Consider that shark officially jumped
It's been a few weeks since I last experienced that "Wait. It's not April 1st, is it?" feeling, but it's back:Apparently, this Twilight-inspired road safety sign in Portland, Oregon is, like, a r...
Chatting about the common cold
Salon.com has a fascinating interview up with science journalist Jennifer Ackerman, author of Ah-Choo! The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold. I had no idea I'd find the subject so interesting, bu...
Why does Voldemort's hissing always, always make me laugh?
Speak of the new Harry Potter movie and a new trailer appears:
So many bad ideas in one place...
Speaking of the book-to-movie transition, the fine people at BuzzSugar have put together a list of 15 Books To Read Before They're Adapted For the Screen. At least at this point, I'm only plannin...
Artemis Fowl the movie: MIA
Entertainment Weekly's Popwatch column has posted an article guessing at the next YA book to be adapted for the big screen. Most of the story is pure speculation—will Hollywood ever made a 3-D ad...
Looking to waste some time?
Have I got the iTunes app for you: several "classic" Choose Your Own Adventure titles have been launched recently as interactive reading experiences for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Even as a...
Get thee to a bookstore
How did this slip by me? I know last month felt like it was all Mockingjay, all the time in the kids' lit world, but seriously: how did I miss this?Author Norton Juster and illustrator Jules Feif...
Just like in Scooby Doo
As you all know, I have many problems with fake books. One, they're fake books. Two, what are you supposed to keep in them? They're tiny! Three—and this is particularly true in this case—they'...
Ah, gimmicks
Yet another snippet of Disney Princess news has come my way: a sing-a-long version of Beauty and Beast will be shown in a limited number of theaters on September 29th and October 2nd. Hopefully t...
Romeo and Juliet + Zombies = Inevitable
NPR has posted a review of Anne Fortier's novel Juliet, a modern, completely re-imagined take on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. I'm not sure I'll read this—the cover is totally boring, and I am ...
Eat, Pray, Love, shop
Meg sent me this link to a limited-release line of three Eat, Pray, Love-inspired fragrances on Friday, but the maker has already sold out. The sprays are apparently still available in some store...
"Best of 2010" already?
The 2010 Hugo Awards for outstanding science fiction or fantasy works were given out this week. The best novel award was a tie this year—China Miéville's The City & The City and Paolo Bacigalupi'...
Safety first
Check out this owl-shaped bookend from Etsy artist Aprilfoss:Pretty cute, huh? And, at $26, relatively affordable. Aprilfoss's owls come in a wide variety of colors and fabrics, and each one sho...
Witch-hunting for fun and profit
Cinematical is linking Noomi Rapace (who played Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish film adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) to an upcoming American project called Hansel and Gretel: Witch ...
From one creepy extreme to another
These oddly melancholy images of obese Disney princesses are popping up all over the Internet. (They're drawn by Aly Bellissimo, the artist behind the questionably-SFW Creepy Miranda blog.) I wa...
Down for the count
PublishersWeekly recently posted an interesting article about chain bookstores' ongoing attempts to stay profitable during the economic downturn. Of the three major U.S. book chains (Books-A-Mill...
Now in glorious Technicolor
Cinematical informs me that Lionsgate Films is pondering three directors for their upcoming Hunger Games movie adaptation: Gary Ross (Pleasantville), David Slade (The Twilight Saga: Eclipse), and...
Like Gokusen, but even stranger?
AnimeNewsNetwork informs me that a live-action(!) television adaptation of Deka Wanko (the current manga from Gokusen creator Kozueko Morimoto) is in the works. Now, I haven't read Deka Wanko (l...
Don't do it, guys.
A television adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series, created without involvement by the author?This, dear readers, is a Very Bad Idea.
Weirdness collides!
If you check out the website for Icelandic musician Bjork, you can see the video for her song "Moomins and the Comet Chase". It's part of the soundtrack for the movie based on Tove Jansson's chil...
Right there with you, NPH
Wow, this movie (based on the YA book Beastly by Alex Flinn, and inspired by the "Beauty and the Beast" fairytale) looks seriously terrible:I'm actually almost impressed by how bad this looks.
Sage advice for the young'uns
Ah, satirical advice from Disney's cartoon princesses! Check out these words of wisdom from "Belle" and "Ariel":To be fair, I feel like cherry-picking objectionable messages from Disney films is ...
Christmas (themed books) come early...
Oooh, Lisa Kleypas is releasing another holiday-themed novella (after 2008's A Wallflower Christmas). Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor will be out in late October, and appears to be the first entry...
A book club take on Mockingjay
Okay, one last post on Mockingjay, and then I'm done talking about it (at least until the inevitable movie* comes out). The online magazine Slate has chosen Mockingjay as the subject of one of th...
Edgar Allan Poe fights (or possibly commits) crime
John Cusack has apparently signed on to play Edgar Allan Poe in a (fictionalized) account of the poet's last few days of life. The description of the film on Cinematical mentions something about ...
The Walking Dead on AMC
Behold, the trailer's out for the upcoming AMC zombie series The Walking Dead, based on the comic book of the same name by writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore. Enjoy... but not right befo...
Aisha finally hits the big screen
AustenBlog has posted a review of Aisha, the Bollywood update of Jane Austen's Emma. The critique is positive but far from gushing, and the author notes that the movie appears to be a close remak...
Onwards and upwards
Now that one buzz-worthy summer release is behind us, it's time to move on to the next. The final book in the 39 Clues series comes out next week. Behold:Fans of this series know that only a fra...
Catching Fire and Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
Well, dear readers, I waded through both Catching Fire and Mockingjay yesterday, and my emotions were mixed. There were elements I liked, but the violence was so constant that I found myself actu...