I want it.
WOW: according to the New York Post, the house that reportedly inspired the heroine's home in Harriet the Spy is up for sale, and it could be yours for a mere $4.95 million! The house is gorgeous, and in a perfect world some enterprising hotelier will turn it into a boutique hotel that serves nothing but cake and tomato sandwiches...
Well, that's appalling.
According to Slate, Texas has agreed to include a textbook on Mexican-Americans on its list of proposed titles for the 2017-2018 school year. Seeing as 51.3 percent of the state's public-school students in 2012-2013 were Hispanic, this seems like a perfectly appropriate gesture. Unfortunately...
Maybe if I took out a loan...
I was recently introduced to the Folio Society, a London-based publisher of beautiful (and painfully expensive) books. I'm impressed by the fact that they appear to devote just as much effort—if not more—to books like Stephen King's...
Trigger warning
Today, the fine people at Go Fug Yourself posted their weekly Outlander recap, and this week's episode appears to focus heavily on rape, the fallout from rape, and (curve ball!) coercive sex. I left a comment on the GFY recap that basically summarized my thoughts on historical fiction/TV shows using rape as a narrative crutch, but I feel like hijacking other people's blogs...
Why bother?
The first trailer is out for Disney's upcoming "live action" adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, and I... well, I don't really see the point. I sort of understood the idea of telling a more fleshed-out version of Cinderella, seeing as Disney's earlier films...
A Song For Ella Grey, by David Almond
David Almond's A Song For Ella Grey is a young adult re-telling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, set in modern-day Northumberland and starring a bunch of small-town emo kids. The story is told from the point of view of a girl named Claire. Claire is obsessively devoted to her friend Ella, but when a mysterious boy with a beautiful singing voice appears, Ella instantly falls in love with him...
Weekly Book Giveaway: A Song for Ella Grey, by David Almond
his week's Book Giveaway is David Almond's young adult novel A Song For Ella Grey. I'm having a bit of trouble imagining how a teen re-telling of Orpheus and Eurydice (which I'm assuming this book is) will work, but that cover art is simply too gorgeous to pass up...
Mini-reviews: Pigs Have Wings, by P.G. Wodehouse, and A Gathering of Shadows, by V. E. Schwab
Another quickie guided tour of the sequels and series installments I've read this week:
P.G. Wodehouse's 1952 novel Pigs Have Wings is one of the funnier standalone Blandings Castle stories. (Like most of the Blandings adventures, this one involves several thwarted love affairs and a threat to the health and well-being of Empress of Blandings, Lord Emsworth's prize pig.) I usually...
Who knows?
I got an email this morning informing me that Random House/Penguin is planning to publish a young adult "adaptation" of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code this fall. The book will be available on September 8th in the UK and September 13th here in the States. Frankly, I found The Da Vinci Code damn near unreadable—it felt like a boring version of Katherine Neville's The Eight—but Brown's novel has sold approximately one zillion copies, so...
A bold move
There was a recent post on LaineyGossip about the upcoming AMC show Preacher, which premieres on May 22nd (we originally wrote about it here). According to Lainey, the premiere episode features "a specific joke...
Whelp.
So, that Nancy Drew-inspired TV series we wrote about back in January? The one featuring a 30-something Nancy with a job as a detective for the NYPD, where she "investigates and solves crimes using her uncanny observational skills"? I was kind of excited about that, but...
Off-brand
The trailer is out for Ang Lee's upcoming film adaptation of Ben Fountain's debut novel, 2012's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. I haven't read Billy Lynn, but I keep seeing it described as "razor-sharp satire". I can only say that that is really not the vibe I'm getting from this trailer...
Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal
The back cover of Mary Robinette Kowal's novel Shades of Milk and Honey describes it as “precisely the sort of tale we would expect from Jane Austen”. That comment is... a little hyperbolic, to put it mildly, but Kowal's book has its own virtue...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal
This week's Book Giveaway is Mary Robinette Kowal's fantasy novel Shades of Milk and Honey, which the back cover describes as "like wandering onto a secret picnic attended by Pride and Prejudice and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell". That sounds like a very tall order, but hopefully Ms. Kowal's book is up to the challenge. A full review will follow later today...
Mini-reviews: Lady Renegade, Forest of Ruin, and The Case of the Fire Inside
Today we are introducing a new feature here at Wordcandy: mini-reviews of the various sequels/series installments/comic books we've read during the week. Basically, I get tired of recapping everything that's happened in, say, the previous seven books in a particular series, but I still might want to complain or enthuse about book number eight...
On the edge
I got an email this morning about Book Mail, an upcoming "mystery box" offer from Book Riot and Out of Print Clothing. According to the official description, the box is a one-time thing (not a subscription service), will cost $60, is guaranteed to be worth more than the purchase price, and will contain...
Sticker shock
The Daily Mail just reported on a Texas couple's Harry Potter-themed wedding, which was lavish, expensive, and admittedly pretty amazing-looking. (They had a trained owl fly the wedding rings to the best man!) The shindig cost $65,000 and took a year and a half to plan. Sadly, the article fails to...
That's a full-length-novel-worthy cover, though.
io9 informs me that there is a short film adaptation of Daniel H. Wilson’s Pinocchio-goes-scifi story The Nostalgist, and it's now available (for free!) online. Here's the official plot description...
Salacious! (But not really.)
THR recently posted a juicy excerpt from Canadian filmmaker Barry Avrich's recently-released book Moguls, Monsters and Madmen: An Uncensored Life in Show Business. It's well-worth checking out, particularly if you enjoy behind-the-scenes gossip...
The Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle, by Rick Riordan
While I thoroughly enjoyed Rick Riordan's 'Heroes of Olympus' series, I was dismayed by the way the author handled Nico di Angelo, his first major gay character. I applauded Riordan's efforts to be more inclusive, but Nico seemed downright tortured by his sexuality, which—considering both modern attitudes towards sex and other, far more pressing problems in the poor kid's life—felt unnecessarily overwrought. I'm assuming I wasn't the only person to complain, because...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle, by Rick Riordan
This week's Book Giveaway is Rick Riordan's new book The Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle. Riordan has a gift for making total Mary-Sues into appealing, sympathetic characters, but humanizing an actual god might be a tall order, even for him. Our review will follow later today...
Gothic romance dialed up to 11
The trailer is out for director Park Chan-wook's film Agasshi (The Handmaiden), and it looks incredible—dramatic, artistic, and creepy as hell. It's a loose adaptation of Sarah Waters's 2002 novel Fingersmith, and will debut at the Cannes Film Festival next week. Park, who is best known for his 2003 movie Oldboy, has...
Original-flavor dystopia
Nightmares, ahoy: according to THR, Hulu is planning a 10-episode-long miniseries adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. The series will air in 2017 and star Mad Men actress Elizabeth Moss. I've never been able to finish The Handmaid's Tale...
Gross, but maybe better than normal fruitcake
The Guardian recently posted Kate Young's tribute to the early Philip Pullman series The Ruby in the Smoke, complete with a recipe for a fruit cake mentioned in the series. I wasn't a huge fan of the Ruby series, and I'm even less...
Selfish
Okay, I really, really want this $14 notebook from the Whitney Museum gift shop, but why is it so tiny? What if the list of people I'd like to punch in the face is long? And why is it unlined? What if...
Done and done
According to io9, Robert Jordan's widow Harriet McDougal has announced that the weird legal situation surrounding the TV rights to Jordan's Wheel of Time series has been resolved, and an approved adaptation is on its way...
The Wallflower, by Tomoko Hayakawa
Tomoko Hayakawa's The Wallflower ran from 2000 to 2015, spanning 36 volumes. That's at least twenty volumes longer than the actual storytelling could support, but there is no denying that the series' main character is one of the most memorable heroines in manga...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Wallflower Vol. 36, by Tomoko Hayakawa
This week's Book Giveaway is the last volume of The Wallflower, the long-running romantic comedy manga by Tomoko Hayakawa. The Wallflower has always been a little flimsy (there was enough story for a ten-volume series, tops, but it ran for thirty six), but it also brought me one of my all-time favorite manga heroines, so I will always have a soft spot for it in my heart...
Good luck
And in one last bit of movie-adaptation news, Emily Blunt and Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda have been confirmed as the stars of a sequel to Disney's Mary Poppins. I've never actually seen the original Mary Poppins, but just typing the name is enough to get some of the music stuck in my head, so...
Sorry, Meg.
In news that will undoubtedly traumatize Wordcandy staff member Megan (who hates the book with a fiery passion), the Guardian is reporting that there will be a new film adaptation of Richard Adams’s 1972 novel Watership Down. The movie will be a co-production of the BBC and Netflix, and features...