The curse of the delicate flower
If you're a braver person than I am, check out the recent Twilight spoof that aired as part of the Simpsons' annual "Treehouse of Horror" episode. I was too embarrassed to watch more than a minut...
One-stop shopping
If you're interested in checking out any of this year's finalists for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Horn Book people and the School Library Journal folks have both put...
Fellow Pacific Northwesteners take note:
Mockingjay author Suzanne Collins will be visiting Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon on Sunday, November 7th from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. Due to a hand injury, Ms. Collins will be stamping books rath...
Cookbook porn
The Atlantic has posted a lengthy review (complete with two recipe links) of The Gourmet Cookie Book, the latest and last title from the now-defunct Gourmet magazine. The review is good, but get ...
Goin' to the movies
Time for another film adaptation news round-up!According to the MTV Movies Blog, Johnny Depp might be playing the Huntsman in the movie Snow White and The Huntsman. The Hollywood Reporter is offer...
Zora Neale Hurston goes Nancy Drew
The Times has posted an article about Zora and Me, a new kids' novel featuring a fictionalized version of Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston as a girl detective. Written by Victoria Bon...
Clutch the pearls!
And speaking of Jane Austen's work, AustenBlog has put together a helpful collection of links about the recent kerfluffle over Austen scholar Kathryn Sutherland, who has made the shocking allegati...
So confused
Well, here's the trailer for From Prada to Nada, the latest film version based (obviously very loosely) on Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility:Huh. Is Wilmer Valderrama playing the Colonel Brando...
Creepy real estate doesn't bring in the cash that it used to, apparently.
The house that inspired Jay Anson's "nonfiction" book The Amityville Horror: A True Story has once again been sold, this time for $200,000 less than its asking price of 1.15 million dollars. I'm ...
The future of publishing?
NPR has an article up on their "All Tech Considered" site about sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow's very 21st-century take on self-publishing. Doctorow's latest book, a collection of short stories call...
Good call, guys.
Hey, all right: according to the Associated Press, the Virginia elementary school textbook we wrote about last week that featured the inaccurate claim that thousands of black troops fought for the...
Smelly and useful
Behold, dear readers, ice cream-shaped and -scented bookmarks, available at ShanaLogic:I don't know about that $27 price tag, but the idea is... well, cute-adjacent.
Pride and Prejudice (Annotated Editions), by Jane Austen
A few months ago, I wrote a short post about DK Publishing's "Illustrated Classics" edition of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, calling it "not the annotated Pride and Prejudice of my dreams", but praising it for its information, art direction, and extremely reasonable price...
Literary casting round-up: sci-fi, fantasy, and The Great Gatsby
Lots of book-to-movie casting news coming out recently:Leonardo DiCaprio has apparently read for the role of Jay Gatsby in the still-up-in-the-air adaptation of The Great Gatsby.Martin Freeman (be...
Decoratin' for the holidays
At $24 per four-foot-long strand, I'm not quite sure what one would do with this Retro Art Deco Bibliophile Garland, but I like it. Maybe if you had a very small, very oddly shaped Christmas tree...?
Let this DIE, PLEASE.
Why, look at this! Harlequin Books (never famed for their originality) are leaping on the "Jane Austen + supernatural beings" wagon......a mere two years after the rest of the publishing world.
So very, very wrong
According to the Washington Post, "A textbook distributed to Virginia fourth-graders says that thousands of African Americans fought for the South during the Civil War--a claim rejected by most hi...
DonorsChoose gets $1 Million (with your help)
In honor of Donors Choose's 10th birthday, Townsend Press is donating $1 million to pay down all book donation requests to below $98. However, for the money to go through, donors like us need to ...
America's Test Kitchen tightens its belt
If you're a fan of America's Test Kitchen's line of cookbooks, they've recently released their third loose-leaf, binder-style epic. Behold:The Healthy Family Cookbook's 800 recipes feature smalle...
RIP, comic book guy
In a horrible bit of comics news, New York police say a 77-year-old man named Homer Marciniak died of a heart attack after being beaten by thieves who had broken into his home to steal his valuabl...
Ah, the pearl-clutching shockers of bygone generations...
The fine people at Entertainment Weekly recently put together a list of 24 Classic "Steamy" Books. The list is worth clicking through for the vintage covers alone, but some of the quotes are grea...
Britney wants you to READ
Flavorwire has compiled a "quick visual history" of the American Library Association's "Read" posters featuring popular musicians (at the time). I'm unclear as to why Bowie is wearing a letterman...
I'm sure this would brighten up anyone's holiday morning.
If you're a fan of those Worst-Case Scenario books, or you've got a lot of small boys to shop for, check out this deal from the Chronicle Books website: they're offering 25% off and free shipping ...
Eating like it's 1896
NPR has a great article up about Fannie's Last Supper, the newest book from Chris Kimball, host of PBS's America's Test Kitchen and founder of Cook's Magazine. Kimball apparently spent two years ...
Didn't they see King Kong?
Well, well. Further Hobbit movie news: according to the MTV Movies Blog, Peter Jackson's two-part film adaptation of the novel is going to cost a whopping $500 million on top of $100 million in ...
My feelings on censorship have gone to war with my feelings on common sense.
Oh, man...A mother of an 11-year-old girl in New Hampshire has asked that Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games be removed from the school's curriculum because of its violent subject matter. The wom...
The more Crusie the merrier
So I decided to swing by and check out the "Upcoming Books" page for Jennifer Crusie (author of our current Featured Book, the excellent Maybe This Time). And while it's possible some of the book...
Want to smell tomato-soup-roast-beef-and-blueberry-pie fresh?
Of all the candy mentioned in Roald Dahl's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Violet Beauregarde's full-course-dinner gum has always struck me as the least appealing, but apparently scientis...
Singin' in the library
Flavorwire has put together a list of ten music videos (plus one bonus clip) set in bookstores and libraries. Their choices range from Ludacris to Van Halen to She and Him, so you should brace yo...
The sweet scent of a horror-story victim
Behold, two limited-edition perfumes oils inspired by Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:Aren't they cute? I'm not sure I actually want to smell like a spicy pumpkin, but for a mere ...