Irritation factor increase: 19%
The manga blogs have been abuzz with news of Tokyopop's recent "restructuring". According to several sources, the Los Angeles-based manga publisher will divide itself into two separate divisions: ...
Inuyasha to end
After 12 action-packed years, comic goddess Rumiko Takahashi is ending Inuyasha. According to the Rumic World website:"Inuyasha is set to end after two more chapters with #558 wrapping up volume ...
Signs of life
I am a wee bit late to this, but Jenny Crusie recently posted* the first chapter of Dogs and Goddesses, her upcoming collaboration with Anne Stuart and Lani Diane Rich, and I am happy to inform yo...
Gossip Girl in a hoop skirt
Rumors, the sequel to Luxe, Anna Godbersen's 2007 novel about Manhattan debutantes at the turn of the previous century, is now out in stores:I loved the cover art for Luxe, but I couldn't get past...
"Writing as Ian Fleming", huh?
The new James Bond novel is out, and it's written by some guy named Sebastian Faulks: According to the veerrry fine, veerrry pale print between the two authors' names (can you guys even read that...
Runaways: the movie
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel's Runaways series will be getting its very own film adaptation sometime in the (probably very distant) future. Series creator Brian K. Vaughan is writin...
The Foundling: Monster Blood Tattoo, by D. M. Cornish
Poor Rosamund Bookchild. Orphaned and odd, he just can’t catch a break. He's scrawny and curious in a world where neither is desirable. Kids pick on him, potential employers pass him over, and al...
Naomi and Ely's No-Kiss List, by David Leviathan and Rachel Cohn
David Levithan writes about teenagers so well that I originally thought he must not be too far divorced from his own teen years. As it turns out, he’s thirty-eight—but his writing does an excellen...
Expanding the empire
According to Variety, Disney's plans for Kingdom Comics are progressing nicely. This new division will develop graphic novels for film adaptation (and turn past live-action films into comics). It...
Studio Ghibli takes on The Little Mermaid
We're seeing early images from Hayao Miyazaki's upcoming film Ponyo on the Cliff:Ponyo is a retelling of Hans Christian Anderson's classic fairytale The Little Mermaid. The plot centers on a gold...
Call of the Highland Moon, by Kendra Leigh Castle
Kendra Leigh Castle’s debut novel Call of the Highland Moon kicks off with a supernatural twist on the meet cute device: When werewolf Gideon MacInnes is attacked by his cousin’s minions during a ...
Julia Quinn picks up the pace
Speaking of Ms. Quinn...I am not a huge Julia Quinn fan--her books are pleasant, but rarely memorable--but I found myself unusually interested in the secondary couple in her just-released The Los...
Avon Books gets time out of purgatory
Avon Books has launched a charity called Love Gives Back. According to their website, "Love Gives Back [is] a new program where you'll get Sneak Peeks into upcoming releases and be able to read Av...
Excited about that 800-word-long Harry Potter prequel?
For those of you just turning on your computers, J.K. Rowling has written an 800-word mini-prequel to her Harry Potter series that will be auctioned off for a charity benefiting Dyslexia Action. I...
We’ll have YA fantasy coming out of our ears.
I’m still waiting to see what Megan Whalen Turner will publish next (where did that woman go?), but several other A-list fantasy writers are marching towards their next publication:1. Robin McKinl...
Princess Ben, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s new novel Princess Ben is a major departure from her earlier works, Dairy Queen and The Off Season. While Dairy Queen and The Off Season focused on the trials of a dairy-farming teenager with dreams of playing high school football in small-town Wisconsin...
Creeptastic
Check it out:Wow! I've never read Jeanne DuPrau's The City of Ember*, but Bill Murray? Tim Robbins? Martin Landau? Those are some big names for a kid movie--not that ths particular preview seems a...
Build-a-library
While wandering through my local bookstore last night, I came across the new line of Puffin Classics re-releases. Each of the titles featured below costs $4.99, and includes an introduction by a w...
I think we're reading these titles a little differently.
Check out this blog post on Guardian.co.uk about the sexism faced by female fantasy authors. I have no doubt female writers encounter considerable sexism*, but I'm not sure I agree with such stat...
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: 10th Anniversary Edition
Scholastic has announced an upcoming 10th Anniversary edition of J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The re-release will cost $30.00, feature new artwor...
No, thank you.
I see that Jenny Downham's novel Before I Die has been shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction award. We were offered a copy of this novel for review several months ago and I politely dec...
Yearly top ten lists already?
I have no problem with the books featured on Booklist Online's list of the Top 10 SF/Fantasy for Youth: 2008 titles, but that title is misleading--it isn't really a list of this year's top sci-fi/...
Skip Beat! to be made into a T-drama?
I'm hearing rumors that Yoshiko Nakamura's deliciously funny revenge manga Skip Beat! is going to be made into a Taiwanese drama starring Ariel Lin. Frankly, my hopes are not high.Not everything ...
Lynne Rossetto Kasper guest-blogging for Powell's
Lynne Rossetto Kasper, host of NPR's The Splendid Table and co-author (with producer Sally Swift) of the awesome new cookbook The Splendid Table's How To Eat Supper: Recipes, Stories, and Opinions...
Lisa Kleypas to spice up the fall book season...
...with not one but two(!!!) new historicals, and it looks like A Wallflower Christmas will be coming out in HARDCOVER:(I'd be even more excited about this if the book didn't cost $16.99, which te...
Books I don't care about are going to be made into movies I won't see
According to this, they're going to make a movie out of R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series (big when I was in sixth grade), according to this they're making another Nicholas Sparks adaptation (ugh!), ...
ABC Family (hearts) Meg Cabot
According to the News page of Meg Cabot's website, ABC Family has optioned her standalone novel Jinx as a TV movie and her Heather Wells mysteries as a series. Cabot's novels have already inspire...
Gossip Girl: Season One on DVD
TVShowsOnDVD.com is reporting that the release date for the DVD version of the (semi-)hit show Gossip Girl is August 19th. The DVD (which retails for an eyebrow-raising $59.98, although Amazon is...
A new book from a late author
I saw this at a Seattle bookstore over the weekend:The Joys of Love is a previously unpublished coming-of-age story written by Madeleine L'Engle in the 1940s. The book includes an introduction by...