This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch

This really isn't a book about Benedict Cumberbatch. It's a book about loving what you love, embracing what makes you weird, and remembering *you* when life tries to beat it out of you. This is a book that empowers people, especially women and gender queer people, to know that whatever it is that you love, that lights you up, is no more or less important than what does the same for another person.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

In This IS Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch, author Tabitha Carvan digs into her obsession with Benedict Cumberbatch -- the why, the how, and what it all really means. She recounts personal anecdotes, quotes research, and conducts interviews from other members of Cumberbatch's fanbase around the world, in pursuit of an answer to what a woman is meant to do with something as silly as an obsession with ol' Benny Cucumber.

I'm a child of the Superwholock era -- I remember fondly the hellscape that was 2012 Tumblr shaping my teenage years -- so I was really intrigued at the premise of this book. The older I get, the more I realize that fandom is shaped by the older members of fan communities, and this book was a chance to see into that world. In a way, I think I was looking for an answer about the future, about what it means to be a grown woman and also a fan, and how to reconcile those two seemingly incongruous things.

And boy, did I get an answer! In some ways it was like this book was reading my mind -- all those intrusive thoughts about what real fans look like, what other people think, what to do with the feelings of shame associated with wearing a middle-aged man's face on your t-shirt, were addressed on the page. It was wonderful. I took so many notes.

I don't know how to recommend this book in an unbiased way. I think you'll like this book if you're a person who has any sort of interest that, at one point or another, you felt like you had to hide. You don't have to explicitly like Benedict Cumberbatch -- after all, the book isn't actually about him! -- but it might help you ease into the overarching idea of precisely how it feels to love something down to your bones, no matter how unreasonable it may feel.

Anyways, I loved this book, women are wonderful and worthy of joy, and Benedict Cumberbatch (both the idea and the person) rocks.

This is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch by Tabitha Carvan resonated with me. I felt connected to her fandom and passion to the point I can point directly to things in my own life. The writing and her experiences are approachable and full of witty self examination. Carvan has a wonderful way of approaching the passions of women that might not match with traditional socially accepted interests. I think it is a wonderful look through her personal experiences of how some women abandon their own passions perhaps out of embarrassment, shame, or because life gets in the way. Those passions are also tossed aside for more logical and traditional choices. She also reveals how places in our life, such as career and motherhood, can chip away at those passions. I am not sure that all readers will feel quite a kinship with Carvan. As an avid gamer with my own fandom for urban fantasy, I too have felt like Carvan. In all, I think the book did a wonderful job at looking at these passions and saying that it's okay to love the things we do. We have permission to feel joy and embrace the things we love that might seem silly to others. If it makes you happy and it is harmless, fandom on!

This hilarious, all-consuming and wise memoir is both completely not about Benedict Cumberbatch while simultaneously delving into Tabitha’s sudden fantastic, delirious, delicious obsession with him. Tabitha, an Australian Mon of two toddlers, has had the edges of herself completely blurred as motherhood overtakes her. She wonders at the overall ability of Dads to duck out of this all-out obsession, preserving time for play as well as self-identity as kids come along. Amidst this devolution of identity, Tabitha develops an over-the-top love as all things Benedict that consumes her waking imagination. Tabitha starts to realize that her unique celebrity love is shared by thousands of other middle age women, a diverse collective of dreamers known in the press as “Cumberbitches.”

As Tabitha interviews other women sharing this Cumberbatch obsession in an effort to overcome her own embarrassment and shame, she realizes that underlying all of this is the uniquely forgotten imaginative and playful lives of women as we “mature.” Drawing from works of experts in the field of celebrity crushes, women’s development (such as Passages), and as wide ranging as Jenny Offil’s novel Dept. of Speculation and the poetry of Mary Oliver. What emerges is insight both so sublime and brilliant that it literally has you catching your breath.

By the end, you’re giving Tabitha a standing ovation, hooting and hollering, and simply delighting in her University office desk that has been overrun with Cumberbatch photos and paraphernalia. You emerge with a far wiser and deeper understanding of the inner lives of women today, and challenge yourself about what you’re doing about your playful self.

This is a book that literally needs to be read by every woman, and as a start I’m giving it out upon publication to all my women friends as well as my daughter.

GO YOU TABITHA! And thanks for sweeping the rest of us along with you.

Thanks to NetGalley as well as Putnam for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

This is a fascinating book on so many levels! The author, after becoming a mother to two small children, suddenly realizes that she is madly in love with the British actor Benedict Cumberbatch. She spends all her free time looking at photos of him, watching his TV and film appearances over and over, googling news stories about him, etc. Eventually, she discovered that there are entire communities of "Cumberbitches" (as his rabid fans call themselves) all over the Internet. She also discovers "fanfic" sites, where people write their own fictional accounts of the actor, or the characters he plays. She decorates her spare bedroom and desk at work with photos of him. While she is both proud and mortified by her obsession, she begins to wonder about it -- why? why now? why me? In doing her research to try to figure it out, she talks with many who share her obsession, as well as a variety of scientists, academics and authors who have studied various aspects of the situation. The author remembers being similarly infatuated as a young woman with various interests, until, one day, it seemed that she was being discouraged from having these obsessions. Men, she notes, are given approval to be obsessed with interests -- whether it's golf or a sports team. It's not unseemly at all. Women, on the other hand, are expected by society to put aside their own interests and concentrate on things that are proper, productive, and above all, seemly. The author, aware of this, even points out her own biases -- her son is indulged in his love of cars and trains, but her daughter, who loves all things pink and sparkly, has undoubtedly been brainwashed into liking these "girly" (and therefore, less important) things. The message of the book is to embrace, unashamedly and with your whole heart, whatever makes you happy and gives you fulfillment. Most of the fellow Benedict-lovers she speaks to have allowed their joy in all things Cumberbatch to spill over to other areas of their lives. Once they give themselves permission to love something fully and without reservations, whole worlds of possibilities open up to them. And that's all anyone can ask out of life.