Soul-crushing... but in a good way!
I heard about New York's "Cringe" gatherings on NPR about a year ago, but I've never been lucky enough to attend one (and, seeing as I'm something of a delicate flower, that's probably just as wel...
Cook like a spy
Or, at least, cook like a titan-haired teen sleuth:I wonder if this is actually a shiny new reprint of this?
Powell's Books, new and improved.
The Willamette Week's blog has posted some images of the proposed addition to Powell's Books' Burnside store in downtown Portland, OR. It's tough for me to visualize the finished project based on ...
"Spain—On the Road Again", or: "The Insufferably Smug Take a Road Trip"
I finally caught an episode of Spain—On the Road Again, the PBS food/travel TV series featuring cookbook authors Mario Batali and Mark Bittman and actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Claudia Bassols. Un...
Meg Cabot redeems herself.
I know I've complained in the past about Meg Cabot milking her series for all they're worth, but this idea is straight-up awesome:Ransom My Heart is a historical romance "written" by Princess Mia ...
And in additional contest news...
AnimeNewsNetwork is holding their annual Anime-themed Pumpkin Carving Contest. They're giving away some serious prize packs, but beware: you'll be competing against pumpkins like this 2007 entry:C...
Win a John Wyndham set!
Forbidden Planet is currently giving away two sets of Penguin UK's gorgeous new reprints of sci-fi author (The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes, etc.) John Wyndham's classic novels. Click he...
Ode to a Hot Mess
I managed to catch today's installment of The Writer's Almanac, which reminded me that today was French poet Arthur Rimbaud's birthday. Now, normally I dismiss the Symbolist poets as a bunch of wh...
Bookmercials!
Annnd the fine people at Sourcebooks Jabberwocky have created online commercials for the Humpty Dumpty Jr. series we reviewed earlier today:
Humpty Dumpty Jr.: Hardboiled Detective, by Nate Evans, Paul Hindman, and Vince Evans
There’s a certain age—say, six to eight—at which most young boys really enjoy books about mucus, leaking diapers, and/or questionable odors. Unfortunately, few authors (Dav Pilkey aside) appear to...
Terry Pratchett keeps on being awesome.
Wordcandy favorite Terry Pratchett has written another essay about his ongoing battle with "posterior cortical atrophy", a rare form of Alzheimer’s--a depressing subject, but one he continues to h...
National Book Awards
Once again they have announced the finalists for the National Book Awards, and once again, despite spending the entire freaking year reading and reviewing books, I haven't read a single featured t...
The Great Outdoor Fight, by Chris Onstad
A word of warning before we begin, dear readers: the packaging of Chris Onstad’s Achewood: The Great Outdoor Fight is deceptively adorable. This book might look like it belongs on the set of...
Wordcandy for hard times
Slate has a great slide show up about kids' books set during tough financial times. They skipped a lot of my favorites (Mama's Bank Account, about an immigrant Norwegian family in San Francisco in...
Anime season is up and running
October is here, and all that delicious anime has finally landed!Skip Beat!:Vampire Knight - Guilty:Nodame Cantabile - Paris:
Colleen McCullough takes on Jane Austen
Wow! Thanks to AustenBlog, I now know that Colleen McCullough (author of The Thorn Birds, which missed inclusion on the Wordcandy-approved List of Unreadable Books by inches) has written a Pride ...
Scanlation update
Aaaaand the third and final part of Absolute Witch chapter six is now up on our Scanlations page!
Watch Ouran, School Rumble on the cheap
Anime distributor Funimation is currently streaming the first two episodes of the Ouran High School Host Club anime adaptation AND the first four episodes of the second season of School Rumble. I ...
After all, what other pressing issues could they have to worry about?
Don't worry, dear readers, that absolutely vital bill to declare Herman Melville's Moby-Dick as the official "epic novel" of Massachusetts has passed their state House of Representatives.Thank goo...
Shakespeare, diluted.
Is the world truly ready for a TV adaptation of a movie adaptation of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew? ABC Family seems to think so.
Sale on book posters...
Got blank walls and literary tastes? Art.com is having a 20% off sale today, and they carry a much wider variety of titles than Urban Outfitters did when they offered an identical line of book-art...
Scanlation updates!
Two updates on our Scanlations page, dear readers: the second part of Absolute Witch Chapter 6, and chapter 26 of Banhonsa.
Powell's Books - Indiespensable
Powell's Books, Portland, Oregon's independent bookstore to the stars, has started a new subscription book club:For $39.95 per delivery, Indiespensable subscribers will enjoy a delivery of:"[The] ...
Unforseen awesomeness ahead
I haven't been particularly excited about the upcoming film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline. I enjoyed the book (although I prefer Gaiman's short story The Wolves in the Walls), but I was dis...
Katherine Neville's The Eight rides again
Recently, I've been seeing copies of Katherine Neville's 1988 novel The Eight popping up in prime bookstore real estate (stacks on the misleadingly-named "new releases" table, free-standing displa...
Hansel and Gretel: the Un-dead
Speaking of Korean entertainment, Variety is reporting that practically everybody but the Americans will have an opportunity to see the Korean horror film based on the (already pretty horrific) fa...
Not as exciting as it would have been a week ago...
As an enthusiastic fan of Korean entertainment, I was very sad to hear of the suicide of actress Choi Jin-Shil, whose most recent production was the sweet, funny, Cinderella-esque k-drama My Last ...