Oct 29 2006

Wow.

Apparently, a massive statue of comic strip veteran Dennis the Menace was stolen from a park in Monterey, California, some time last Wednesday. The statue is three feet tall and weighs 125 pounds...

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Oct 28 2006

Fabio!

Two of my favorite things collided this week: romance novels & reality television! You see, I have a very sad, pathetic obsession with America's Next Top Model, and the photo challenge this week w...

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Oct 27 2006

Stephanie Lessing

Stephanie Lessing is a freelance writer who has contributed to magazines ranging from Conde Nast Traveler to Vogue. She is also the author of one of our Book-of-the-Week picks, 2006’s Miss Under...

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Oct 27 2006

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...

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Oct 26 2006

Miss Understanding, by Stephanie Lessing

2006-10-26-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...

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Oct 26 2006

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...

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Oct 25 2006

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...

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Oct 24 2006

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 ...

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Oct 23 2006

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....

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Oct 21 2006

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...

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Oct 19 2006

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.

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Oct 17 2006

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...

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Oct 16 2006

The Ladies of Grace Adieu, by Susanna Clarke

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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...

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Oct 16 2006

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...

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Oct 15 2006

Have the coolest kitchen on your street.

Tile it pulp-fiction style!Tiles available through ClassicHardware.com

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Oct 14 2006

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...

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Oct 13 2006

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 ...

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Oct 12 2006

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...

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Oct 11 2006

The Pinhoe Egg, by Diana Wynne Jones

2006-10-11-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...

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Oct 11 2006

Host Club

Nathan and I have begun watching the fan-subbed anime version of Bisco Hatori's Ouran High School Host Club. (If you're interested, you can download all 26 magnificently silly episodes at Animes...

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Oct 10 2006

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...

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Oct 5 2006

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...

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Oct 4 2006

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...

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Oct 3 2006

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...

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Oct 2 2006

Alas.

While visiting my local bookstore this weekend, I was excited to see a beautifully bound, Alice In Wonderland-inspired book on the new fiction shelves: Frank Beddor's The Looking-Glass Wars. Unfo...

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Oct 1 2006

Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett

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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...

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Sep 30 2006

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) ...

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Sep 28 2006

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...

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Sep 27 2006

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...

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Sep 26 2006

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 ...

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