Jun 29 2009

Propaganda for fun and paranoia

There's a fabulous article over on Sleep is For the Weak about the comics of North Korea, which are apparently chock-full of propaganda-y goodness. (In The Great General Mighty Wing, pictured righ...

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Jun 26 2009

Hiatus blues

Another manga creator is taking a break due to poor health: according to AnimeNewsNetwork, NANA author Ai Yazawa is putting her popular series (read our review of the movie adaptation here) on hol...

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Jun 25 2009

Janet Evanovich changes it up

After a whopping fourteen volumes, Janet Evanovich has decided to go with fancy new cover art. Behold:Cute, right? And a nice change from volumes one through fourteen, which all look more or less ...

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Jun 24 2009

New manga from S.A.'s Maki Minami

According to the AnimeNewsNetwork, there's a new manga coming out from Special A's Maki Minami. The series will be called Seiyū ka—!, and ANN describes its heroine thusly:"Hime Kino, a 15-year-old...

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Jun 24 2009

Dubious DIY

I'm just not sure about this upside-down bookshelf project:It looks kind of cool, sure, but how do you get the books (especially the ones on the ends) down? And, once they're down, how do you put ...

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Jun 23 2009

Ponyo in English

The English-language trailer for Hayao Miyazaki's latest film (the Little Mermaid retelling Ponyo) is finally up, and while they didn't quite sync up the voices and the mouths, it still looks pret...

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Jun 23 2009

Chicken With Plums, by Marjane Satrapi

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I do not enjoy tragic love stories. I rolled my eyes when Anna Karenina offed herself, I failed to sympathize with the plight of Newland Archer, and I spent most of The Great Gatsby wanting to kic...

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Jun 22 2009

Alice... from Hell!

USA Today has a bunch of exclusive images from Tim Burton's upcoming adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, but if this is the kind of thing we're going to be subjected to, I'm not sure I'm old enough...

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Jun 22 2009

Teenagers (heart) disaster lit?

The Wall Street Journal recently posted an essay about the brisk market for grim YA literature, wondering when the nation's teenagers became "connoisseurs of disaster". The author, Katie Roiphe, s...

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Jun 19 2009

Tone it down, son.

They've released a whole bunch of Harry Potter images on the British Warner Bros. site, and I am once again taken aback by young Daniel Radcliffe's ability to over-emote:See what I mean? His over...

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Jun 18 2009

Book nerd chic

Is it wrong that I really, really, really want to buy this?I mean, how many "conversation piece" furniture items are actually functional? Overstock is selling this library cart for $215.99. What d...

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Jun 18 2009

Jim Lynch speaks

Powell's Books (in Portland, OR) has just posted a great interview with Border Songs/The Highest Tide author Jim Lynch, who lives in my hometown of Olympia, WA. Pacific Northwest power! raises fist

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Jun 17 2009

Coming to a Supermall near you?

Two Wordcandy staff members were at a Seattle-area mall over the weekend, and ran across this wonderful device. In case you can't tell from the picture, this is a book-and-candy vending machine s...

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Jun 17 2009

More Gokusen!

In happier manga news, Shueisha's You magazine has announced that Kozueko Morimoto's Gokusen manga will return for two more issues in July. Gokusen ended in 2007 after a seven-year-long run, but t...

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Jun 16 2009

More health troubles for Nodame creator

According to AnimeNewsNetwork, the next installment of Tomoko Ninomiya's Nodame Cantabile will delayed because Ms. Ninomiya has been rushed to the hospital to treat acute appendicitis. The manga's...

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Jun 16 2009

Meh.

You know, I was fine when I heard that Being John Malkovich director Spike Jonze was heading up the movie adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are. I was calm when they used an Arcade Fire song in ...

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Jun 15 2009

Nervous from the get-go...

Maya Slater's, um, unique reworking of Pride and Prejudice, The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy, is finally out here in the U.S., and I'm wrestling with temptation. I strongly suspect I will regret rea...

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Jun 15 2009

Amy Poehler serves up justice

Amy Poehler has signed on to star in a film adaptation of Jarrett Krosoczka's upcoming children's graphic novel series Lunch Lady:I love me some Amy Poehler, and the combination of her + a series ...

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Jun 12 2009

See more True Blood goodness

Buzzsugar has posted four clips from the upcoming second season of True Blood. Is it just me, or are their accents just a hair better this season?

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Jun 12 2009

Shutter Island trailer's up

Check out the brand-new trailer for Shutter Island, based on Mystic River author Dennis Lehane's novel of the same name:Eh. It looks The Sixth Sense-y.

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Jun 11 2009

More Nodame!

In happier manga-related news, AnimeNewsNetwork says that Nodame Cantabile creator Tomoko Ninomiya is planning to launch a new manga miniseries called Noda-Can BS (short for "Nodame Cantabile Back...

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Jun 11 2009

Manga price hikes

Hmm. It seems that several major manga publishers will be raising their prices in the immediate future, including Del Rey, Viz, and Dark Horse. Their books will now run $1 or $2 more per volume.Pe...

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Jun 10 2009

Summer reading picks straight from the source!

Salon.com has asked a variety of authors, including Wordcandy-approved authors like Neil Gaiman, Berkeley Breathed, and Diana Gabaldon, for their summer reading picks, some of which are actually p...

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Jun 10 2009

Suzanne Collins answers her own burning questions

The Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins is allowing fans to vote on three questions per month, one of which she will answer. This month's questions are:Does Katniss feel any love toward Peeta?Whic...

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Jun 9 2009

From evil vampire to... less evil vampire!

Twilight fans and manhwa fans take note: The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Cam "Evil James" Gigandet will star opposite Paul Bettany in Priest, an adaptation of the well-known horror/Weste...

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Jun 9 2009

A sequel to Catcher in the Rye?

...not quite.Apparently, some dude who calls himself John David California has written an unauthorized sequel to J. D. Salinger's classic novel, and the reclusive author (who hasn't given an inter...

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Jun 8 2009

The Awakening, by Kelley Armstrong

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Kelley Armstrong’s 2008 novel The Summoning was her first attempt at writing teen fiction, and a rousing success. Set in the same world as her Women of the Underworld series, The Summoning...

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Jun 8 2009

New book from Jim Lynch

At long last, The Highest Tide author Jim Lynch has written another book. Border Songs is due out on June 16th:I am super-excited about this book (The Highest Tide was 100% awesome!), but I was sa...

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Jun 5 2009

Powells interviews China Miéville

China Miéville recently spoke with Doug Brown, one of the staff members from Powell's Books, about his new book The City and the City. Over the course of the interview he used the word "paradigm"...

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Jun 4 2009

Scholastic promotes Catching Fire

I'm impressed by this book trailer for the upcoming sequel to Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games:No bad acting, just tense music, shots of the cover, and a few quotes. Unexciting, but also non-emb...

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