Wordcandy loves Sylvia Plath's poetry
It's been a long time since we've done one of these, but today is Sylvia Plath's birthday (and, let's face it, a lot of her stuff is very Halloween-appropriate), so I think it's time:TerminalRidin...
Miss Understanding, by Stephanie Lessing
At first glance, Stephanie Lessing’s novel Miss Understanding looks pretty generic. A fish-out-of-water comedy set in a fashion magazine? Shades of Ugly Betty. A neurotic, obsessive heroine with a bevy of psychosomatic illnesses? Shades of Bridget Jones. A female-empowering adult-coming-of-age story featuring lots of Mean Girls-style bad behavior and a romantically mismatched couple...
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Mega-popular author Barbara Delinsky has recently updated her non-fiction book Uplift: Secrets from the Sisterhood of Breast Cancer Survivors, and Anna Suknov at FSB Associates has very kindly off...
They're coming...
The holidays are careening towards us at warp speed, so it might be time to start thinking about presents, people. Now is the perfect time to stock up on inexpensive gifts for those terrifying peo...
About as weird as you'd expect.
While poking around at Seattle's Easy Street Records a few days ago (I was waiting for Bobbby Bare Jr*. to show up), I ran across a pile of Shel Silverstein CDs. Apparently, these recordings were ...
Match Me if You Can
I finally got around to reading Match Me if You Can, by Susan Elizabeth Phillips (it took a while, but midterms have put a major crimp on my reading time). This book reminded me of why I love Ms....
Guilty Pleasures
Check 'em out! The long-awaited Anita Blake comic book was released this week. While I could not bring myself to actually go out and spend my hard-earned money on one, I was able to find some sam...
Save the date?
The world's first Jane Austen-inspired tarot deck is scheduled to be released on March 7th, 2007. Behold:...yeah, I can't really see Miss Austen as a big tarot fan, either.
e-book news
Slate.com has an interesting article up about the Sony Reader, a $350 portable e-book device that that has many a pair of book-geek-y hands in a cold sweat. (Not mine, though. You'll have to rip t...
The Ladies of Grace Adieu, by Susanna Clarke
Fans of Susanna Clarke’s 2004 novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell will be thrilled to learn that Bloomsbury has just released a gorgeous collection of Ms. Clarke’s short stories, all of which are set in the same world as Strange and Norrell, although few feature the same characters...
More Diana Wynne Jones!
I was pleased to discover that Penguin Books has just reprinted Diana Wynne Jones's wickedly funny The Tough Guide To Fantasyland. Jones's book is presented as a mock guidebook, complete with map...
Have the coolest kitchen on your street.
Tile it pulp-fiction style!Tiles available through ClassicHardware.com
Two things.
When I saw the cover art for Eloisa James's upcoming book, two thoughts crossed my mind (after I stopped snickering):1. Isn't this story supposed to feature a non-size-4 heroine? Because that back...
What price weirdness?
I love Lewis Carroll's stuff, and I didn't blink an eye when, in 1999, Martin Gardner's lovely Annotated Alice was priced at $29.95. It's a beautiful and staggeringly well-researched book, and I ...
Just in time for Halloween...
...comes Dame Darcy's (author of the indie comic Meat Cake) illustrated version of Jane Eyre. If you happen to be a pretentious tool dressed up in a Goth-Lolita outfit, this is totally the book f...
The Pinhoe Egg, by Diana Wynne Jones
I was thrilled to learn that Diana Wynne Jones was writing another book for her Worlds of Chrestomanci series. Her previous effort, 2005’s Conrad’s Fate, was funny and surreal, a tongue-in-cheek Upstairs/Downstairs farce with some dreamlike fantasy thrown in...
Emmmmmmmma.....
Thanks to the wonderfully informative Austenblog, I am now aware of TWO October Austen theater adaptations. The first is a musical (!!!) version of Emma, which is currently playing in New York. A...
Support your local mystery writer: buy a brick.
The Edgar Allan Poe Museum's online store is selling bricks from Poe's last standing house, which was demolished in Manhattan last year. Each brick costs about $70, and is individually numbered, f...
Nutjobs on parade
The Washington Post is reporting that a mother of four in Gwinnett County, Georgia, is seeking to have the Harry Potter books banned from the county's school libraries, claiming that the books pr...
Ready for a little grave-spinning, Miss Austen?
Apparently, there are upcoming film versions of Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Mansfield Park in the works.Thought #1: YAY!Thought #2: This version of Mansfield better be a hell of a lot better...
Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett’s third Tiffany Aching book, Wintersmith, has problems. It’s not as uproariously funny as the previous two installments, and both the main plot and the villain are emotionally underwhelming. The book’s dreamlike atmosphere works in a few places, but Pratchett’s constant shifting from humor to pathos to action makes the story’s climax fall a little flat...
MirrorMask
I finally got around to watching Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's movie MirrorMask last night, and it was pretty good! I put off watching it for ages because (and I'm sorry to say it, but it's true) ...
Money burning a hole in your pocket?
Then we suggest that you check out some of these Wordcandy-approved manga titles. Unlike a lot of the manga we recommend, all of these stories are still in their infancy, English-language publicat...
Nora Roberts churns 'em out
The book covers and descriptions of the final two books in Nora Roberts's Circle Trilogy are up. Dance of the Gods is due out October 3rd, and Valley of Silence is due out October 31st. The descr...
One more shot...
The rest of the recent batch of Harry Potter promo stills didn't particularly interest me, but I thought I would share this last picture:Man, everybody looks so grown up! Also... mad as hell, for ...