Apr 16 2007

Diana Wynne Jones news!

According to her homepage, the great Diana Wynne Jones's current work-in-progress will feature a guest appearance from Wizard Howl, the hero of Howl's Moving Castle (and a bit player in Castle in ...

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Apr 13 2007

Creepy.

While hunting down artist James Jean's website for yesterday's post, I ran across this, his cover art for William Sleator's novel Among the Dolls:Whoa. Add a clown and that is the freakiest thing...

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Apr 12 2007

Free Comic Book Day is coming soon...

Remember, gentle readers, Free Comic Book Day is coming up on May 5th. I don't know much about this year's titles, but there's one titled The Umbrella Academy that features cover art by the pheno...

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Apr 11 2007

Teen Witch Powers Activate!

Thanks to the fine people at Penguin Books, I have recently discovered Cate Tiernan’s very entertaining YA supernatural/suspense series Sweep*. Ms. Tiernan produced this fifteen-book-long series ...

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Apr 10 2007

Benjamin Black

Benjamin Black is the pen name of prize-winning Irish novelist and journalist John Banville. Banville’s books are short on charm, but long on intelligence, elegant prose, and dark humor. His mys...

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Apr 10 2007

Christine Falls, by Benjamin Black

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I’m not much of a mystery fan. I’m more of a fantasy/sci-fi kind of guy. But despite the appalling family secrets, ominous settings, and rampant alcoholism in Benjamin Black’s Christine Falls, I still found myself compulsively turning pages. It’s a brilliant book, gloom and all...

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Apr 10 2007

Manga on the cheap.

We always encourage people to buy manga through their local comic book stores (who could almost certainly use the money), but if you're doing all your manga shopping at Borders or Barnes and Noble...

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Apr 9 2007

In an old house in Paris...

Check out this super-cute box set of Ludwig Bemelmans' three most popular Madeline stories. According to the publisher, it's "packaged in a replica of the famous 'old house in Paris that was cover...

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Apr 6 2007

Stardust Trailer

We've been keeping an eye on the new Stardust movie, and we now have a trailer. Take a look:There's a better version on the official Stardust website, located here.

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Apr 5 2007

New series from Kelley Armstrong

It seems that Kelley Armstrong, the author of the much-loved Otherworld books, has a new series in the works. Unlike her current series, which has a strong paranormal/suspense element, this new s...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Apr 1 2007

Sugar Daddy, by Lisa Kleypas

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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 ...

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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...

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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 ...

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Mar 21 2007

The Game, by Diana Wynne Jones

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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...

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Mar 21 2007

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

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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...

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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 ...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Mar 13 2007

My Dead Girlfriend, by Eric Wight

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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...

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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".

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