From Alien to The Matrix: Reading Science Fiction Film. A well constructed overview of major SF films since the 90s. The essays are thoughtful, not cluttered with jargon, and fill out an important space in a field that has surprisingly few books for the number of films it's produced. For the sf cinemaphile and casual reader alike.

Reading Six Feet Under : TV to Die for.   Another television studies book based on a popular cable series. There are a few good points made, but they're made more than once. For as brilliant as I felt the show was, this particular book largely seems like a group of academic fan boys gooing over their favorite show. The occasional poems are sophomoric efforts, recapping episodes in somewhat quirky verse.

Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture, Sherri A Iness.  A nice collection of academic essays on "tough women" in current or recent television shows. The usuals are all covered (Buffy, Xena, and Nikita) as well as Dark Angel, Witchblade, Farscape and "mob women." It's nice to see some variety. All the scholarship seems sound, and the essays are easy for the lay reader to understand - a feature not nearly common enough in collections of this kind.

Danse Macabre  by Stephen King. King's nonfiction critical look at the horror genre is well worth reading, but walks a fine line between mainstream shrinkwrap and well-thought criticism. I'd recommend it unhesitatingly were it not for King's tendency to ramble and go off on tangents that, while interesting enough, wouldn't fly in a standard academic work on the subject.

Johnny Depp Starts Here, Murray Pomerance.  Amazon’s price, and the few reviews suggest that this is being sold as popular subject matter because of it's topic.. Despite the flashy cover, this is pretty clearly an academic work and a decently realized one as well. My only caveat is that Pomerance takes her subject too seriously at times, talking in rather lofty philosophical terms about her purpose. Let's be honest: it's intriguing, even helpful as a work of star studies/film criticism, but Johnny Depp's image will never be an existential matter.

Sex and the Slayer, Lorna Jowett - subtitled "A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan," Lowett's book doesn't really take on much that hasn't been tackled in Slayage, the BtVS academic playground.

Women Among the Inklings: Gender, C. S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams, Candice Fredrick, Sam McBride.  A balanced feminist analysis of women in Inklings lives and fiction, this is a good starting point for any fan interested in the often conflicting ideas about women this fantastic group of fantasy writers produced.

Youth of Darkest England: Working-Class Children At The Heart Of Victorian Empire, Troy Boone.  Clearly written and intriguing even for the non-academic, I unreservedly recommend it.  Boone structures his book around the Baden-Powell youth movement, Y culture, and its reflections in literature of the time.

Planets in Peril : A Critical Study of C.S. Lewis's Ransom Trilogy, David C. Downing. I picked this up for a research paper on Lewis, and while it's definitely academic, it should appeal to lay readers with more than a passing interest in Lewis as well.  Each of Downing's chapter's takes a different perspective on elements of the trilogy, from the portrayal of evil to its medieval influences. Excellent scholarship.

The Sandman Papers: An Exploration of the Sandman Mythology, Ed. Joe Sanders.  One of an increasingly large number of quasi-academic books aimed at a more popular audience, The Sandman Papers should appeal to fans of Gaiman, myth, and the comic form.  In fact, the collection's only drawback is its brevity - the introduction indicates that this is a commissioned work, all essays written in mind for such a volume.  Given the extreme range of topics touched on in the mammoth 10+ trade volume run, the topics are all over the place.