Southern vampire must-see TV
And speaking of pretty girls lapping blood, the TV powers-that-be used the same charming motif for the teaser poster for Alan Ball's upcoming HBO show True Blood, which is based off of Wordcandy f...
Red Sonja news, part II
They've released the poster for that upcoming Red Sonja adaptation I was talking about, and it looks about as classy as you'd expect:...uh, yeah. I guess that settles the "Is it going to be a hig...
The Amnesiac, by Sam Taylor

When construction worker James Purdew, the protagonist of Sam Taylor’s ambitious psychological thriller The Amnesiac, breaks his leg in an accident, he spends his convalescence obsessing over the ...
Watchmen trailer online
The movie adaptation of Alan Moore's Hugo Award-winning graphic novel Watchmen is out:Like most of Moore's stuff, I've always thought Watchmen was way too self-consciously weighty, so I'm glad to ...
Comic-con fallout
As usual, Comic-Con totally delivered on the geek news front:*Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game is going to be made into a comic book. My brother loved this book, but I never got over Card’s introd...
Coming soon to a theater near you...
There appear to be two more YA fantasy novel film adaptations coming down the pike: producer Nina Jacobson is making a movie version of the popular Children of the Lamp series by P.B. Kerr, and Wa...
Gaiman gets choosy.
Neil Gaiman—who's obviously in full promotion-mode for his upcoming novel The Graveyard Book—has compiled a list of his 10 favorite "New Classic Monsters" for Entertainment Weekly. I’m not sure I...
Kat Richardson rides again
Underground, the third book in Kat Richardson's Greywalker series, is due out in exactly two weeks, and she's recently posted an excerpt on her website. I cannot wait to read this novel—Richardso...
Graphic novel odds and ends
NPR has an article up about American interest in foreign comics—everything from Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis to manga. The article is generic and under-researched, particularly by NPR's standards...
Earthly Pleasures, by Karen Neches

Skye Sebring, the heroine of Karen Neches’s amusing and unconventional novel Earthly Pleasures, is one of Heaven's "Hospitality greeters"—a supernatural social worker who spends her days help...
Pride and Prejudice: the musical
Yes, dear readers, I'm afraid it's true. There really is going to be a Pride and Prejudice musical:According to the synopsis page, this production will be a two-fold delight: the story will focus...
Heyer contest, part II
Our recent Georgette Heyer giveaway is over, and I'd like to thank every one of the people who entered. E-mails to the winners should go out this afternoon, and please keep checking back for info...
Simplexity, by Jeffrey Kluger

Time magazine writer and editor Jeffrey Kluger’s Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple) offers a brisk and (mostly) comprehensible introduction to...
Moribito to appear on Adult Swim?
AnimeNewsNetwork has confirmed that the Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit anime series will premiere on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim on August 24. Moribito is an adaptation if Nahoko Uehashi's fan...
A Geisha's Journey, by Komomo

We don’t review much nonfiction here at Wordcandy, but once in a while we encounter a nonfiction title that absolutely fascinates us, even when the subject is one in which we had no previous inter...
Ask, and ye shall receive
Cover's out for the upcoming Jennifer Crusie collaboration:Eh. I'm not feeling the Charlie's Angels vibe of those silhouettes, but I suppose it could be worse. Anyway, Amazon has posted a release ...
Wicked: the book/musical/movie
The internet is abuzz with news of an upcoming big-screen adaptation of Gregory Maguire's Wizard of Oz retelling Wicked. There seems to be some question as to whether the film will be based on th...
Speaking of cons...
...news coverage of the San Diego Comic-Con (July 24-27) is kicking into gear. Variety has two interesting articles up--one focusing on Hollywood's interest in the convention, and another on two ...
Keepin' the economy afloat
I was happy to see that Anime Expo (the largest anime-oriented show in the country) did reasonably well this year. After two years of stagnant attendance rates, numbers were actually UP about 5% f...
Likely Story: Book One, by David Van Etten

David Van Etten*’s Likely Story is the story of Mallory, the teenage daughter of a famous(ly bad) soap opera star. Mallory’s mother is the ultimate drama queen, but her daughter’s talen...
Lady of Quality, by Georgette Heyer

Georgette Heyer’s novels Lady of Quality and Black Sheep have a lot in common: both books are set in Bath, their plots center around similar dilemmas, and they each feature a wealthy, unconve...
Weird bunch
In honor of the theatrical release of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, I gathered up several of the odd commercials that have been showing this month on TV to promote the movie. I'm torn on which one ...
Fact of Life #31, by Denise Vega

High-school junior Kat Flynn loves her after-school job, even if it is a little unconventional. She works at her mother's midwife birthing center, intermixing secretarial work with helping prospec...
Bodice-ripper, anyone?
I know it's late in the day, but this was just too good to hold onto until tomorrow:Hee hee hee.Seriously? A dude in an open shirt, clutching a nightgown-clad (and kinda bored-looking) woman to h...