Mar 22 2008

Winifred Watson

Winifred Watson was a writer in the 1930s. Apparently, she wrote a couple of well-received rural dramas of the type satirized in Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm, and then went on to write the ...

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Mar 21 2008

Wanted

The trailer for the film adaptation of Mark Millar's graphic novel Wanted is out:Huh. Adorable James MacAvoy seems miscast as a budding supervillain (particularly one who was orginally modeled on ...

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Mar 20 2008

L.J. Smith returns

In unexpected (but awesome!) news, fantasy writer L.J. Smith has returned from a decade-long absence. The only signs of life we've seen from Ms. Smith since 1998 have been the recent re-releases ...

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Mar 19 2008

Freeing Tibet

The BBC/NPR program The World aired an interview with novelist Eliot Pattison yesterday as part of a series of stories on the recent unrest in Tibet. I've never read one of Pattison's mysteries, ...

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Mar 18 2008

The Penderwicks, by Jeanne Birdsall

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I have long avoided reading Jeanne Birdsall's National Book Award-winning The Penderwicks, mostly because of its tastefully retro cover (which I felt was shamelessly derivative of the silhouette i...

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Mar 17 2008

Hana Yori Dango Version 3.0

While reading the excellent Dramabeans blog, I was delighted to see that there's going to be a K-drama adaptation of the cheese-tastic shojo manga Hana Yori Dango. I enjoyed the recent Japanese v...

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Mar 14 2008

Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, by James Patterson

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James Patterson’s Maximum Ride books are an action-adventure/science fiction series featuring a group of genetically engineered bird-human children. There are currently three books in the series*...

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Mar 13 2008

Novala Takemoto

Novala Takemoto is the author of the Japanese cult classic Kamikaze Girls. Kamikaze Girls has been turned into a manga and a feature film, and (naturally, this is the greatest honor of all) it's ...

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Mar 13 2008

Kamikaze Girls, by Novala Takemoto

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I hunted down a copy of Novala Takemoto’s 2002 novel Kamikaze Girls after I saw the film adaptation a few months ago, and—for once!—I’m not sure which I recommend picking up first. There are slig...

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Mar 13 2008

The Fug Girls are at Powell's

Well, kinda. Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, creators of GoFugYourself are the guest bloggers this week for Powells.com. Sadly, they haven't talked much about books at this point (although ref...

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Mar 12 2008

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winnifred Watson

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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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