Save the words!
The fine people at Oxford English Dictionaries have started SaveTheWords.org, a website devoted to reviving thousands of gloriously obscure English words that have fallen out of daily use. Visito...
Michael Buckley for an older crowd
I caught an episode of Robotomy over the weekend, and while this series was co-created by best-selling children's author Michael Buckley and appears on Cartoon Network, do not assume it is safe fo...
Jumping the gun?
Deadline is reporting that Fox 2000 has bought the rights to a projected YA trilogy written by Julianna Baggott. The series doesn't actually have a publisher yet, much less a release date or cove...
Weak. Sauce.
Oh, for crying out loud:They're doing zombie/children's poem crossovers now? And they're charging nearly $13 for them? Seriously, the minute I see someone trying to splice a monster joke into a ...
Smelling like Charles Dickens
Artisan candlemaker Paddywax has released a line of author-inspired candles. At $25 per 9oz. glass container, you can now scent your home with candles named after Edgar Allan Poe, Jane Austen, He...
It's still not April 1st, right?
Huh. NPR informs me that the 4th Annual Quidditch World Cup is taking place at De Witt Clinton Park in New York City this very weekend, and will feature more than 60 different teams from high sch...
And look! She's *not* shaped like Barbie!
Jezebel has posted a couple of advance images from the upcoming Marvel Comics reboot of the "Spider-Girl" character. (This version of the character has no connection to Peter Parker, apparently.)...
Not bad, not bad at all.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips is apparently planning on giving away several advance-reader copies of her upcoming book Call Me Irresistible over the next few months, so if you're a fan of hers you migh...
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...