Holiday Gift Guide: Animal Bookends
Gift Idea #6: Zuny Bookends
Zuny Bookends are cheerful and sturdy (they're made of synthetic leather, so your kid would need to put in some serious effort to chew through one), and come in pretty much whatever animal form you can think of...
Holiday Gift Guide: Literary posters
Gift Idea #5: Jane Austen posters by PemberleyPond
I have some quibbles: These ladies got Sir William Lucas's name wrong on their Pride and Prejudice poster...
Holiday Gift Guide: Roots: The Definitive Compendium, by Diane Morgan
Gift Idea #4: Roots: The Definitive Compendium, by Diane Morgan
In addition to being the winner of the 2013 James Beard Foundation Book Award for "Vegetable Focused and Vegetarian" cookbooks* and the winner of the 2013 IACP Cookbook Award for single subject-cookbooks, Diane Morgan's book Roots (cover price $40, can be found for considerably less online) is...
Holiday Gift Guide: Harry Potter necklace
Gift Idea #3 Harry Potter necklace
Etsy is overflowing with Harry Potter-themed jewelry and clothing, but I fell in love with this delicate sterling silver "Glasses" necklace ($34). It manages to be both pretty...
Holiday Gift Guide: Bizarrely specific journals
Gift Idea #2: Blank Books
It doesn't matter what your friends and loved ones are into: trust me, there's probably a journal for it, and journals are almost always a safe and affordable gift. Check out BuyOlympia's wide selection of blank books and guided journals, which offer...
Holiday Gift Guide: Kate Beaton t-shirts
This year we're doing our Wordcandy-approved holiday gift list a little differently: we're going to put together a series of eight mini posts, each featuring a different gift idea. Like always, we're way late with these suggestions (our sincerest apologies to our Hanukkah-celebrating readers), but at least all of our suggestions are well under fifty bucks...
The Living, by Matt de la Pena
Matt de la Peña's The Living has gotten a lot of praise for its supercharged premise, its sympathetic male protagonist, and the way it touches on class, wealth, and social injustice. Most of that praise is well deserved, and only one thing prevented me from wholeheartedly enjoying it: the discovery that this is actually the first book in a series, and (of course) nothing ever gets resolved in a first installment...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Living, by Matt de la Pena
This week's Book Giveaway pick is Matt de la Pena's The Living, which looks, uh, intense. There's a glowing quote on the front from James Dashner (not really a recommendation, to my mind), but NPR describes the book as "...at once a disaster epic, a survival story and a coming of age novel, told through the life of a young man who is becoming aware of class, prejudice and romance", and...
An in-depth look
We have two Hunger Games links today: the real estate blog Movoto has done one of their imaginary property evaluations on Katniss's mansion in the Victors' village (long story short: it rings in at $1.8 million), and Slate recently offered a...
The MacGuffin personified
According to the Seattle Times, the titular bird statuette featured in the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon recently sold for more than $4 million. The black figurine is "one of two known cast lead statuettes made for John Huston's screen version of the film but the only one confirmed by Warner Bros. archives as having appeared in it", and...
Vampire Academy on screen
They've released a trailer for the upcoming Vampire Academy movie, and I'm not sure what to think. While I liked the first book, the rest of the series left me cold, so my memory's a little fuzzy, but...
Premeditated, by Josin McQuein
Josin L. McQuein's Premeditated is the kind of novel that helps teenage mystery fans grow up into adult ones. In addition to featuring a lot of very teen-friendly romantic and familial drama, McQuein sprinkles her text with a series of tantalizing clues that are just tricky enough to make a young reader feel like Sherlock Holmes...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Premeditated, by Josin McQuein
Our current Weekly Book Giveaway pick is Josin McQuein's Premeditated, which appears to be a mystery/revenge story that I'm pretty sure will go horribly wrong. So, uh, just the thing to get us all into the holiday spirit...
Breaking off a piece of the historical drama action
According to the Christian Science Monitor, Robert K. Massie's biography Catherine the Great is being adapted into a "limited series" for ABC. The book was well-received by critics, so I'm assuming ABC is hoping for something a little more high-brow than the CW's Reign...
Yawn.
I am much less enthused about the "Penguin Horror" line of reprints than I was about the recent "Legends of the Ancient North" collection. I don't care if the book choices were curated by Guillermo del Toro ...
Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud
Jonathan Stroud's novel Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase has a surprising amount in common with the Travel Channel series Ghost Adventures. Sure, The Screaming Staircase is the product of an award-winning, New York Times best-selling author, while Ghost Adventures is a ridiculous show about a bunch of shrieking dudebros racing around and swearing at (allegedly) mysterious noises, but both center around...
Insulting one's core audience: as illustrated by Joanna Trollope
I was never inclined to read Joanna Trollope's modern-day rewrite of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, seeing as A) it's my least-favorite Austen novel, and B) Trollope doesn't exactly rock my boat, either. (Plus, most the reviews have been lukewarm at best.) But...
Admittedly, they're pretty ugly, but...
Seattle toy shop Archie McPhee continues to supply the world with random stuff that no one really needs, but everyone enjoys, like this $7.00 tin of 22 Jane Austen-inspired temporary tattoos...
Dark Witch, by Nora Roberts
It's pointless to complain about repetitiveness in a Nora Roberts book. The woman has published over 200 novels; at this point I'm not sure if there's a romantic conflict out there she hasn't beaten to death. Certainly all the subjects in her latest novel Dark Witch are pretty shopworn—but if you're in the right mood, “shopworn” can translate to “enjoyable and comforting”...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Dark Witch, by Nora Roberts
This week's Book Giveaway is Dark Witch, the latest effort from Nora Roberts. And no, despite that title and cover art, it's not actually a Halloween story. Our review will go up tonight...
How tall do you have to be to go on a Hunger Games ride?
Here's another thing I could present without comment (but I won't): Lionsgate is apparently considering opening up a Hunger Games theme park! Which sounds super fun and not at all weird as hell...
It's coming.
I'll just present this without additional comment: here's a link to the film trailer for Lifetime's upcoming Flowers in the Attic adaptation...
Loud Awake and Lost, by Adele Griffin
While I had plenty of complaints about Adele Griffin's previous two books, I felt unaccountably hopeful about her latest effort, Loud Awake and Lost. It look me a while to figure out where my sunny optimism was coming from, but...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Loud Awake and Lost, by Adele Griffin
This week's Book Giveaway pick is Adele Griffin's Loud Awake and Lost. I keep complaining about Ms. Griffin's books, but something keeps me reading them, too. (Likeliest culprits: her eye-catching cover art and my severe a lack of willpower.) My review should go up later today...
The Addams family to ride again?
According to Variety, MGM is looking to produce an animated film based on the long-running Addams Family cartoons created by Charles Addams...
A step towards awareness
I am ridiculously excited by this idea: Sweden is introducing a new rating to its movie theaters based on the famous "Bechdel test", which requires a movie (or book or TV show or whatever) to include...
I should probably contribute to this.
Whoa: the Kickstarter fund for Ever, Jane (a multiplayer role-playing game inspired by Jane Austen's books) is plugging right along, hovering at more than $30,000 of their $100,000 goal, with 25 days yet to go. Interested parties should visit the game's Kickstarter site, which, according to lead designer Judy Tyrer, offers a downloadable prototype...
Visual punch
Etsy artist Evan Robertson's shop Obvious State features original illustrations, posters, fine art prints, and more, inspired by the work of classic writers ranging from Oscar Wilde to Sylvia Plath...
Sooo gorgeous
I'm assuming this is an attempt to further mine the pocketbooks of Tolkien fans (in case dividing The Hobbit into three movies wasn't shameless enough): Penguin has released a series called Legends from the Ancient North, described as...
Tandem, by Anna Jarzab
Anna Jarzab's last novel, The Opposite of Hallelujah, was a thoughtful and original exploration of family, faith, and mental illness. I loved it, but it didn't exactly scream “Teen Blockbuster”. Her latest effort, Tandem, hews much closer to the tried-and-true formula of recent bestsellers: love triangles, fantasy elements, violence, and deeply stupid choices abound...