A little look-see
And here we have the actual Hunger Games footage, dear readers. 90% of it is a pleasant walk in the woods, 8% is devoted to fireballs and arrows, and and 2% (maybe) is devoted to actual plot:
Enjoy (or not)
If you're really, really patient, MTV will be airing the first video footage from the upcoming Hunger Games movie adaptation during this Sunday's VMAs. For the rest of us, I'd recommend waiting ...
Picking over the remains
Last weekend, while hunting for a particular book for my brother's birthday, I ventured into a Borders store. I usually avoid stores that are closing (they make me feel like a vulture), but I'd a...
Living up to the hype
The Wall Street Journal has posted an article about the marketing hoopla surrounding never-before-published author Erin Morgenstern's upcoming novel The Night Circus. Once again, everyone involv...
How-to throughout the ages
The fine people at AbeBooks have put together a list entitled "Courting to Dueling: Antiquated Etiquette Guides". The books are worth checking out for the covers alone, but some of the titles are...
New and improved
The new cover art has been released for the upcoming collectors' edition of Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games. The new edition will cost $30, goes on sale in November, and features (inexplicably...
Vampires plus!
If you're a fan of Vampire Academy author Richelle Mead, you can get a jump-start on tomorrow's release of the first novel in her new spin-off series Bloodlines. EntertainmentWeekly.com is offeri...
A loose adaptation, clearly.
Okay, this is allegedly based on The Count of Monte Cristo, and I think I might have to watch it:
(Sincere) applause
In celebration of this weekend's D23 Expo, the Disney fan event, Disney is planning to donate $500,000 and eight million books—ranging from titles for beginning readers to teen series—to First Boo...
Dude's been slacking.
I'll probably buy this book when it comes out in January, even though the only truly pressing Sisters Grimm question I have is WHERE IS BOOK NINE, BUCKLEY?!?
Maybe if you think of it as an investment?
If you're really, really wealthy and/or a really, really big Harry Potter fan, check out this 16-disc, 199-euro complete Harry Potter DVD set, available in November via the French Amazon site:
I...
Comic book cakelets
If you're a Marvel Comics fan with a steady hand and an affinity for baking, it might be worth spending $36 for this Marvel Cakelet Pan from Williams Sonoma. My cake-decorating skills, sadly, ar...
And who knows what movie tickets might cost by the time they're finished?
HitFix reported last week that Warner Bros. has nearly finalized a deal that would have David Yates (the director of the last four Harry Potter movies) and Steve Kloves (the screenwriter for all b...
I think I'll skip this one.
According to Vulture, Jesse Eisenberg is set to star in director Richard Ayoade’s adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella The Double, which they describe as "Fight Club for bureaucrats". That a...
Bruce: The Great and Powerful
Okay, the odds that I'll see the upcoming Oz: The Great and Powerful movie just went way up. According to his Twitter feed, Bruce Campbell is going to be in it. I don't know about you guys, but...
They're devoted Mystery! viewers.
My parents have recently embarked on a Michael Connelly binge, so this news should make them happy: Variety is reporting that ABC is developing a TV series based on the movie adaptation of Connell...
Implausible accents and fake gray hair
While I'm pretty sure there's a copy of David Nicholls's One Day mouldering on the Wordcandy to-be-read bookshelf, none of us have ever picked it up. (Despite the relatively cheery cover, somethi...
Supporting Edgar
According the Times, the Edgar Allan Poe House in Baltimore has lost two years' worth of city funding and may now have to close—as a museum, anyway. (It's a designated landmark, so it can't be tor...
Ruby Red, by Kerstin Gier
While most of the books I write about are sent to us by publishers or PR groups, occasionally I read something so awesome that it cries out for a review, even if I had to spend my own money t...
Parenting in a digital age
NPR's "All Tech Considered" blog has an article up featuring a handful of parenting tips about girls and social media from Rachel Simmons, author of the best-selling nonfiction title Odd Girl Out:...
Opportunity found
Fans of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast series have long known that the author outlined a fourth and final volume called Titus Awakes before his death in 1968, but it seemed destined to remain one of l...
Too much is never enough
And now there's a third Snow White movie in the works, this one from Disney. Just what the world needs!
A closer look
Much to my delight, there is a new biography of Georgette Heyer coming out this October. According to The Bookseller, Jennifer Kloester's book Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller includes p...
Testing...
The Times recently published a list of their online edition's most looked-up words of 2011, and BuzzFeed has the top 20, along with their definitions. Feel free to test your vocab prowess! (For w...
So Shelly, by Ty Roth
Let me start by giving credit where credit is due: the Wordcandy to-be-read bookshelf is overflowing with YA gothic romances, but Ty Roth’s novel So Shelly stands out. Inspired by the notorious l...
State-ordered indulgence
It's National Ice Cream Sandwich Day, guys. And, as always, David Lebovitz is here for us.
What's the opposite of an ego boost?
If I was Mark Zuckerberg, I'd keep a copy of this upcoming biographical comic under my pillow, and whenever I started feeling too big for my britches I'd take it out and stare at it. I bet two mi...
A mystery solved
When publisher Little, Brown & Company e-mailed booksellers a list of their upcoming books last week, there was a November 14th release that excited quite a bit of curiosity: Untitled, by Anonymou...
To while away an idle hour
I finally saw the trailer for the live-action J-drama version of the manga Ouran High School Host Club. Behold:While I enjoy the silliness of the Ouran manga, and thought it worked really well as...