Alyzon Whitestarr, by Isobelle Carmody
The title of Isobelle Carmody's book Alyzon Whitestarr sounds like an eighties hair band, the cover model looks like Gossip Girl's Little J in a bad Goth wig, and the ...
The Unit, by Ninni Holmqvist

The Unit, the debut novel by Swedish author Ninni Holmqvist, is neither fish nor fowl nor good Swedish surströmming. It's half dystopian horror story and half mid-life...
All kinds of disgusting
Speaking of Salon.com, they just posted another bookgeek-friendly interview, this one with Everything Sucks: Losing My Mind and Finding Myself in a High School Quest for Cool author Hannah Friedma...
Laura Ingalls Wilder's name-taking, butt-kicking spawn
Salon.com has an article up about Rose Wilder Lane, the oldest daughter of beloved children's writer Laura Ingalls Wilder. The Salon piece draws on both an upcoming book by Wendy McClure about the...
Reason number #327 I want to go to Beijing...
...would be this bookstore.Sadly, I suspect I'm a mite too tall to fit in. Also, I don't speak Chinese. Oh, and I'm 30 years old. But I'd still go.
The Sweet Life of Stella Madison, by Lara M. Zeises

Stella Madison, the 17-year-old heroine of Lara M. Zeises's The Sweet Life of Stella Madison, has her hands full: her boyfriend has just professed his love, her long-s...
It strikes again...
Horrors! Another publisher has fallen prey to The Curse of the Georgette Heyer Back Cover Blurb, as Ace and Harlequin and Arrow have done before it! Here's what's written on the back cover of the ...
Break out the cake!
...because The Writer's Almanac informs me it's J.K. Rowling's birthday.Hey, any excuse for cake, right?
Kind of a stretch...
...but, hey, we love The Yellow Submarine, so we felt a need to do this shout-out. Heinz Edelmann, the art director for the incredibly distinctive 1968 Beatles film The Yellow Submarine, died last...
Laughing it up in the Middle East
Charlize Theron has acquired the screen rights to Christopher Buckley's satirical novel Florence of Arabia, which is apparently about "a State Dept. employee (to be played by Theron) who, after wa...
Drink like a vampire
True Blood geeks better start digging through their couch cushions, because HBO has bottles of Tru-Blood available for pre-order, and they cost a whopping $4 apiece. Also, this is a "uniquely carb...
Dial Emmy for Murder, by Eileen Davidson

Dial Emmy for Murder might not have the genre-hopping appeal of, say, a Janet Evanovich novel, but it's a perfectly respectable mystery with an amusing hook and an app...
Vintage books are the new neckties.
The latest J.Crew catalog recently showed up in my mailbox, and it has a literary theme! The shoot was called "East of Eden", and the models were photographed reading (er... "reading") vintage boo...
Beach Reading Giveaway
The Wordcandy staff is happy to announce that we are embarking on another contest (our most extensive to date!) and we're posting it here on the blog a full day early, giving our blog readers a 24...
Charmingly unique, or just ridiculous?
Eh, flip a coin, right?AustenBlog has just posted a review of a book called Prawn and Prejudice, and they seem to really like it... although I'd read it based on the title alone. I might be bored ...
Is it wrong...
...that I totally want these little cigarette-box books, even though I've never smoked and I don't like these particular titles? Proof, once again, that weirdly-sized things placed out of context...
Want to see the Alice in Wonderland teaser trailer a day early?
I'm not sure it's worth signing up for Facebook just to see a teaser trailer one day before the rest of us, but hardcore Alice fanatics with Facebook pages might want to check this out: MTV is rep...
Anime for the masses
Even more Wordcandy-on-the-cheap goodness! I just got a VIZ press release informing me that the first 32 episode of Rumiko Takahashi's Inuyasha are now available on Hulu, which means they are FREE...
Free stuff all over the place
The Sugar Network is currently running two book-focused contests: a Kindle giveaway and a "Battle of the Books" game with $100 daily (and $1000 monthly) prizes. Good luck to those who enter!
Jane Austen: now with 100% more tentacles
I'm still not thrilled by the [Jane Austen novel] + [random monster] formula, but I have to give Quirk Classics credit: this is the best-quality book trailer I've ever seen.Seriously, choose a d...
The Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief trailer is out, and....
...it is exactly what you'd expect from a Chris Columbus joint. Why, Hollywood? Why? Seriously, he is such a bad director. This series could have been so much fun (and let's not lie, I'm still ...
Annnd she's back!
Er... again.After her second (maybe third?) significant health issue in the past year or so, Nodame Cantabile creator Tomoko Ninomiya has announced that she will resume producing chapters of the m...
G. Willow Wilson chats with KUOW
DC Comics writer G. Willow Wilson chatted with Seattle-area NPR affiliate KUOW last March, but (luckily for me) they re-aired the interview yesterday, and I have now added Wilson's comic book seri...
No accounting for taste
Speaking of vastly overrated books with serious marketing mojo, I picked up this at my local library a few days ago:This, dear readers, is a scrapbook-style book that serves as a companion to Fran...