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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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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