Soap Opera Holiday Gift Ideas: Indulge Yourself In Sudsers!

Thanksgiving, Christmas… the holidays are upon us and soap fans will want to add these books about a soap opera legend, daytime serials, and supercouples to their gifting list! Read on as Soap Hub gives you the scoop on a trio of tomes that should be on the bookshelves — or on the Kindles — of every soap fan!

My Life to Live
Before she died, Agnes Nixon, creator of All My Children and One Life to Live, and writer of many other serials, completed her autobiography.

It’s titled My Life to Live: How I Became the Queen of Soaps When Men Ruled the Airwaves.

The book recounts Nixon’s life as a TV pioneer and how she brought social issues to daytime, tackling such topics as interracial romance, the Vietnam War, and AIDS, sometimes long before nighttime TV addressed them.

Bonus: there’s a foreword by Carol Burnett, who recurred on AMC as Verla Grubbs, the long lost daughter of Langley Wallingford.

Soap Opera Confidential
Elizabeth Searle (author/editor) and Suzanne Strempek Shea (editor) teamed up with a variety of contributors to help explain the fascination audiences have with soap operas.

The full title of their tome is Soap Opera Confidential: Writers and Soap Insiders on Why We’ll Tune in Tomorrow As the World Turns Restlessly by the Guiding Light of Our Lives. The book examines what makes audiences “tune in tomorrow”

A varied group of participants, including Thorsten Kaye (Ridge, The Bold and the Beautiful), journalist Leigh Montville, and authors Elinor Lipman and Ann Hood explore the soap phenomenon from a range of perspectives and consider the appeal of a venerable genre.

Soap Opera Supercouples
Soaps have always been focused on love stories. Some couples proved more popular than others, e.g. As the World Turns‘ Jeff and Penny (ask your grandparents) and Another World‘s Steve and Alice (ask your parents).

But, by the time the 1980s came around, supercouples were everywhere. The number of supercouples brought new popularity to daytime TV.

This book, Soap Opera Supercouples: The Great Romances of Daytime Drama by Henrietta Ross, documents the phenomenon, tracing its history, legacy and impact on the soap opera industry and on popular culture at large.

Look no further than the cover to see that Ross knows what she’s talking about; it features “super” supercouple Patch and Kayla (Stephen Nichols and Mary Beth Evans) from Days of Our Lives!