Phony: Part II
The Guardian recently posted an update to the fascinating John Smelcer story, which we wrote about last week. It seems that the overwhelming pile of evidence suggesting that Mr. Smelcer is 100% full of garbage...
Store-brand Poe
Some streaming service that I've never heard of (Shudder) has bought the rights to all four chapters of Neil Gaiman’s Likely Stories, a collection of short-film adaptations that originally aired on the UK’s Sky Arts last year...
Money was spent
The promotions for the upcoming Blade Runner sequel are mad fancy: Collider just premiered an “in-world” short film that explains what happened between the events of the first movie, set in 2019, and this sequel, set in 2049. This short takes place in 2036, and features...
Yeah, but...
Well, this is a mystery: Pajiba has recently posted an in-depth look at the latest New York Times YA bestseller, an extremely dorky-looking novel called Handbook For Mortals, by Lani Sarem. There's a lot that doesn't make sense about this book's meteoric rise...
Ash and Quill, by Rachel Caine
Ash and Quill is the third installment in Rachel Caine's The Great Library series. In these books, the world's knowledge is jealously hoarded by the all-powerful Great Library. Caine's protagonist is a book smuggler-turned-Great Library soldier named Jess Brightwell. Jess and his small band of allies have recently escaped from the Library's clutches, but soon find themselves in an even worse situation...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Ash and Quill, by Rachel Caine
This week's Book Giveaway is Rachel Caine's Ash and Quill, which, as it happens, is not the final book in a trilogy. (If I had known this ahead of time, my expectations might have been... different.) A full review will follow shortly...
Eagerly anticipating
This is why I will never stop watching Asian TV shows: their source material is so much weirder than ours. According to the website Dramabeans, this fall I'll be able to see a K-drama live-action adaptation of Japanese author Hideo Okuda's "Psychiatrist Irabu" series...
Phony
Okay, this article is great, and I strongly encourage you to go read the entire thing yourself. It's an investigation into the many alleged lies of an author named John Smelcer. It seems that Smelcer, who has been nominated for awards and given jobs based on his Alaskan Native ethnic heritage, might not be Native after all...
Not impressed.
The trailer is out for the BBC's adaptation of J.K. Rowling/Robert Galbraith's The Cuckoo's Calling. I did not realize the main character's name is "Cormoran Strike". That does not sound like a real character; that sounds like a military excercise...
I approve of the cover, at least?
Pajiba recently posted an update on the forthcoming A Discovery of Witches TV series, based on the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness. The show is being adapted by Bad Wolf Television (a company run by two former Doctor Who producers), will star Matthew Goode and Teresa Palmer, and the...
Direwolves!
Game of Thrones fans, take note: according to the Smithsonian website, on September 24th, you can visit Castle Ward in Northern Ireland (the location of the show's version of Winterfell) for a single-day celebration of the series. Tickets to...
The World of Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse
I firmly believe that P.G. Wodehouse is best experienced in the short-story format. Sure, I've laughed myself sick over individual scenes in his full-length novels, but let's face it: every Jeeves and Wooster novel is really just a short story on steroids, so why bother with the needlessly hulked-out version when...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The World of Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse
This week's Book Giveaway is my all-time favorite P.G. Wodehouse collection: the 1989 omnibus edition The World of Jeeves. This hefty sucker contains all 34 Jeeves and Wooster short stories, and is (in my opinion) the best organized and most accessible way of enjoying Wodehouse's work. A full review will follow shortly...
Absolutely ridiculous
We might have been consistently underwhelmed by V.E. Schwab's Shades of Magic series, but nobody deserves this kind of nonsense: according to the...
And poor Divergent, I suppose
Well, the concept for "Lionsgate Movie World" sounds a lot cooler than I would have imagined, considering I don't really think of Lionsgate as a Marvel-style household name. But Lionsgate has made some marquee projects in the past decade or so, and...
Dora Gray?
According to Variety, Lionsgate is developing a gender-swapped version of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The film will be directed by Annie Clark (better known as the musician St. Vincent). I have...
I'm sure Marvel still makes out O.K.
I am frequently confused by the tangled business ties between Marvel and the other studios that develop Marvel properties, but are not considered part of the Marvel 'verse. (This group includes the X-Men series, as well as the last set of Spider-Man movies.) But Sony's current version of...
My hat is off to the casting director
The trailer is out for the upcoming film adaptation of Molly's Game, based on Molly Bloom's memoir of the same name. The movie will be out on November 22nd, and while I don't understand a damn thing about poker...
Where The Water Goes, by David Owen
A note to new readers: while Wordcandy mostly reviews fiction, we do make space for the occasional post on nonfiction books we consider to be of general interest. Previous nonfiction picks have focused on food, money, or (as in this case) the environment. Hopefully you find these featured books as interesting as we do...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Where the Water Goes, by David Owen
It's been a while since we've reviewed any nonfiction, so this week's Book Giveaway will be David Owen's Where the Water Goes. I'm only a few chapters in, but thus far it's interesting, although Owen (or his editor) appears to be a little confused about how commas work. A full review will follow shortly...
I like it, though!
I was delighted to see a review of Jean Webster's 1912 novel Daddy-Long-Legs on the website Dear Author, and even more pleased by what a great job the author did of summarizing the book's strengths and weaknesses...
Suppressed passion... and bees
Variety informs me that Anna Paquin will star in a movie adaptation of Fiona Shaw's 2009 novel Tell It To The Bees. According to the article, the story is set in the 1950s, and Paquin will play a doctor who returns to her hometown to take over her late father’s medical practice. Her situation grows complicated when...
This will not be G-rated.
According to Deadline, A Wrinkle in Time director Ava DuVernay, Charles D. King, and director-writer Victoria Mahoney have bought the rights to make a TV adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s 1987 sci-fi novel Dawn...
With bells on
I was just asking for another TV or movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and the universe has responded: according to Radio Times, ITV is planning an new TV version of the novel that will "tease out the story's 'darker tones'". My first reaction is: do the darker tones take take much teasing? I mean, this...
Expanding
I'm not always a fan of Yen Press's translation work (I think they sometimes make the mistake of hewing too closely to the original language, even when such a direct translation takes readers out of the story), but they're one of the more reliable and high-quality manga publishers, so I was pleased to hear that they are planning...
Hero in the Highlands, by Suzanne Enoch
I rarely pick up Scottish romance novels. I have no beef with Scotland, but I have never understood what makes it such a rich source for romance novel fetishization. (I mean, why not Ireland? Or Wales? Is it the kilts?) But my inability to appreciate the appeal of itchy, smelly, difficult-to-clean wool skirts is offset by my faith in Suzanne Enoch, one of the few romance novelists I find consistently entertaining, so I decided to give her recent novel Hero in the Highlands a shot...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Hero in the Highlands, by Suzanne Enoch
This week's Book Giveaway is Suzanne Enoch's Hero in the Highlands, the first book in her No Ordinary Hero series. I'm not usually a huge fan of Scottish romance novels, but Enoch is a reliable writer, so I'm hoping for the best. A full review will follow shortly...
Maybe people buy them as odd Christmas gifts?
According to io9, Chuck Palahniuk is once again blending original fiction with coloring pages, releasing a book called Legacy: An Off-Color Novella for You to Color. Clearly, his short story anthology/coloring book hybrid Bait sold well...
Makes sense
If you have mixed feelings about the upcoming movie adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, there seems to be a TV series in the works, too. It's unclear if version will have much (if anything) in common with the movie, but TV certainly seems like a more logical medium...
All spiders would need to be carefully transferred outside
If you have $3.7 million stuffed under your mattress and you're a big fan of famous children's tearjerkers, today's your lucky day: the house that inspired E.B. White's Charlotte's Web is currently up for sale. In addition to (presumably) boasting an infestation of spiders, the property...