Feb 3 2010

Girls Gone Victorian

Whoa: this is the first time I've seen someone market a romance novel (from Katie MacAlister, one of Meg's favorite authors) as "steampunk". New literary sub-genre, or just a marketing gimmick? On...

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Feb 2 2010

You do have to admire her gall, though.

My, my. Whatever could this be? It appears to be a reprint (the one hundred and forty-seventh edition, I believe) of Nora Roberts's 1991 novel Genuine Lies, and it costs sixteen dollars. Are you k...

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Feb 2 2010

Like The Rules, but even sadder.

Huh. It turns out Lori Gottlieb's Marry Him: The Case for Settling For Mr. Good Enough isn't a joke. It's a real book (due out next week!), not just fodder for AustenBlog's "It worked so well fo...

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Feb 1 2010

Silk purse/sow's ear

I was poking around the bookstore over the weekend, and I ran across this:Now, I'm not an Ayn Rand fan, but I am a fan of great cover art, and that is some really, truly great cover art. I love th...

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Feb 1 2010

Eye candy

Jewelry designer Tom Binns has put together two lines of Alice in Wonderland-inspired jewelry: six limited-edition pieces that will retail for $1,000 to $1,500, and a lower-priced collection, Tom ...

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Jan 29 2010

Zombie Loan (Yen Press Extravaganza Part III), by Peach-Pit

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This should be our last installment of this series... at least for a while! Zombie-Loan, an ongoing manga from the female writing/artistic duo Peach-Pit, offers a b...

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Jan 28 2010

The Diamonds, by Ted Michael

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Fans of everything from Mean Girls to The A-List will recognize elements of Ted Michael's debut novel The Diamonds, but Michael's take on this overly-familiar material still feels smart, fun, and ...

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Jan 28 2010

Watered down

I was reading Roger Sutton's always-delightful Horn Book Blog, and ran across a post on Cornelia Funke's upcoming novel Reckless. Sutton's post quotes the Reckless press release (which I have not ...

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Jan 27 2010

Truth in advertising

99% of the cover art for the upcoming Twilight graphic novel is unremarkable......but I am impressed by the way they made [what is presumably] Edward's hand ever-so-slightly blue. Way to play up t...

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Jan 27 2010

Moon Called, by Patricia Briggs

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If I had to describe Patricia Briggs's novel Moon Called in a single line, I'd probably go for something like: “A lot like Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series—only way less annoying...

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Jan 27 2010

For the disorganized Austen junkies among us...

If, like me, you missed the first episode of the newest adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma currently airing on PBS stations in the US, you can see the thing in full on the Masterpiece Classic site. ...

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Jan 26 2010

Zombie TV

Huh: AMC has apparently green-lit a pilot for a television series based on Robert Kirkman's comic series The Walking Dead. I'm really hoping this gets picked up--I love zombie stuff, and think a...

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Jan 26 2010

Patricia Briggs

Patrica Briggs is an urban fantasy author based in Washington State. She's best known for her Mercy Thompson series about a shape-shifting VW mechanic living in the Tri-Cities area. (The first t...

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Jan 26 2010

Quirky.

I see so many Jane Austen continuations/adaptations/re-workings that they frequently start to blend together, but this one is gonna stick out in my memory:You see, dear readers, Pride/Prejudice fo...

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Jan 25 2010

I may not be a princess, but...

My concerns about costs remain valid, but I happened to run across Barbara Beery's Green Princess Cookbook the other day, and I have give her credit: the recipes in this book look crazy delicious....

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Jan 22 2010

Dream Life, by Lauren Mechling

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Dream Life is Lauren Mechling's follow-up to 2008's Dream Girl, and it's even more enjoyably far-fetched than its predecessor. Both novels feature improbably-named 10th grader Claire Voyante, whos...

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Jan 21 2010

Do they bind them in gold or what?

Ever since finishing Obernewtyn (our current Featured Book), I've been sulking over the discovery that author Isobelle Carmody's US, UK, and Canadian publishers chose to split her final two books ...

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Jan 21 2010

Spinning Disney

We try to avoid reporting on rumors (particularly rumors from a site like AintitCoolNews, which gives us an instant headache whenever we visit it), but this one's pretty widespread: whispers aboun...

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Jan 20 2010

Babymouse: Dragonslayer, by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm

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The Babymouse series, written by author Jennifer L. Holm and illustrated by her brother, freelance graphic artist Matthew Holm, are cute, silly, and unabashedly pink, making them an enjoyable alte...

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Jan 20 2010

Congratulations to 'em both.

Whoa. I'd heard that Neil Gaiman was getting married again to musician Amanda Palmer, but I hadn't actually seen the happy couple. Now, thanks to GoFugYourself's Golden Globes coverage, I have. (L...

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Jan 19 2010

Isobelle Carmody

Isobelle Carmody is the Australian author of both the Obernewtyn Chronicles (the first book of which is one of our Featured Titles) and Alyzon Whitestarr, an excellent standalone young adult fanta...

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Jan 19 2010

Obernewtyn, by Isobelle Carmody

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Isobelle Carmody wrote Obernewtyn, the first novel in her Obernewtyn Chronicles, at the ripe old age of fourteen. Admittedly, the book wasn't actually published until she was thirty, so we'r...

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Jan 19 2010

Fallen, by Lauren Kate

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As a merry band of book critics who spend a lot of time pondering young adult literature, we found it impossible to read Lauren Kate's novel Fallen without thinking about Stephenie Meyer's...

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Jan 19 2010

Alice blue

Hmm. As random merchandising tie-ins go, O.P.I.'s Alice In Wonderland-themed nail polish really isn't too bad:I am way too cheap to spend $8.50 for a bottle of nail polish, so I'm going to hope th...

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Jan 14 2010

Awesomeness on sale

Powell's Books in Oregon is currently offering several of Penguin's Deluxe Classic Editions at 30% off. I'm not sure if it's just the crappy January weather making all of my old books look sad and...

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Jan 14 2010

The Return

I got an e-mail last week informing me that Scholastic is planning to re-launch Ann M. Martin's Babysitters Club series with new covers and an all-new novel (a prequel) called The Summer Before. F...

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Jan 13 2010

Knight of Pleasure, by Margaret Mallory

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One of the main reasons Nathan, Megan and I started Wordcandy was our desire to give serious (okay, semi-serious) literary consideration to genres of fiction that do not ordinarily receive their f...

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Jan 13 2010

In a word: Huh?

Forget all that Jay Leno/Conan nonsense, the real TV headscratcher of the moment is the idea of a reality show set in Forks, WA, the setting for Stephenie Meyer's enormously popular Twilight serie...

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Jan 12 2010

Homecoming, by Patricia Briggs and David Lawrence

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I have never read Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson books, but if Homecoming—the first entry in a projected series of graphic novel tie-ins to the series—is any indication of her storytelling abilit...

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Jan 12 2010

The k-drama rides again!

Ohohoho, dear readers. Exciting news: According to Dramabeans, the Korean drama PTB have cast Lee Min-ho (of the way-more-popular-than-it-deserved-to-be drama Boys Before Flowers) in the upcoming ...

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