. Speaking objectively, I think XENA was almost as important in creating the new heroic woman on TV as BUFFY (Buffy came first in movie form, but Xena was first on TV, but most subsequent female heroes were based more on Buffy), but the number of critical works on BUFFY is staggering, while next to nothing has been released on XENA. Among TV critics and historians of TV and scholars, XENA has yet to get its due. So, in the absence of other books on XENA, this is one of the few books with which we are left.

It's a good read for any Xena fan. And to have 1 of my stories published in it makes it even more special to me!

This book is absolutely great. I could relate to many of these stories by fans. I had similar experiences too, with some of them, and I cried to some of these stories, I laughed with others.
Particularly well done is the section dedicated to the late Kevin Smith,that was touching, and I will always remenber Kevin, so will the fans.
Thanks for writing this book.

Read it if you love TV.

Sarah