Aug 17 2011

(Sincere) applause

In celebration of this weekend's D23 Expo, the Disney fan event, Disney is planning to donate $500,000 and eight million books—ranging from titles for beginning readers to teen series—to First Boo...

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Aug 16 2011

Dude's been slacking.

I'll probably buy this book when it comes out in January, even though the only truly pressing Sisters Grimm question I have is WHERE IS BOOK NINE, BUCKLEY?!?

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Aug 16 2011

Maybe if you think of it as an investment?

If you're really, really wealthy and/or a really, really big Harry Potter fan, check out this 16-disc, 199-euro complete Harry Potter DVD set, available in November via the French Amazon site:

I...

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Aug 15 2011

Comic book cakelets

If you're a Marvel Comics fan with a steady hand and an affinity for baking, it might be worth spending $36 for this Marvel Cakelet Pan from Williams Sonoma. My cake-decorating skills, sadly, ar...

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Aug 15 2011

And who knows what movie tickets might cost by the time they're finished?

HitFix reported last week that Warner Bros. has nearly finalized a deal that would have David Yates (the director of the last four Harry Potter movies) and Steve Kloves (the screenwriter for all b...

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Aug 11 2011

I think I'll skip this one.

According to Vulture, Jesse Eisenberg is set to star in director Richard Ayoade’s adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella The Double, which they describe as "Fight Club for bureaucrats". That a...

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Aug 11 2011

Bruce: The Great and Powerful

Okay, the odds that I'll see the upcoming Oz: The Great and Powerful movie just went way up. According to his Twitter feed, Bruce Campbell is going to be in it. I don't know about you guys, but...

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Aug 10 2011

They're devoted Mystery! viewers.

My parents have recently embarked on a Michael Connelly binge, so this news should make them happy: Variety is reporting that ABC is developing a TV series based on the movie adaptation of Connell...

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Aug 9 2011

Implausible accents and fake gray hair

While I'm pretty sure there's a copy of David Nicholls's One Day mouldering on the Wordcandy to-be-read bookshelf, none of us have ever picked it up. (Despite the relatively cheery cover, somethi...

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Aug 9 2011

Supporting Edgar

According the Times, the Edgar Allan Poe House in Baltimore has lost two years' worth of city funding and may now have to close—as a museum, anyway. (It's a designated landmark, so it can't be tor...

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Aug 8 2011

Kerstin Gier

We can’t tell you much about Kerstin Gier, seeing as we don’t speak German. This is clearly a mistake on our parts, because Ms. Gier’s novel Ruby Red is the only one of her books that has been tr...

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Aug 8 2011

Ruby Red, by Kerstin Gier

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While most of the books I write about are sent to us by publishers or PR groups, occasionally I read something so awesome that it cries out for a review, even if I had to spend my own money t...

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Aug 8 2011

Parenting in a digital age

NPR's "All Tech Considered" blog has an article up featuring a handful of parenting tips about girls and social media from Rachel Simmons, author of the best-selling nonfiction title Odd Girl Out:...

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Aug 8 2011

Opportunity found

Fans of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast series have long known that the author outlined a fourth and final volume called Titus Awakes before his death in 1968, but it seemed destined to remain one of l...

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Aug 5 2011

Too much is never enough

And now there's a third Snow White movie in the works, this one from Disney. Just what the world needs!

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Aug 4 2011

A closer look

Much to my delight, there is a new biography of Georgette Heyer coming out this October. According to The Bookseller, Jennifer Kloester's book Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller includes p...

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Aug 4 2011

Testing...

The Times recently published a list of their online edition's most looked-up words of 2011, and BuzzFeed has the top 20, along with their definitions. Feel free to test your vocab prowess! (For w...

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Aug 3 2011

So Shelly, by Ty Roth

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Let me start by giving credit where credit is due: the Wordcandy to-be-read bookshelf is overflowing with YA gothic romances, but Ty Roth’s novel So Shelly stands out. Inspired by the notorious l...

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Aug 2 2011

State-ordered indulgence

It's National Ice Cream Sandwich Day, guys. And, as always, David Lebovitz is here for us.

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Aug 2 2011

What's the opposite of an ego boost?

If I was Mark Zuckerberg, I'd keep a copy of this upcoming biographical comic under my pillow, and whenever I started feeling too big for my britches I'd take it out and stare at it. I bet two mi...

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Aug 1 2011

A mystery solved

When publisher Little, Brown & Company e-mailed booksellers a list of their upcoming books last week, there was a November 14th release that excited quite a bit of curiosity: Untitled, by Anonymou...

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Aug 1 2011

To while away an idle hour

I finally saw the trailer for the live-action J-drama version of the manga Ouran High School Host Club. Behold:While I enjoy the silliness of the Ouran manga, and thought it worked really well as...

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Jul 29 2011

Comics on the horizon

Yesterday, Publishers Weekly posted a helpful round-up of the kids' comics announcements released at this year's Comic-Con, including info on upcoming titles from Smile's Raina Telgemeier, the Amu...

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Jul 28 2011

National treasure

AWESOME: I skipped over to AustenBlog to see what happened with the partial manuscript of Jane Austen’s unfinished novel The Watsons that was auctioned off earlier this month. I was delighted to ...

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Jul 28 2011

At least it's a catchier title

The trailer's out for The Ides of March, the latest film from writer/director/star George Clooney. The movie is an adaptation of Beau Willimon's 2008 play Farragut North, which is loosely based o...

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Jul 27 2011

Fairytale pop art

I was going to write a blog post about Anne Rice's upcoming werewolf book, but like I said: I totally don't care about Anne Rice. So let's look at these Disney Underground prints inspired by the ...

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Jul 26 2011

Meredith Gran

Meredith Gran is a web cartoonist best known for her Octopus Pie series. The first two years' worth of Octopus Pie strips were collected in the graphic novel There Are No Stars in Brooklyn, one o...

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Jul 26 2011

There Are No Stars in Brooklyn, by Meredith Gran

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Meredith Gran's graphic novel Octopus Pie: There Are No Stars in Brooklyn is frequently compared to Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim series, and the two comics do share a certain hipster vibe...

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Jul 26 2011

AMC's zombies return

If you've got a strong stomach and 4+ minutes to spare, the trailer's out for the second season of The Walking Dead, AMC's television adaptation of Robert Kirkman's comic book series:

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Jul 26 2011

Interview with the Vampire goes graphic

Yen Press and Anne Rice are planning a single-volume graphic novel adaptation of Rice's 1976 novel Interview with the Vampire, due out in fall 2012. Rather to my surprise, I really like this firs...

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