Obernewtyn, by Isobelle Carmody
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...
Fallen, by Lauren Kate
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...
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...
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...
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...
Knight of Pleasure, by Margaret Mallory
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...
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...
Homecoming, by Patricia Briggs and David Lawrence
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
Angel Diary (Yen Press Extravaganza Part II), by KARA and Lee YunHee
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-...
Very Very Sweet (Yen Press Extravaganza Part I), by JiSang Shin and Geo
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...
The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer
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 ...
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...
High Anxiety, by Charlotte Hughes
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 ...
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...
Comic Book Design, by Gary Spencer Millidge
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...
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...
In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue, by Lauren Weber
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...
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...
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'...
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 ...
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...
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?
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...
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...
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...