Posts tagged with classic-books
Legal wrangling
This is a depressing story, so I hope she wins: 87-year-old To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee says that her literary agent Samuel Pinkus (the son-in-law of her long-time agent Eugene Winick) took advantage of her poor health to trick her into signing over the copyright of her book to him...
Vintage cyborgs
Speaking of serialized stories, science fiction fans can now read the first chapter of British author E.V. Odle's 1923 little-known novel The Clockwork Man, which is apparently the earliest story to feature a cyborg...
DO NOT WANT.
I'm sorry, but I'm voting "no" on this one: according to Deadline, Guillermo del Toro is planning to produce a movie adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel The Secret Garden, and it's rumored that his version will be set in the American South at the turn of the 20th Century...
Forget Tim Burton, Sleepy Hollow is going Underworld
I'm shoving this into my mental file labeled "Probably a mistake": according to Entertainment Weekly, Fox has ordered a pilot for a television adaptation of Washington Irving's Sleepy Hollow. They're describing it as “A modern-day supernatural thriller based on...
Dr. Jekyll vs. Mr. Hyde on a weekly basis
Well, Revenge proved there was an audience for heavily-altered TV adaptations of classic novels, so at the end of the month NBC is kicking off Do No Harm, a modern-day reworking of Robert Louis Stevenson's novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde...
So pretty!
Speaking of less-ludicrously-overpriced items from Anthropologie, the store recently trotted out a collection of six novels from the Penguin Classics line featuring absolutely gorgeous cover art designed by stationer Mr. Boddingtion's Studio...
Children's books, condensed
I love, love, love these minimalist children's book-art posters from graphic designer Christian Jackson. I originally ran into them at The Land of Nod, where they will run you about a hundred bucks (framed)...
I am straight-up depressed by this.
The idea of a Goodnight Moon app seems fundamentally wrong to me (it's meant to be a passive literary experience, that's what makes it so soothing), but, as usual, that doesn't mean someone didn't make one...
Clifford's big birthday
NPR recently posted an article celebrating the 50th "birthday" of Clifford the Big Red Dog. Created by author and illustrator Norman Bridwell in 1962, the Clifford series has sold more than 126 million copies and is available in 13 languages. The article includes a really sweet interview with Bridwell and his wife Norma...
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Miracle Whip
Has anybody else seen this Miracle Whip commercial? Who on earth decided "fake mayonnaise" + The Scarlet Letter was a natural pairing?
Don't get me wrong: I actually think the idea is pretty great. But I'm choosing to believe...
It's not how I'd choose to spend my weekend, but...
If you have the time, inclination, or need, you should check out the Moby Dick Big Read, a free online version of Melville’s masterpiece. Each of the book's 135 chapters is to be read aloud (featuring a mixture of famous and unknown readers) and broadcast online in a sequence of 135 publicly accessible downloads...
That is some low-budget cover art, too.
According to E!Online, some e-book company called Clandestine Classics has taken a bunch of classic novels and sexed 'em up. The article name-drops the Brontes, Austen, Melville, and Conan Doyle as potential subjects (victims?)...
Eat like Holden Caulfield
Flavorwire recently featured a several images created by graphic designer Dinah Fried. The photo series, entitled Fictitious Dishes, features recreations of famous meals from classic novels, including The Catcher in the Rye, Moby Dick, and, of course, the gruel from Oliver Twist...
Texting Jane
Following up their Texts from Scarlett O'Hara and Texts from Sweet Valley High posts, The Hairpin has produced a series called Texts from Jane Eyre. They're very Hark! A Vagrant in style...
Please do Alice in Wonderland next.
Much to my delight, Penguin has released three more "Penguin Threads" editions. The new titles, which feature a variety of styles of embroidery-inspired cover art, are Little Women, The Wizard of Oz, and The Wind in the Willows, and they're all so gorgeous I'm even tempted to buy Little Women (and you guys know how I feel about that book)...
Anna Karenina meets Mad Men
I'm having difficulty picturing this, but InStyle informs me that Banana Republic is planning a capsule collection inspired by the upcoming film adaptation of Anna Karenina, but "with more of a 50s feel"...
No thank you.
Ugh. I'm not a fan of Anna Karenina, or Joe Wright, or Tom Stoppard, or Merchant-Ivory-lite literary adaptations in general. But this lavish new trailer certainly looks pretty, and I suspect the movie will win many awards (but not my hard-earned $10)...
Swashbuckling, etc.
Guy Ritchie has been hired to direct a new film adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. No word on whether or not it will be as smirkingly tongue-in-cheek as Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes movies, but since they're describing it as a "stylized" version of the novel, I'm assuming so...
Seriously abridged
If you're a fan of the Classics Illustrated series or the children's comics anthology Little Lit, you might want to check out the recently-released collection The Graphic Canon, Vol. 1. The trilogy will feature nearly 200 gorgeously-illustrated literary adaptions, ranging from the early epics...
Worlds collide
According to io9, BOOM! Studios has asked Mouse Guard creator David Petersen to create cover art for several Muppets-meet-classic-kid-stories mashup comics...
Meaningless awards
The American Book Review, a nonprofit journal published by the Illinois State University, recently compiled a list of the 100 best first lines from novels. As always, this is is totally subjective...
New-old stories
According to the Guardian, 500 "new" fairytales were recently discovered in an archive in Regensburg, Germany, where they had been stored for over 150 years. The stories are part of the collection of folklore gathered during the mid-19th century by historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth in the Bavarian region of Oberpfalz...
A legacy to be proud of
We were sorry to hear that Jan Berenstain, who co-wrote and illustrated the perennially popular Berenstain Bears series with her husband Stan, suffered a severe stroke on Thursday and died Friday without regaining consciousness. Ms. Berenstain was 88, and is survived by two sons and four grandchildren.
Utterly bizarre
Scholastic Parent & Child magazine has trotted out their list of the 100 Greatest Books for Kids, awarding the top spot to Charlotte's Web, second place to Goodnight Moon, and third place to A Wrinkle in Time.
Real estate pin-ups
Last week, Flavorwire put together a slideshow of 15 Famous Authors' Beautiful Estates. It was fun to flip through, although surprisingly few of the homes had my heart burning with real estate envy...
Hipster Hamlet
If you told me this entire line of books (from Penguin's Puffin Books imprint) was a tie-in for a new series of classic literature adaptations airing on ABC Family, I would totally believe you:(It...
A nod to the pulp factor
Publishers Weekly did a great post recently about the many and varied cover art choices for John Steinbeck's East of Eden. I can't say I agree with their statement "If you haven’t yet read East o...
At long last, more Cold Comfort
For the first time since its original publication fifty years ago, a reprint of Stella Gibbons's short story collection Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm is going hit bookshelves next week. Cold Com...
A modern classic
Much to my delight, the second book for NPR's Back-Seat Book Club is Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, one of my all-time favorite books. The Back-Seat Book Club is technically aimed at read...
Abridged beyond belief
These "Baby Lit" books are cute, right? And the Jane Austen one at least got a good review on AustenBlog. But how could anyone make Romeo and Juliet into a baby board book (even if it's just a "...