Sign me UP
Levar Burton has a new podcast called Levar Burton Reads. Nerdist describes it as "Reading Rainbow for adults", but who cares how anyone describes it? You had me at "Levar Burton reads"...
Grab a hankie.
This is both beautiful and tear-inducing: the Guardian tells me that the highest bid in the Authors for Grenfell Tower auction was given to James Clements, a teacher who bid £1,500 to have a character in Philip Pullman's upcoming series named after a former student who died in the fire, 16-year-old Nur Huda el-Wahabi...
Ever-evolving
There's some good stuff in the latest Oxford English Dictionary update: "woke", "Boston Marriage", wrestling terms "face" and "heel". But my favorite is their attempt to give nuance to "A new sense of thing"...
Books and booze
Well, I am just shocked, I tell you: according to Atlas Obscura, book clubs have always been focused on gossip and drinking, just as much (if not more) as they've been focused on reading...
A Conjuring of Light, by V. E. Schwab
A Conjuring of Light is the third and final book in V.E. Schwab's bestselling Shades of Magic series. At this point in the story, the relative safety of Red London has shattered. Kell, Lila, and their allies are confronted with the seemingly limitless powers of Osaron, a being of pure magic determined to bend the world of Red London to his will...
Weekly Book Giveaway: A Conjuring of Light, by V.E. Schwab
This week's Book Giveaway is V.E. Schwab's A Conjuring of Light, the third book in a somewhat over-hyped series that has, however, been blessed by the cover art gods. A full review will follow shortly...
With a little editing, sign me up
The Guardian is getting in on the upcoming Harry Potter celebrations, too: the most recent installment in their "Novel Recipes" series is a (softer) version of Hagrid's rock cakes from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone...
Those STRIPES!
Next Monday, June 26th, marks the 20th anniversary of the British publication of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone. Rowling's publisher Bloomsbury has an entire page of suggested ways to celebrate, including...
Donate!
In addition to being a very worthy cause, there are some A+++ items being offered on the "Authors for Grenfell Tower" online auction, ranging from signed books to writing advice...
John Wick, with all the style removed
Maybe I spoke too soon on that "all the meh" title earlier: the trailer is out for the upcoming film adaptation of Vince Flynn's thriller American Assassin, and it looks resoundingly mediocre...
Meh. All the meh.
According to Variety, the people behind the BBC's Sherlock are now working on a(nother) adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. There's pretty much no information about this project yet, but...
Just Dreaming, by Kerstin Gier
This is damning with faint praise, but Just Dreaming, the final book in Kerstin Gier's Silver Trilogy, is less of a hot mess than the finale of her previous series. So things are looking up (I guess), but Gier is still relying on the appeal of her lively, funny heroines to ease readers past...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Just Dreaming, by Kerstin Gier
This week's Book Giveaway is Kerstin Gier's Just Dreaming, the final installment in her Silver Trilogy. I usually find Gier's books equally fun and frustrating, so we'll see if this story manages to land firmly in one camp or the other. A full review will follow shortly...
Results may vary
Curbed just posted a bunch of images from an upcoming book of three-dimensional paper models of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, created by “paper engineer” and artist Marc Hagan-Guirey...
The thinnest of skin
Aww: Donald Trump has blocked Stephen King on Twitter! Luckily(?) for King, J.K. Rowling has offered to DM him the tweets (until Trump gets around to blocking her, too)...
Informative!
According to the Gloucester Times, a 12-year-old girl named Megan Gething used information gleaned from her reading of The Hunger Games to create a tourniquet for a friend who had sliced her leg open...
Pre-goatee
The trailer is out for Will, an upcoming TNT series about a young, "sexy" William Shakespeare in 1589, after his arrival in London (and, it must be noted, well after his marriage to Anne Hathaway). It appears to be pretty much 100% anachronisms...
Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman
Earlier this year, acclaimed storyteller Neil Gaiman published a $26, 281-page-long work of fanfiction: Norse Mythology, his “novelistic” retelling of several famous Norse myths. The book covers the stars of the Norse pantheon (Odin, Thor, Loki, Freya), and includes several of the best-known myths, including Thor's cross-dressing wedding, the death of Balder, and the many, many exploits of Loki the trickster...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman
This week's Book Giveaway is Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology. A full review will follow shortly, but I can already tell you that (alas) Gaiman's take on the Norse gods does not bear much resemblance to Taika Waititi's candy-colored vision for Thor: Ragnarok...
Possibly worth it
There was another intriguing-looking snack recently posted as part of the Guardian's "Novel Recipes": macaroons inspired by Elizabeth Von Armin's The Enchanted April...
Runaways REBORN
This is great: acclaimed YA novelist Rainbow Rowell has been hired to restart Marvel's Runaways, and she is apparently planning to revive Gert, whom I have always believed was killed off at least partially because it was too upsetting for Marvel's artists to draw a fat character...
I want to visit!
Big news for Studio Ghibli fans: in 2018, the studio plans to open a My Neighbor Totoro-inspired theme park in Japan's Aichi prefecture. The park will be designed in a way that doesn't disturb the local wildlife, and...
Castles and crappy parents
The trailer is out for the upcoming film adaptation of Jeannette Walls’s memoir The Glass Castle. I tend to get this book confused with I Capture the Castle (another story about poverty and sub-par parenting), and I doubt this movie will do much to keep the stories separate in my mind...
But the heroine doesn't die!
According to The New York Times, a long-lost Edith Wharton play has recently surfaced. The Shadow of a Doubt was supposed to be staged in New York in 1901, but for unknown reasons the production was abandoned and the play forgotten...
The Case of the Forked Road, by John Allison
The Case of the Forked Road, the seventh installment in John Allison's excellent Bad Machinery series, is—as always—a whacked-out delight. There's time travel, puberty jokes, and a PG-rated adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross. The boys play a reduced role in this volume (although their stories are expanded from the online version), but...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Case of the Forked Road, by John Allison
This week's Book Giveaway is John Allison's The Case of the Forked Road, the seventh book in the Bad Machinery series. I am, as always, pretty stoked to see a new Bad Machinery book, but there are certain very obvious changes about this installment that do not thrill me. A full review will follow shortly...
Maybe not opening day, but...
Oooh... the new Murder on the Orient Express trailer is out, and I am at least 80% impressed. The train looks amazing, the cast is solid (I could do without Depp, though), and Kenneth Branagh does a fine impression of David Suchet's accent. On the down side, he is not David Suchet (no matter how much he sounds like him)...
New-old Tolkien
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt just released a "new" book by J.R.R. Tolkien: Beren and Lúthien. The book is actually a compilation of Tolkien's earlier descriptions of the love story between Beren, a mortal man, and Lúthien, an immortal elf, which are apparently scattered throughout his writings. According to the publisher's description, Christopher Tolkien...
Kettles of DOOM
I finally saw the trailer for the soon-to-be-released film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel, and it looks very dramatic. I have never seen so many ominous-looking tea kettles in my life...