Turn that angry squint to good account, Leo!
According to Entertainment Weekly, Leonardo DiCaprio will be starring in (and producing) an adaptation of Stephan Talty’s upcoming book The Black Hand, which sounds like it will be right up the actor's alley. Check out this plot summary...
Unfamiliar Fishes, by Sarah Vowell
Reading Sarah Vowell's 2011 book Unfamiliar Fishes is like skimming through a 230-page-long magazine article. It's a witty, easily digestible take on a fascinating element of American history—but I would have preferred less wit and more dry facts...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Unfamiliar Fishes, by Sarah Vowell
In times of politically-induced stress, I frequently find it soothing to read about the politically-induced stress of Olden Times. (Sometimes I need to be reminded that humanity is cockroach-level resilient.) So this week's Book Giveaway is Sarah Vowell's 2011 book Unfamiliar Fishes, about the American annexation of Hawaii in 1898...
Second try
Yesterday Dramabeans posted a casting rumor about the upcoming movie adaptation of my beloved Cheese in the Trap. I still feel really weird about this project...
Pre-Valentine's Day
NYMag's new site The Strategist just posted a list (charmingly) titled "12 Romantic Books That Won't Make You Gag". I'm not, you know, a six-year-old boy, so romance doesn't actually disgust me, but whatever. They have some good picks on there...
This is a million times more disturbing as a live-action.
And in non-political, non-depressing news, the final trailer for the upcoming live-action version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast is out. I am...
Apropos
I've been seeing a number of people linking to this 2015 Washington Post article about Anne Frank and her family being denied entry as refugees into the U.S. in 1941. It's a long (and terribly depressing) read, but...
Maybe there are CliffsNotes?
According to Quartz, Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism is now sold out on Amazon. I've read The Origins of Totalitarianism, and all I can say is: if people are buying it in hopes of a quick, comprehensible explanation of Trump's rise to power...
The Burning Page, by Genevieve Cogman
I recently reviewed the first two books in Genevieve Cogman's Invisible Library series, and was delighted when the third installment, The Burning Page, showed up on my doorstep. It's a fun read, but I don't see any evidence of a fourth book, and I much prefer The Burning Page as a series installment than a series conclusion...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Burning Page, by Genevieve Cogman
This week's Book Giveaway is The Burning Page, the third (but hopefully not final) book in Genevieve Cogman's Invisible Library series. We've enjoyed this series thus far, and our review of The Burning Page will be posted shortly...
They're already written? They come with built-in fanbases?
There's a new article at the Verge called "Why Hollywood is turning to books for its biggest productions". While the author makes a couple of decent points in the second half of the article, he confuses me early on with the suggestion that faithful, ambitious TV/movie adaptations of books only began...
The more you know
NPR recently posted great article about the Merriam-Webster twitter feed, which has been sharing a lot of pointed political definitions recently. Frankly, I don't think the new president cares much about expanding his vocabulary...
Doublespeak
So... according to the Guardian, George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty Four recently became the 6th best-selling book on Amazon...
Now on TV
Deb Perelman, creator of the popular cooking website Smitten Kitchen, just made an exciting announcement: Food Network has launched a Smitten Kitchen digital series. You can watch the first episode via the embedded link, and...
A hundred and thirty-odd years later...
I got an e-mail last week about The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine, a "never-before-published, unfinished children’s story by Mark Twain, completed and brought to life by Caldecott Medal winners Philip and Erin Stead", which will be released next September from Random House. The cover art...
The Mating Season, by P.G. Wodehouse
Regardless of whether they're 20 pages long or 200, P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories are always the same: heavy on whip-cracking aunts, hapless young men, formidable young ladies, and romantic misunderstandings that can usually only be resolved by making an ass out of poor Bertie Wooster. Since there are so few differences between his novels and short stories, I prefer the short stories—they cram just as much awesomeness into far fewer pages...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Mating Season, by P.G. Wodehouse
This week's Book Giveaway is P.G. Wodehouse's 1949 Jeeves and Wooster novel The Mating Season. I'm just sayin', apropos of... nothing special: in times of stress, there is nothing like Wodehouse. A full review will follow shortly...
All of a piece
Today is Edgar Allan Poe's birthday! And thanks to The Writer's Almanac, I can now add another rumor to my collection of juicy Poe-related trivia: Poe went to West Point, where he may have gotten himself deliberately expelled by appearing nude at drill...
Not my style, but...
The Revelist recently featured an article about these sold-out Niffler necklaces, inspired by the jewelry-stealing fantastic beasts from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter 'verse...
Update!
There's more news on the mysterious recent shutdown of AllRomanceEbooks. I was clearly not alone in thinking it sounded hinky: according to the website Writer Beware, a class action lawsuit...
To each their own
According to The AV Club, Warner Bros. is eyeing Hajime Isayama‘s manga Attack On Titan for an American live-action adaptation. The series has already become an anime, several video games, and a Japanese live-action film, but...
Around the World in Eighty Days, by Jules Verne
First published in 1873, Around the World in Eighty Days is Jules Verne's most popular work. It's the story of Phileas Fogg, an enigmatic, unflappable Englishman who bets a group of his wealthy peers that he can circumnavigate the earth in eighty days. Accompanied by his bewildered valet Passepartout (and pursued by a detective who incorrectly believes Fogg to be a notorious bank robber), Fogg sets out...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
In an effort to erase last week's disastrous choice from my brain, this week's Book Giveaway is a classic: Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days. It's been entertaining readers for nearly 150 years; I'm hoping it will be enough to wipe The Darkest Torment from my "recently read" memory bank. A full review will follow shortly...
Maybe too specific?
Two Harry Potter + food articles in as many days! According to the Gothamist, there's a new Harry Potter-themed pasta restaurant in Williamsburg. It's tough to tell from the Pasta Wiz website, but the Potter connection looks a little tenuous...
Ch-ch-changes
International Business Times recently posted an article about the differences between Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale and Hulu's upcoming TV adaptation of the story. The article features some spoilers (obviously), but I'm glad I read it. I'm wrestling with the TV producers' decision to...
Their spelling is pretty terrible, though.
Refinery29 recently featured an article about the Llety Cynin bed-and-breakfast in South Wales, which is celebrating the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by...
Financial hijinks
Well, this is hinky. According to Publishers Weekly, the once-popular online e-book retailer AllRomanceEbooks shut down operations at the end of December. Unfortunately, there's a lot of mystery surrounding the whys and wherefores of this shut down...
Sibling rivalry: classics edition
Classic book nerds take note: Samantha Ellis recently wrote an interesting article about Anne Brontë ("the sister who got there first") for the Guardian. While I've never read Agnes Grey, the novel Brontë wrote about her experiences as a governess, I have read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and enjoyed it more than either of Brontë's sisters' novels...
The Darkest Torment, by Gena Showalter
Gena Showalter's The Darkest Torment is the literary equivalent of a music video—flashy and evocative, but short on coherent plot. Admittedly, this is the twelfth installment in an ongoing series, so I didn't expect to grasp the minutiae of Showalter's world, but the standalone elements of this story (including the entire romantic story arc) didn't make much sense, either...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Darkest Torment, by Gena Showalter
It's been quite some time since we last reviewed a straight-up romance novel, so this week's Book Giveaway is Gena Showalter's The Darkest Torment. Apparently, and all appearances to the contrary, that dude on the cover isn't a professional surfer/part-time model, he's a demon! (Or something. The back cover is not 100% clear on this point.) A full review will follow shortly...