Jan 11 2010

IKEA looks to Japan

According to Publishers Weekly's The Beat, home-furnishings superstore IKEA will soon be offering a line of manga-themed textiles designed by a Swedish artist named Åsa Ekström. The images will fe...

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Jan 11 2010

Maybe they'll hire a better team this time...?

Ugh! After all that complaining we did about Marvel's Pride and Prejudice comic, now we're gonna have to suffer through a Sense and Sensibility one, too?Thankfully (for me), that's my least favori...

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Jan 8 2010

Angel Diary (Yen Press Extravaganza Part II), by KARA and Lee YunHee

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So here's part two of our mini-review bonanza! By and large, we've been very impressed by the quality of these series—we don't mean to make them sound like vultures, but Yen Press has been cherry-...

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Jan 7 2010

Very Very Sweet (Yen Press Extravaganza Part I), by JiSang Shin and Geo

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A few weeks ago, we found a large box from Yen Press waiting on our doorstep. We were super-excited—Yen Press is the manga/manhwa publishing group that has taken over the English publication of se...

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Jan 6 2010

The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer

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It is easy to see why Simon Mawer's The Glass Room was shortlisted for 2009's Man Booker Prize: the book is gorgeously written, historically significant, and 99% of it is a total downer. Mawer's ...

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Jan 6 2010

Michael Pollan's costly advice

Okay, I like Michael Pollan, and I've heard good things about Food Rules, his "pocket compendium of food wisdom". But, dude: it costs eleven dollars. For a collection of sixty-four paragraphs. For...

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Jan 5 2010

High Anxiety, by Charlotte Hughes

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Charlotte Hughes' High Anxiety is her third book to feature accident-prone psychologist Kate Holly (following What Looks Like Crazy and Nutcase). At this point in the series, Kate's life is about ...

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Jan 5 2010

Signs of life

So, there's some news on the Dune movie adaptation front: according to Variety, Paramount Pictures has asked Pierre Morel to direct. Morel will replace Peter Berg, who exited in favor of directin...

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Jan 4 2010

Comic Book Design, by Gary Spencer Millidge

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Gary Spencer Millidge's Comic Book Design offers readers a colorful and informative tour of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into the creation and promotion of comic books. He delves into cons...

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Jan 4 2010

Cinderella's Sister

If you're still unfamiliar with K-dramas, A) you are seriously missing out, and B) you might want to start with Cinderella's Sister, an upcoming 20-episode series scheduled to begin in March. Acc...

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Dec 31 2009

Lauren Weber

Lauren Weber is a former staff reporter for Newsday and Reuters. Her nonfiction book In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue is one of our Featured Book titles.

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Dec 31 2009

In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue, by Lauren Weber

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Many bookstores celebrate the first of the year by promoting two kinds of titles: diet guides and books about finances—both subjects likely to find a wide audience in the weeks following a ho...

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Dec 29 2009

Speaking of cover art...

When Meg and I ran across this in the bookstore the other day, our first thought was: "Is this, like, a joke romance novel*?" Because it really, seriously looks like one of those fake vintage pho...

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Dec 29 2009

Movin' on up

I'm usually not a fan of $14 paperback reprints (particularly when the original book cost far less), but I really like this cover:Awesome, huh? I think I would have left off the lipstick mark (it'...

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Dec 28 2009

And the price is so very, very right!

If you're a reader of fanfiction (fan-penned stories set in the worlds of various books/movies/TV shows/etc.), you might want to check out the Yuletide Treasure Fic Exchange, a massive fanfiction ...

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Dec 28 2009

Mini-Emma

Huh. It's a Jane Austen rip-off (of Emma, despite this book's title) for the 8-12 set:I'm not sure how I feel about this. The plot description sounds cute, actually, but it does seem like a nak...

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Dec 22 2009

Looks like the dog version of Mr. Ed.

Dude, they're making a movie out of the Marmaduke comic strip. I'd embed a video, but frankly I'm not comfortable sharing that kind of thing with impressionable readers. If you're desperate to see...

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Dec 22 2009

Books as Art

So, not sure how I feel about this:It's called Idiom, and it's an installation art piece by Slovak artist Matej Krén. It lives in the Prague Public Library.Neat? Kinky? Pretentious? All three?

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Dec 21 2009

RIP, Kirkus

Horn Book's Roger Sutton posted a nice preemptive obituary for Kirkus Reviews, the pre-publication book review magazine scheduled to close at the end of the year. Sutton acknowleges Kirkus's repu...

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Dec 21 2009

À la carte

If you're the kind of person who wants that Pictorial Webster's Dictionary solely because of all the pretty pictures, you now have the option of going straight for the pictures and skipping all th...

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Dec 17 2009

Behind (way behind) the times

In a little bit of magazine news, Salon.com's Broadsheet points out that Time magazine's annual "Person of the Year" coverstory hasn't featured a standalone female pick since 1986(!!!). They go o...

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Dec 17 2009

Overplayed

sigh I am so tired of the lady-in-a-long-skirt-fights-evil trend, you guys:I realize that the book industry is suffering, but taking every mildly successful book formula and copying it into the ...

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Dec 16 2009

The gift that keeps on giving

It's Wordcandy Goddess Jane Austen's birthday today, dear readers! Let's celebrate with something appropriate, shall we?Ah... soggy Colin Firth. It's better than cake!

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Dec 16 2009

My wallet is crying already.

Man, I am going to waste so much money at the movie theater this spring, aren't I?Here's the newest Alice in Wonderland trailer:

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Dec 15 2009

Greeks gone wild

But if you prefer your ancient mythology with more earnest expressions and even hokier CGI, Warner Bros. is releasing their remake of Clash of the Titans in March. It looks pretty bad, too... but ...

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Dec 15 2009

Percy Jackson's High School Musical

Well, they've released another Percy Jackson and the Olympians trailer:sigh I laughed at the pen line, but otherwise it just looks so hokey. Also, I find myself totally distracted by that kid's...

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Dec 14 2009

Well played, Mr. (and Mrs.) King.

In a classy move, Stephen King and wife Tabitha have apparently donated $13,000 (well, $12,999--they worried about the unlucky "13") to allow 150 soldiers from the Maine Army National Guard to tra...

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Dec 14 2009

Double ugh.

Man, not only are they making a movie version of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, it's going to star (and be produced by) Natalie Portman, an actress I have always found hugely overrated*. I don't...

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Dec 11 2009

Literary gifts for our fellow procrastinators...

It's that time of year again, dear readers: time for us to post our list of Wordcandy-approved holiday gifts! Most of these presents are inexpensive, available online, and (should y'all get your a...

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Dec 10 2009

Holiday cheer on tap

The fine people at Bookreporter.com have kicked off their second annual "Author Holiday Blogs" feature--a collection of holiday-themed posts by authors ranging from Stephen Coonts to Barbara Delin...

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