Normally we want the monster to lose
Somehow I missed the earlier trailers for The Last Voyage of the Demeter, but now I'm beginning to see them fairly frequently, as the movie is coming out in a couple of weeks. Here's hoping there's some kind of twist ending, because I've read Dracula...
The Inheritance Games, by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
We were huge fans of Jennifer Lynn Barnes's series The Naturals (with the exception of the last book, which was a bit of a letdown), so we had high hopes for her most recent suspense/mystery effort: The Inheritance Games, the first book in a trilogy of the same name. And while we can't say we found it as immediately engaging as The Naturals, this new series is off to a promising start...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Inheritance Games, by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
This week's Book Giveaway is Jennifer Lynn Barnes's 2020 novel The Inheritance Games, the first installment in her best-selling "trilogy" (consisting of four books) of the same name. Take comfort, impatient readers: I'm pretty sure the main storyline is concluded in the three books that are already out, and the fourth, which is due out in a few weeks, is a spin-off. A full review will follow shortly...
The original cover art CAN'T be that bad
Okay, this one is new to me: Juniper Books is a company that specializes in what I can only describe as fancy book slipcovers. If you want your romance novel/sci-fi series/YA thriller to look like it belongs in a historical library, they have the dustjacket for you. I was pretty excited about...
Just what every household needs
It's not even August yet, but stores are already beginning to drop their 2023 Halloween merchandise, and this somewhat startled-looking container in the shape of Edgar Allan Poe's head is very, uh, eye-catching...
A (possibly temporary) silver lining?
And speaking of the SDCC, the lack of TV/film stars has lead to a bumper year for comic book writers and artist, according to Publishers' Weekly. “Holy [expletive]," one comics exec told the publication, “Crowds are bonkers, sales are bonkers.” The news definitely...
Lovely
NPR just posted a great interview with food writer Madhur Jaffrey, whose 1973 cookbook An Invitation to Indian Cooking is getting a gorgeous 50th anniversary reprint from Knopf...
Hard pass
This year's San Diego Comic-Con might be devoid of big-name stars, thanks to the ongoing writers' and actors' strikes, but it's still a good time of year for studios to release trailers for their most nerd-friendly content. This includes a trailer for Adult Swim's upcoming adaptation of Junji Ito's classic horror manga Uzumaki. I'll be...
Darcy Bites, by Amy Elizabeth Davis
Amy Elizabeth Davis's Darcy Bites: Pride and Prejudice with Fangs combines two of my favorite things: Jane Austen and vampires. And—unlike Seth Grahame-Smith's popular Pride and Prejudice and Zombies—Davis's book actually attempts to fuse her two worlds together organically, rather than injecting a few monster-fighting scenes into Austen's novel and hoping for the best...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Darcy Bites, by Amy Elizabeth Davis
This week's Book Giveaway is Darcy Bites: Pride and Prejudice with Fangs, by Amy Elizabeth Davis. As you can probably tell from the cover, this is very much a polished-up fanfiction, but I'll read nearly anything with vampires or the characters from Pride and Prejudice in it, so this is basically my catnip...
If only it starred anyone else...
And despite my intense dislike of Kenneth Branagh, I have to admit that at least the trailer for his upcoming adaptation of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novel Hallowe'en Party looks pretty solid. (They're calling it A Haunting in Venice.) As ever...
Low-stakes entertainment
The trailer is out for the second season of Amazon's adaptation of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. I watched every episode of the last season, and yet I can't remember a single thing about it. (That's how I felt about the books, too.) But that won't stop me from...
Buckets of tears
According to Publishers Weekly, HarperCollins Children’s Books plans to publish Neil Gaiman's poem What You Need to Be Warm as a picture book featuring illustrations by 13 well-known children's artists. Gaiman wrote the poem after asking his Twitter followers...
Gorey 2024
Next year's Edward Gorey calendar has been released, and it's the most Edward Gorey-esque vibe imaginable. This year, sadly, I went with an adorable Moomin calendar that keeps tearing under its own weight. I didn't realize calendars could even have poor structural engineering, but...
Much ado about nothing
There was a pearl-clutching meltdown in certain conservative circles over the weekend over a set of leaked photos from the upcoming Disney remake of Snow White, which will star actress Rachel Zeigler, who is of Polish and Columbian descent, as well as a diverse group of actors...
Money For Nothing, by P.G. Wodehouse
P.G. Wodehouse had his flaws. Even if one separates the art from the artist, his stories routinely feature contradictory character backgrounds, bewildering British-to-American editing choices, and a LOT of recycled one-liners. None of those put much of a dent in his reputation as the funniest English writer in history, but if you're fussy about details, you might be better off sticking with his standalone work...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Money For Nothing, by P.G. Wodehouse
Our current Book Giveaway is P.G. Wodehouse's 1928 novel Money For Nothing. While not Wodehouse's most memorable work, it's the perfect book to take along on vacation. You'll have fun reading it, but also it won't be a great loss if you accidentally leave it behind when you're done (seeing as it's a lot like all of Wodehouse's other standalones). A full review will follow shortly...
There's some good stuff in their ebay store
According to The Guardian, a first edition copy of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit was discovered in the Cancer Research UK charity shop in Dundee. The store only sells items for £5 and under, and...
If it ain't broke, I guess
I see that Lifetime has made yet another V.C. Andrews miniseries adaptation, this time of the 1990 novel Dawn, which was apparently "started" by Andrews (who died four years earlier, so... make of that what you will) and finished by ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman. Truly, Lifetime + V.C. Andrews is...
Just no
The trailer for Wonka, a based-on-nothing prequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, came out yesterday and, well, no thank you. The last time I had such a visceral negative reaction to a trailer was with the Harry Potter prequels, and this feels exactly the same...
Agree to disagree?
According to LitHub, famous romance novel cover model Fabio does not agree with the current trend toward more fundamentally kind, laid-back, and mentally healthy male protagonists in romance novels...
The Mysterious Affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie
Most classic mystery novels seem extremely formulaic to me: I can usually guess the murderer almost entirely based upon the size of the role they play in the story. That said, what feels overly familiar to a reader in 2023 was probably a lot less shopworn in 1916, when Agatha Christie wrote her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Mysterious Affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie
Our current Book Giveaway is the very beautiful Harper Muse Classics "Painted Edition" of Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles, her first novel and the book that introduced the world to Hercule Poirot. A full review will follow shortly...
Strange pairing
Greta Gerwig's upcoming Barbie movie is everywhere right now, and with excellent reason. Even without any clue about the actual plot, it just looks awesome, and I have high hopes she will deliver something worthy of the A+++ marketing push leading up to the film's release. That said, I am a little taken aback...
Even without all the murder stuff, she could do better
The full trailer is out for Killers of the Flower Moon, the upcoming film directed by Martin Scorsese and based on David Grann’s best-selling book. Here's hoping Leonardo DiCaprio can summon previously undiscovered depths of charm, because...
A Court of Thorns and Roses, by Sarah J. Maas
I admit it: I have resisted reading Sarah J. Maas's enormously popular A Court of Thorns and Roses, despite recommendations from several friends. I have tried a few of her books before, and—while they were undeniably readable—they felt vaguely generic, like she'd been handed an AI-generated list of hot literature trends for young women aged 16 to 21 and told to do her damnedest to fit them all into 400 pages...
Weekly Book Giveaway: A Court of Thorns and Roses, by Sarah J. Maas
This week's Book Giveaway is Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses. This is obviously an enormously popular series that certainly doesn't need my endorsement, but if you, like me, have somehow avoided reading it in the past six years or so, now's your chance to win a free copy! A full review will follow shortly...
Straining credulity
Netflix's adaptation of Tia Williams's The Perfect Find comes out tomorrow, and it looks fun. The cast is great, the clothes look amazing, and I'll watch Gina Torres in anything. It's always hard for me to buy into the angst of any kind of age-difference story when the older partner looks like Gabrielle Union, however...