Mar 12 2008

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winnifred Watson

Winifred Watson’s 1938 novel Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day has just been made into a movie, and—for once!—we’re totally grateful. We’re usually the first in line to complain about film adaptations, but if it wasn’t for the fine people at Focus Features we might never have heard of this charmingly optimistic romantic comedy...

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Mar 11 2008

Sisters Grimm #6: Tales from the Hood

(Have I mentioned how much I hate the whole Daylight Savings spring time change? Because, seriously: my brain feels like it's going to melt.)I can't believe this slipped past me, but Michael Buckl...

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Mar 10 2008

Bone: the movie

Meg sent me this link over the weekend. Apparently, Warner Bros. has bought the movie rights to Jeff Smith's Bone. See, a Bone movie would only work for me if they got the people who make Wallac...

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Mar 7 2008

Georgette Heyer rides again!

Much to my delight, Sourcebooks, Inc. is continuing to release beautiful paperback editions of Georgette Heyer novels. Their most recent publication, False Colours, isn’t her best work, but even a...

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Mar 6 2008

Scott Bittle

Journalist Scott Bittle is the executive editor of Public Agenda Online, and (along with Jean Johnson) the co-author of Where Does the Money Go? Your Guide to the Federal Budget Crisis, one of our...

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Mar 6 2008

Where Does the Money Go? Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis, by Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson

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Wordcandy doesn’t review much nonfiction, but we were pleasantly surprised by Jean Johnson and Scott Bittle’s Where Does the Money Go? Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis. Miraculously, Johnson and Bittle have managed to write a politically unbiased book on an important-but-drier-than-dust subject that is both informative and entertaining...

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Mar 6 2008

Jean Johnson

Jean Johnson is a writer, the executive vice president of Public Agenda, and (along with Scott Bittle) the co-author of Where Does the Money Go? Your Guide to the Federal Budget Crisis, one of our...

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Mar 6 2008

Amazon takes one for the team

As most of you probably know, Amazon purchased J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard at a Sotheby’s auction. The purchase price (of £1,950,000!!!) was donated to The Children's Voice campai...

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Mar 5 2008

Help Jennifer Colt (or somebody else) land a Penguin contract

I got this e-mail from beloved Wordcandy author Jennifer Colt yesterday:Dear Friends,I entered my unpublished McAfee Twins manuscript The Hellraiser of the Hollywood Hills in the Amazon Breakthrou...

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Mar 4 2008

Hogfather: the movie

We are happy to report that the Sky One made-for-TV movie adaptation of the Terry Pratchett novel Hogfather is finally available here in the U.S. This unique holiday story (Hogfather, the Discwor...

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Mar 3 2008

Yikes.

Lynsay Sands is a fun writer, and her Argeneau Vampire series is totally cute. (Seriously—pleasant, non-violent, Canadian vampires! They're adorable!) Unfortunately, I'm seeing a disturbing trend ...

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Feb 29 2008

Immortal, by Traci L. Slatton

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[Note: this review contains a semi-spoiler, so procede with caution!]

While Anne Rice fans breathlessly await that last Lestat book, they would be well advised to check out Traci L. Slatton’s debut...

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Feb 28 2008

Darkside, by Tom Becker

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Tom Becker’s debut novel Darkside opens with a kidnapping: thirteen-year-old Ricky Thomas is abducted from the middle of Trafalgar Square in broad daylight, and, strangely, none of the hundreds of...

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Feb 28 2008

Five questions with Charles Burns

Thanks to the fine people at Pantheon Books, Wordcandy was recently given the opportunity to ask Charles Burns (author of Black Hole, one of our recent Featured Book titles) a few questions. 1. ...

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Feb 27 2008

When the licensing gods fail us…

Sometimes it's hard to be an anime/drama geek. Distribution is limited, only a fraction of the interesting projects get translated, and the stuff you'd actually pay for doesn't get licensed at al...

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Feb 26 2008

Gnomeo and Juliet

(Sometimes I double-check the dates when I read these things, just to be totally certain they weren't posted on April Fools' Day.)It turns out that there WILL be an animated version of Shakespeare...

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Feb 25 2008

Wait—she's been writing religious books?

Huh. I guess that just goes to show you how much attention I pay to Anne Rice's career. I had a friend in high school who was a fan of the Interview With The Vampire series, so I slogged through...

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Feb 22 2008

How Not To Be Popular, by Jennifer Ziegler

Jennifer Ziegler’s How Not to be Popular is not, as some of you might think, an unauthorized sequel to Meg Cabot’s How To Be Popular. Sure, there’s the nearly identical titles, and the fact that ...

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Feb 21 2008

Tramps Like Us Vol. 14, by Yayoi Ogawa

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TOKYOPOP has just released the final volume of Yayoi Ogawa’s sublimely romantic manga Tramps Like Us, and while we are definitely going to miss seeing new installments of this story every few months, we are thrilled that Ogawa ended her fourteen-volume series on such a satisfying note...

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Feb 21 2008

New and improved

We've been talking recently about coming up with an updated version of our Wordcandy Guide to the Best Shojo Manga. We think our original list is still pretty solid (although Pheromomania Syndrom...

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Feb 20 2008

Spiderwick Chronicles on a budget

Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi are awesome, but their Spiderwick Chronicles books are way overpriced. The novels cost a hefty $10.99 apiece--not bad for a conventional hardcover, but these books...

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Feb 19 2008

Just in case.....

I thought I would post the latest trailer for Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia (the movie adaptation of the second book in the Chronicles of Narnia series), just in case you missed it during t...

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Feb 18 2008

Suzanne Collins's new book

I was bitterly disappointed by the final book in Suzanne Collins's Underland Chronicles (I mean, it's one thing to have an ambiguous ending, but Gregor and the Code of Claw didn't even make sense....

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Feb 15 2008

Confessions of a Serial Kisser, by Wendelin Van Draanen

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Seventeen-year-old Evangeline Logan, the heroine of Wendelin Van Draanen’s new YA novel Confessions of a Serial Kisser, has a lot in common with the eponymous star of her kid-friendly Sammy Keyes mystery series. Both girls are smart, resourceful, and fearless...

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Feb 14 2008

Well, it's cheaper than diamonds.

Happy Valentine's Day, dear readers. If you're in the market for an expensive but very, very awesome Valentine gift, the last volume of the world's most offbeat-yet-sublimely romantic manga is on...

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Feb 13 2008

I Wish

I can't be even remotely impartial about this series, as the scanlation group I work for has been working on it for years, but I'm so happy to see that TOKYOPOP has released the first volume of Hy...

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Feb 12 2008

Charles Burns

Charles Burns isn't the only author to set a horror story in quiet, drizzly Washington State (Kat Richardson and Stephenie Meyer seem to find us pretty horror-worthy, too), but he's definitely the...

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Feb 12 2008

Black Hole, by Charles Burns

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Charles Burns’s graphic novel Black Hole is lyrical, meticulously illustrated, and thought-provoking. It’s also creepy, stomach-churning, and unnecessarily grim. Delicate flowers might want to s...

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Feb 12 2008

Highly unlikely

A link on BuzzSugar took me to this article:"Harry Potter fans are set to get a double treat in the film of the final story – and movie makers are set to double their money. Crew working on the si...

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Feb 11 2008

How could anybody turn down Crockett Johnson?

I was browsing in Olympia's Fireside Bookstore over the weekend, and I came across this:Isn't it lovely? Crockett Johnson (author of Harold and the Purple Crayon, one of the awesomest kids' books...

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