Freeing Tibet
The BBC/NPR program The World aired an interview with novelist Eliot Pattison yesterday as part of a series of stories on the recent unrest in Tibet. I've never read one of Pattison's mysteries, ...
The Penderwicks, by Jeanne Birdsall
I have long avoided reading Jeanne Birdsall's National Book Award-winning The Penderwicks, mostly because of its tastefully retro cover (which I felt was shamelessly derivative of the silhouette i...
Hana Yori Dango Version 3.0
While reading the excellent Dramabeans blog, I was delighted to see that there's going to be a K-drama adaptation of the cheese-tastic shojo manga Hana Yori Dango. I enjoyed the recent Japanese v...
Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, by James Patterson
James Patterson’s Maximum Ride books are an action-adventure/science fiction series featuring a group of genetically engineered bird-human children. There are currently three books in the series*...
Kamikaze Girls, by Novala Takemoto
I hunted down a copy of Novala Takemoto’s 2002 novel Kamikaze Girls after I saw the film adaptation a few months ago, and—for once!—I’m not sure which I recommend picking up first. There are slig...
The Fug Girls are at Powell's
Well, kinda. Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, creators of GoFugYourself are the guest bloggers this week for Powells.com. Sadly, they haven't talked much about books at this point (although ref...
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winnifred Watson
Winifred Watson’s 1938 novel Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day has just been made into a movie, and—for once!—we’re totally grateful. We’re usually the first in line to complain about film adaptations, but if it wasn’t for the fine people at Focus Features we might never have heard of this charmingly optimistic romantic comedy...
Sisters Grimm #6: Tales from the Hood
(Have I mentioned how much I hate the whole Daylight Savings spring time change? Because, seriously: my brain feels like it's going to melt.)I can't believe this slipped past me, but Michael Buckl...
Bone: the movie
Meg sent me this link over the weekend. Apparently, Warner Bros. has bought the movie rights to Jeff Smith's Bone. See, a Bone movie would only work for me if they got the people who make Wallac...
Georgette Heyer rides again!
Much to my delight, Sourcebooks, Inc. is continuing to release beautiful paperback editions of Georgette Heyer novels. Their most recent publication, False Colours, isn’t her best work, but even a...
Where Does the Money Go? Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis, by Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson
Wordcandy doesn’t review much nonfiction, but we were pleasantly surprised by Jean Johnson and Scott Bittle’s Where Does the Money Go? Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis. Miraculously, Johnson and Bittle have managed to write a politically unbiased book on an important-but-drier-than-dust subject that is both informative and entertaining...
Amazon takes one for the team
As most of you probably know, Amazon purchased J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard at a Sotheby’s auction. The purchase price (of £1,950,000!!!) was donated to The Children's Voice campai...
Help Jennifer Colt (or somebody else) land a Penguin contract
I got this e-mail from beloved Wordcandy author Jennifer Colt yesterday:Dear Friends,I entered my unpublished McAfee Twins manuscript The Hellraiser of the Hollywood Hills in the Amazon Breakthrou...
Hogfather: the movie
We are happy to report that the Sky One made-for-TV movie adaptation of the Terry Pratchett novel Hogfather is finally available here in the U.S. This unique holiday story (Hogfather, the Discwor...
Immortal, by Traci L. Slatton
[Note: this review contains a semi-spoiler, so procede with caution!]
While Anne Rice fans breathlessly await that last Lestat book, they would be well advised to check out Traci L. Slatton’s debut...
Darkside, by Tom Becker
Tom Becker’s debut novel Darkside opens with a kidnapping: thirteen-year-old Ricky Thomas is abducted from the middle of Trafalgar Square in broad daylight, and, strangely, none of the hundreds of...
Five questions with Charles Burns
Thanks to the fine people at Pantheon Books, Wordcandy was recently given the opportunity to ask Charles Burns (author of Black Hole, one of our recent Featured Book titles) a few questions. 1. ...
When the licensing gods fail us…
Sometimes it's hard to be an anime/drama geek. Distribution is limited, only a fraction of the interesting projects get translated, and the stuff you'd actually pay for doesn't get licensed at al...
Gnomeo and Juliet
(Sometimes I double-check the dates when I read these things, just to be totally certain they weren't posted on April Fools' Day.)It turns out that there WILL be an animated version of Shakespeare...
How Not To Be Popular, by Jennifer Ziegler
Jennifer Ziegler’s How Not to be Popular is not, as some of you might think, an unauthorized sequel to Meg Cabot’s How To Be Popular. Sure, there’s the nearly identical titles, and the fact that ...
Tramps Like Us Vol. 14, by Yayoi Ogawa
TOKYOPOP has just released the final volume of Yayoi Ogawa’s sublimely romantic manga Tramps Like Us, and while we are definitely going to miss seeing new installments of this story every few months, we are thrilled that Ogawa ended her fourteen-volume series on such a satisfying note...
New and improved
We've been talking recently about coming up with an updated version of our Wordcandy Guide to the Best Shojo Manga. We think our original list is still pretty solid (although Pheromomania Syndrom...