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...
I'm sure this would brighten up anyone's holiday morning.
If you're a fan of those Worst-Case Scenario books, or you've got a lot of small boys to shop for, check out this deal from the Chronicle Books website: they're offering 25% off and free shipping ...
Eating like it's 1896
NPR has a great article up about Fannie's Last Supper, the newest book from Chris Kimball, host of PBS's America's Test Kitchen and founder of Cook's Magazine. Kimball apparently spent two years ...
Didn't they see King Kong?
Well, well. Further Hobbit movie news: according to the MTV Movies Blog, Peter Jackson's two-part film adaptation of the novel is going to cost a whopping $500 million on top of $100 million in ...
My feelings on censorship have gone to war with my feelings on common sense.
Oh, man...A mother of an 11-year-old girl in New Hampshire has asked that Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games be removed from the school's curriculum because of its violent subject matter. The wom...
The more Crusie the merrier
So I decided to swing by and check out the "Upcoming Books" page for Jennifer Crusie (author of our current Featured Book, the excellent Maybe This Time). And while it's possible some of the book...
Want to smell tomato-soup-roast-beef-and-blueberry-pie fresh?
Of all the candy mentioned in Roald Dahl's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Violet Beauregarde's full-course-dinner gum has always struck me as the least appealing, but apparently scientis...
Singin' in the library
Flavorwire has put together a list of ten music videos (plus one bonus clip) set in bookstores and libraries. Their choices range from Ludacris to Van Halen to She and Him, so you should brace yo...
The sweet scent of a horror-story victim
Behold, two limited-edition perfumes oils inspired by Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:Aren't they cute? I'm not sure I actually want to smell like a spicy pumpkin, but for a mere ...
Higher and higher
Salon has posted a fascinating (and quite angry) article on the rising price of new e-books. I'm not sure that two e-books costing more than their printed-and-bound equivalents qualifies as a "tr...
I do like the "Stupidity" title card, though.
Check out the upcoming, gender-swapped movie adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest:It looks like a music video. And (it must be said) kind of a low-budget music video.
Kate Spade gets literary
If you're very, very wealthy and therefore don't mind dropping $325 on a novelty item, may I suggest these Kate Spade "Book of the Month" clutches? Sadly, they don't come with copies of the actua...
Maybe This Time, by Jennifer Crusie
A new Jennifer Crusie novel is always cause for celebration, and Maybe This Time—her first full-length solo effort since 2004's Bet Me—is no exception. In this lively re-working of Henry James's novella The Turn of the Screw...
I was hoping this trend would be beyond tired by 2012.
Twentieth Century Fox has purchased the film rights for Seth Grahame-Smith's novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. (Grahame-Smith also wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and is therefore the...
I'm pretty sure this is contradicted by Hogwarts: A History, but...
The students of Hogwarts are embracing modern technology.
Ooooh, hardcore!
Well, dear readers, here are a couple of movie trailers based on books that wouldn't quite make the Wordcandy A-list. First, I Am Number Four:It's that dude from that terrible-looking Beastly mov...
At least Harry Potter didn't make the list...
In honor of Banned Books Week, here's the list of last year's top-ten most frequently challenged books (according to the American Library Association):1. ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren M...
Hipster cruelty
I am very fond of bookends, but I'm only mildly tempted by these "Glass Half Bookends" from Urban Outfitters:They look cool, and they're supposed to double as vases (although putting flowers in 'e...
The passion of the gnomes
Well, the trailer for Gnomeo and Juliet is out:On the one hand, there's an A-list cast (well, except for Ozzy Osbourne). On the other, there's Elton John music and that inexplicable (and totally ...