Oct 24 2008

Barnes and Noble takes on furniture, with meh-inducing results.

Has anybody else checked out B&N's new "Home" section? Frankly, I would think that a bookseller would offer a more practical book storage solution than this:On the other hand, I did kind of like s...

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Oct 23 2008

Soul-crushing... but in a good way!

I heard about New York's "Cringe" gatherings on NPR about a year ago, but I've never been lucky enough to attend one (and, seeing as I'm something of a delicate flower, that's probably just as wel...

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Oct 23 2008

Cook like a spy

Or, at least, cook like a titan-haired teen sleuth:I wonder if this is actually a shiny new reprint of this?

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Oct 22 2008

Powell's Books, new and improved.

The Willamette Week's blog has posted some images of the proposed addition to Powell's Books' Burnside store in downtown Portland, OR. It's tough for me to visualize the finished project based on ...

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Oct 22 2008

"Spain—On the Road Again", or: "The Insufferably Smug Take a Road Trip"

I finally caught an episode of Spain—On the Road Again, the PBS food/travel TV series featuring cookbook authors Mario Batali and Mark Bittman and actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Claudia Bassols. Un...

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Oct 21 2008

Meg Cabot redeems herself.

I know I've complained in the past about Meg Cabot milking her series for all they're worth, but this idea is straight-up awesome:Ransom My Heart is a historical romance "written" by Princess Mia ...

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Oct 21 2008

And in additional contest news...

AnimeNewsNetwork is holding their annual Anime-themed Pumpkin Carving Contest. They're giving away some serious prize packs, but beware: you'll be competing against pumpkins like this 2007 entry:C...

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Oct 20 2008

Win a John Wyndham set!

Forbidden Planet is currently giving away two sets of Penguin UK's gorgeous new reprints of sci-fi author (The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes, etc.) John Wyndham's classic novels. Click he...

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Oct 20 2008

Ode to a Hot Mess

I managed to catch today's installment of The Writer's Almanac, which reminded me that today was French poet Arthur Rimbaud's birthday. Now, normally I dismiss the Symbolist poets as a bunch of wh...

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Oct 17 2008

Bookmercials!

Annnd the fine people at Sourcebooks Jabberwocky have created online commercials for the Humpty Dumpty Jr. series we reviewed earlier today:

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Oct 17 2008

Humpty Dumpty Jr.: Hardboiled Detective, by Nate Evans, Paul Hindman, and Vince Evans

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There’s a certain age—say, six to eight—at which most young boys really enjoy books about mucus, leaking diapers, and/or questionable odors. Unfortunately, few authors (Dav Pilkey aside) appear to...

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Oct 16 2008

Terry Pratchett keeps on being awesome.

Wordcandy favorite Terry Pratchett has written another essay about his ongoing battle with "posterior cortical atrophy", a rare form of Alzheimer’s--a depressing subject, but one he continues to h...

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Oct 16 2008

National Book Awards

Once again they have announced the finalists for the National Book Awards, and once again, despite spending the entire freaking year reading and reviewing books, I haven't read a single featured t...

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Oct 15 2008

Chris Onstad

Chris Onstad is the creator of Achewood, a webcomic featuring a group of anthropomorphic animals, robots, and stuffed toys, all of whom live and play in the fictional town of Achewood, CA (which i...

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Oct 15 2008

The Great Outdoor Fight, by Chris Onstad

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A word of warning before we begin, dear readers: the packaging of Chris Onstad’s Achewood: The Great Outdoor Fight is deceptively adorable. This book might look like it belongs on the set of...

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Oct 15 2008

Wordcandy for hard times

Slate has a great slide show up about kids' books set during tough financial times. They skipped a lot of my favorites (Mama's Bank Account, about an immigrant Norwegian family in San Francisco in...

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Oct 15 2008

Anime season is up and running

October is here, and all that delicious anime has finally landed!Skip Beat!:Vampire Knight - Guilty:Nodame Cantabile - Paris:

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Oct 14 2008

Um, ew.

Reviews of the current City of Ember movie have been mixed, but I'm less concerned by complaints regarding Bill Murray's smirking and some amateurish acting than I am by the addition [SPOILER!] of...

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Oct 14 2008

Colleen McCullough takes on Jane Austen

Wow! Thanks to AustenBlog, I now know that Colleen McCullough (author of The Thorn Birds, which missed inclusion on the Wordcandy-approved List of Unreadable Books by inches) has written a Pride ...

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Oct 13 2008

Scanlation update

Aaaaand the third and final part of Absolute Witch chapter six is now up on our Scanlations page!

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Oct 13 2008

Watch Ouran, School Rumble on the cheap

Anime distributor Funimation is currently streaming the first two episodes of the Ouran High School Host Club anime adaptation AND the first four episodes of the second season of School Rumble. I ...

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Oct 10 2008

After all, what other pressing issues could they have to worry about?

Don't worry, dear readers, that absolutely vital bill to declare Herman Melville's Moby-Dick as the official "epic novel" of Massachusetts has passed their state House of Representatives.Thank goo...

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Oct 10 2008

More Twilight trailer action:

New and questionably improved!

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Oct 9 2008

Shakespeare, diluted.

Is the world truly ready for a TV adaptation of a movie adaptation of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew? ABC Family seems to think so.

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Oct 9 2008

Sale on book posters...

Got blank walls and literary tastes? Art.com is having a 20% off sale today, and they carry a much wider variety of titles than Urban Outfitters did when they offered an identical line of book-art...

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Oct 8 2008

Scanlation updates!

Two updates on our Scanlations page, dear readers: the second part of Absolute Witch Chapter 6, and chapter 26 of Banhonsa.

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Oct 8 2008

Powell's Books - Indiespensable

Powell's Books, Portland, Oregon's independent bookstore to the stars, has started a new subscription book club:For $39.95 per delivery, Indiespensable subscribers will enjoy a delivery of:"[The] ...

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Oct 7 2008

Unforseen awesomeness ahead

I haven't been particularly excited about the upcoming film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline. I enjoyed the book (although I prefer Gaiman's short story The Wolves in the Walls), but I was dis...

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Oct 7 2008

Katherine Neville's The Eight rides again

Recently, I've been seeing copies of Katherine Neville's 1988 novel The Eight popping up in prime bookstore real estate (stacks on the misleadingly-named "new releases" table, free-standing displa...

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Oct 6 2008

Hansel and Gretel: the Un-dead

Speaking of Korean entertainment, Variety is reporting that practically everybody but the Americans will have an opportunity to see the Korean horror film based on the (already pretty horrific) fa...

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