Apr 4 2007

Lean Mean 13

We have a title and release date for the thirteenth book in the Stephanie Plum series. Lean Mean Thirteen will be out on June 19th! For those of you who can't wait to see what Stephanie gets herse...

More »

Apr 3 2007

Jane Austen has a little work done.

Last Sunday's New York Times featured an article about the minor flap over a publisher's decision to prettify one of the few known images of Jane Austen for a reissued biography. I don't partic...

More »

Apr 2 2007

That man is pure class.

On the most recent episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert posed for a series of bodice-ripper book covers. (He was trying to prove to Harlequin Books that he'd make a great cover model. An...

More »

Apr 1 2007

Sugar Daddy, by Lisa Kleypas

2007-04-01-sugar-daddy-by-lisa-kleypas

Sugar Daddy, Lisa Kleypas’s first contemporary romance novel, is entertaining, well-written, and—best of all—free of anachronistic sexual politics. (Many authors* producing both contemporary and historical romances have been known to lose sight of the fact that readers have different expectations for modern characters than they do for historical ones.) Sugar Daddy features...

More »

Mar 30 2007

Time to suffer, kids!

I've been seeing some comments from people who are taken aback by Oprah's latest book club pick, Cormac McCarthy's The Road (presumably because it has such a bleak style and masculine focus). I'm...

More »

Mar 29 2007

TV does Jane

I've spent the past two nights watching the new British television version of Austen's Northanger Abbey*, and I'm happy to report that it's not bad. It's well cast and nicely filmed, and while it...

More »

Mar 28 2007

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows covers!!!

We finally have the cover art for the final installment of the Harry Potter series. I like the British adult cover the best, though the kids faces on the British children's version are a little sc...

More »

Mar 27 2007

Meg Cabot bullet points

  1. Meg Cabot's YA books are moving from HarperCollins to Scholastic*, which means that she's wrapping up her current projects, including the long-running Princess Diaries series. (She's currentl...

More »

Mar 26 2007

One last piece of manga news...

I just found out that the new Viz title The Gentlemen's Alliance is the English-language edit of the book irc users know as Shinshi Doumei Cross. Hopefully the professional version of this story ...

More »

Mar 22 2007

Boys on bikes

AZN Television has started airing episodes of the Taiwanese drama Mars, based on Fuyumi Soryo's mega-soapy manga series. Here's the official plot description*:"Asia's most popular group F4's Vic...

More »

Mar 22 2007

!!!

I am delighted to report that there are rumors that the English-language release of Yotsuba&! volumes 4 and 5 are going to be out in late June and early October, respectively. I wouldn't put too ...

More »

Mar 21 2007

The Game, by Diana Wynne Jones

2007-03-21-the-game-by-diana-wynne-jones

There’s nobody quite like English fantasy writer Diana Wynne Jones. Her novels feature bizarre subject matter, but she writes with such relaxed assurance that her worlds instantly feel familiar...

More »

Mar 21 2007

Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping, by Judith Levine

2007-03-21-not-buying-it-my-year-without-shopping-by-judith-levine

After hearing Judith Levine on NPR the other day, I decided to pick up a copy of her book Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping*. My hackles rose at the recommendation from Barbara Ehrenreich on the back cover--I applaud Ehrenreich's purpose and conviction, but her books are so profoundly flawed that I think they actually do her causes a disservice. However, Ms. Levine's book doesn't pretend to be an Ehrenreich-style call-to-arms...

More »

Mar 20 2007

Zzzzzzz....

Lisa Kleypas has finally overhauled her website, and I'm surprised to say that I'm kinda sad about it (and not just because I'm now going to have to re-edit her author profile). Sure, we thought ...

More »

Mar 19 2007

Movie news

MSN.com is reporting that Daniel Craig and Julianne Moore* are in talks to star in a film adaptation of José Saramago's Nobel Prize-winning novel Blindness. I've never read Blindness (I'm still w...

More »

Mar 16 2007

Austen: all the better for some hot pirate action?

In this Times editorial, author Celia Brayfield argues that Jane Austen "built a cage for women novelists", and suggests that Austen's "doll-house" novels would have been much improved by a greate...

More »

Mar 15 2007

DIY-ers never had it so good.

Stitchy McYarnpants*'s remarkable book The Museum of Kitschy Stitches: A Gallery of Notorious Knits is currently on sale at UrbanOutfitters.com for a mere $6.99. Pick up a copy for any crafty peo...

More »

Mar 14 2007

Get thee to a comic book store

Today's the release date for the new Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic book! I'm not sure how this whole season-eight-in-comic-book-form is going to work out (I was underwhelmed by the Serenity grap...

More »

Mar 13 2007

My Dead Girlfriend, by Eric Wight

2007-03-13-my-dead-girlfriend-by-eric-wight

At first glance, the first volume of Eric Wight’s My Dead Girlfriend has two things going for it—glowing recommendations from Meg Cabot and Joss Whedon—and one major strike against it: cover art t...

More »

Mar 13 2007

BBC does the book list thing...

...but not as well as we do. Here are their readers' picks for the "Top Ten Books" (pretty solid choices, although I sneer at Wuthering Heights), and here are their "Top Ten Unfinished Novels".

More »

Mar 12 2007

Decorating on the cheap

The Library of Congress's online gift shop currently has copies of this adorable vintage print on sale--you can have a 16" by 20" copy of your very own for a mere $20!

More »

Mar 11 2007

Eric Wight

American comic book writer and artist Eric Wight is the author of My Dead Girlfriend, one of our Book of the Week picks, and a contributing author to Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of the Esc...

More »

Mar 9 2007

Also pretty!

I have long admired the cover art for Michael Buckley's Sisters Grimm series. They're truly beautiful books, with packaging that confidently asserts: "Yes, these books are going to be instant cla...

More »

Mar 8 2007

Pretty!

I don't know anything about this book (the publisher promises that it's a "sensual and gothic tale of obsession and sexual awakening set in France in the 1950s... a tasty literary treat by an anon...

More »

Mar 7 2007

The Physics of the Buffyverse, by Jennifer Ouellette

2007-03-07-the-physics-of-the-buffyverse-by-jennifer-ouellette

I'm no physicist, but I like to keep an eye on the science news, lest I end up sounding like an idiot when chatting with my in-laws, who are all science teachers or geotechnical engineers. Th...

More »

Mar 6 2007

Terrible.

Everyone should read this truly horrifying article about the upcoming library closures in Southern Oregon.

More »

Mar 5 2007

The Watchman, by Robert Crais

2007-03-05-the-watchman-by-robert-crais

I thoroughly enjoyed Robert Crais’s action/suspense novel The Watchman. Crais’s book is neither deep nor plausible, but it is fast, fun, furious, and capped off with a satisfyingly noisy shoot-‘em-out ending. It doesn't have any of the intellectual ambitions of the last action/suspense novel that we reviewed, but it's much more entertaining...

More »

Mar 5 2007

They're not toys, they're action figures.

In slightly cooler figurine news, we're seeing a lot of pictures of the upcoming Harry Potter "deluxe" action figures, and I've got to say--as non-biodegradable plastic goes, they do look pretty a...

More »

Mar 4 2007

Robert Crais

California-based suspense novelist Robert Crais is best known as the author of the Elvis Cole detective series, featuring the wisecracking title character and his enigmatic, heavily armed partner,...

More »

Mar 2 2007

Wow.

I was just cruising to the end of the most recent edition of Jack of Fables, when I came across this charming little objet d'art:Holy frijoles. Who BUYS that kind of thing? Not only is it ridicu...

More »