May 25 2006

Queen of Babble, by Meg Cabot

I try to avoid romance novels that feature heroines under the age of twenty-six*. There are a few books about people in their early twenties that are okay, but I prefer to read about people that have their heads on at least semi-straight before they make any major decisions about their life partners...

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May 25 2006

Traveling this summer?

I received this book a few years ago from Julia, right before I headed off to Italy for a few weeks. Italy is the kind of place where you can usually get by without knowing much of the language, b...

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May 24 2006

Wilde!

Variety has announced an upcoming film version of Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance, starring Annette Bening, Sean Bean, and Lindsay Lohan. (Er... what?)

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May 24 2006

Odds and ends

Sorry about this post wandering all over the Wordcandy map, people...Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson have released Chew On This, a kid-friendly book exploring the same territory that Schlosser c...

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May 23 2006

Happy birthday, Margaret Wise Brown!

And thank you for Goodnight Moon.Apparently, the New York Public Library banned Goodnight Moon when it first came out, which just goes to show you that even super awesome librarians who work in su...

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May 23 2006

Norway loves Wordcandy!

See? They even named a GAME after us:Note: Totally not true.

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May 22 2006

More from Hollywood.

Man, Hollywood has been going crazy for Wordcandy authors recently. (You have good taste, Hollywood. Too bad so many of your movies suck.) It was announced this week that Guillermo del Toro will b...

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May 20 2006

Fast Food Nation, Part II

Okay, I'm a little clearer on this Fast Food Nation movie. Here's the description from Salon.com:"Linklater's film (co-written with Schlosser) is an episodic docudrama about a large group of fict...

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May 19 2006

Aaaand in further movie news...

Huh. Apparently, Richard Linklater's film version of Eric Schlosser's excellent book Fast Food Nation is debuting at Cannes this year.Now, don't get me wrong here, but what? This isn't going to b...

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May 19 2006

Frankly, I am appalled.

While idly strolling through the Target book section the other day, I ran across this:Can you believe it? It's a tie-in novel for the soap opera As the World Turns! It's like one of those crappy ...

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May 18 2006

Wordcandy loves the poetry of William Carlos Williams

This Is Just to Say I have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe iceboxand which you were probablysavingfor breakfastForgive methey were deliciousso sweetand so cold -William Carlos Williams

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May 18 2006

Oh, God, ew!!!

One of my favorite childhood books has been made into a movie. The film version of Thomas Rockwell's "How to Eat Fried Worms" is due for release this summer. It's been a really long time since I r...

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May 17 2006

Books & Art Projects

For any of you who might be looking for a fun project to take on over the next week, might I suggest creating your very own Mexican Novella Love Shrine? I stumbled across this kit today, and since...

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May 16 2006

Behold!

(I love starting posts with "Behold!".) First the t-shirt; now, the comic book:

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May 15 2006

Be careful what you wish for.

It seems that J.K. Rowling made the mistake of mentioning that she had run out of paper while writing the final book in the Harry Potter series, which resulted in many "helpful" fans sending her l...

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May 14 2006

Edward Eager

Playwright and lyricist Edward Eager began writing children’s books after he failed to find any suitable stories to read to his young son. Himself a huge fan of children’s literature, Eager’s boo...

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May 14 2006

Elizabeth Marie Pope

When I started researching Elizabeth Marie Pope, I was shocked to discover that she had written The Sherwood Ring in 1958 and The Perilous Guard in 1974 (and then I was totally bummed to find that...

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May 14 2006

Mignon G. Eberhart

While Mignon Good Eberhart’s name probably rings fewer bells for today’s readers than that of Dorothy Sayers or Margery Allingham, Eberhart spent half of the twentieth century being an extremely p...

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May 14 2006

Alexandre Dumas

Playwright and novelist Alexandre Dumas is so irrevocably linked in my mind with images of pre-Revolutionary France that it’s always a shock to remember that he actually wrote his books in the mid...

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May 14 2006

John Christopher

John Christopher (real name: Samuel Youd) is an English science fiction writer. Mr. Christopher has written more than 70 novels under a variety of pen names, but he is best known as the author of...

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May 14 2006

Inspirational Reading

Okay. We're really not Chicken Soup for the Soul people, but we understand that Mother's Day is the kind of day that frequently involves inspirational reading. So if you're in the market for some ...

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May 12 2006

Cover Art...

I know that I spend a lot of time blaming our authors for their books' bad cover art, even though it's not always their fault--maybe they've been forced into it, or maybe they're just cursed with ...

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May 11 2006

The White Mountains, by John Christopher

2006-05-11-the-white-mountains-by-john-christopher

As post-apocalyptic visions of the future go, the world in John Christopher’s Tripod series isn’t so bad. In some ways, it’s almost idyllic—a world without war or famine, where people are comfortably assured of their own destiny. But there is one major downside: as soon as you turn fourteen, you’re sucked up into the belly of a three-legged, alien-controlled machine called a Tripod, and you’re not returned until a mind-controlling metal cap has been fused onto your skull...

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May 11 2006

The Patron Saints of Book Geeks

Well, hello, Saints Lawrence, Catherine of Alexandria, and Jerome...These, my friends, are the holy saints that Catholics like me pray to when we want to ask for something book-related. (Like, say...

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May 10 2006

Wordcandy weekly book snippet

Excerpt from:Second Sight, by Amanda QuickWhy you should buy a copy of your very own:A fun new book from Ms. Quick, filled with humor and interesting charactersIn this scene...Venetia is a talente...

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May 9 2006

When good manga...

...gets turned into a choose-your-own-romantic-adventure Gameboy Color(TM) game, this is the result:Not that I wouldn't play it. (In a hot minute, people.) Unfortunately, I hear it's a really te...

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May 8 2006

God loves me.

Aaaaaaand here's proof:This and lots of other fine Austen gear is available here.

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May 7 2006

Movie adaptation news

Aintitcoolnews.com is reporting that we can, er, "look forward" to upcoming film versions of Bram Stoker's Dracula and Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The Verne story will apparently b...

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May 6 2006

Get thee...

...to a comic book store! For today, my friends, is:

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May 5 2006

Wordcandy weekly book snippet

Excerpt from:The Boy Next Door, by Meg CabotWhy you should buy a copy of your very own:It's a romance novel told entirely through e-mail exchanges, and it's funny as all-git-out.In this scene...Th...

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