Meh. All the meh.
According to Variety, the people behind the BBC's Sherlock are now working on a(nother) adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. There's pretty much no information about this project yet, but...
Just Dreaming, by Kerstin Gier
This is damning with faint praise, but Just Dreaming, the final book in Kerstin Gier's Silver Trilogy, is less of a hot mess than the finale of her previous series. So things are looking up (I guess), but Gier is still relying on the appeal of her lively, funny heroines to ease readers past...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Just Dreaming, by Kerstin Gier
This week's Book Giveaway is Kerstin Gier's Just Dreaming, the final installment in her Silver Trilogy. I usually find Gier's books equally fun and frustrating, so we'll see if this story manages to land firmly in one camp or the other. A full review will follow shortly...
Results may vary
Curbed just posted a bunch of images from an upcoming book of three-dimensional paper models of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, created by “paper engineer” and artist Marc Hagan-Guirey...
The thinnest of skin
Aww: Donald Trump has blocked Stephen King on Twitter! Luckily(?) for King, J.K. Rowling has offered to DM him the tweets (until Trump gets around to blocking her, too)...
Informative!
According to the Gloucester Times, a 12-year-old girl named Megan Gething used information gleaned from her reading of The Hunger Games to create a tourniquet for a friend who had sliced her leg open...
Pre-goatee
The trailer is out for Will, an upcoming TNT series about a young, "sexy" William Shakespeare in 1589, after his arrival in London (and, it must be noted, well after his marriage to Anne Hathaway). It appears to be pretty much 100% anachronisms...
Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman
Earlier this year, acclaimed storyteller Neil Gaiman published a $26, 281-page-long work of fanfiction: Norse Mythology, his “novelistic” retelling of several famous Norse myths. The book covers the stars of the Norse pantheon (Odin, Thor, Loki, Freya), and includes several of the best-known myths, including Thor's cross-dressing wedding, the death of Balder, and the many, many exploits of Loki the trickster...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman
This week's Book Giveaway is Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology. A full review will follow shortly, but I can already tell you that (alas) Gaiman's take on the Norse gods does not bear much resemblance to Taika Waititi's candy-colored vision for Thor: Ragnarok...
Possibly worth it
There was another intriguing-looking snack recently posted as part of the Guardian's "Novel Recipes": macaroons inspired by Elizabeth Von Armin's The Enchanted April...
Runaways REBORN
This is great: acclaimed YA novelist Rainbow Rowell has been hired to restart Marvel's Runaways, and she is apparently planning to revive Gert, whom I have always believed was killed off at least partially because it was too upsetting for Marvel's artists to draw a fat character...
I want to visit!
Big news for Studio Ghibli fans: in 2018, the studio plans to open a My Neighbor Totoro-inspired theme park in Japan's Aichi prefecture. The park will be designed in a way that doesn't disturb the local wildlife, and...
Castles and crappy parents
The trailer is out for the upcoming film adaptation of Jeannette Walls’s memoir The Glass Castle. I tend to get this book confused with I Capture the Castle (another story about poverty and sub-par parenting), and I doubt this movie will do much to keep the stories separate in my mind...
But the heroine doesn't die!
According to The New York Times, a long-lost Edith Wharton play has recently surfaced. The Shadow of a Doubt was supposed to be staged in New York in 1901, but for unknown reasons the production was abandoned and the play forgotten...
The Case of the Forked Road, by John Allison
The Case of the Forked Road, the seventh installment in John Allison's excellent Bad Machinery series, is—as always—a whacked-out delight. There's time travel, puberty jokes, and a PG-rated adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross. The boys play a reduced role in this volume (although their stories are expanded from the online version), but...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Case of the Forked Road, by John Allison
This week's Book Giveaway is John Allison's The Case of the Forked Road, the seventh book in the Bad Machinery series. I am, as always, pretty stoked to see a new Bad Machinery book, but there are certain very obvious changes about this installment that do not thrill me. A full review will follow shortly...
Maybe not opening day, but...
Oooh... the new Murder on the Orient Express trailer is out, and I am at least 80% impressed. The train looks amazing, the cast is solid (I could do without Depp, though), and Kenneth Branagh does a fine impression of David Suchet's accent. On the down side, he is not David Suchet (no matter how much he sounds like him)...
New-old Tolkien
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt just released a "new" book by J.R.R. Tolkien: Beren and Lúthien. The book is actually a compilation of Tolkien's earlier descriptions of the love story between Beren, a mortal man, and Lúthien, an immortal elf, which are apparently scattered throughout his writings. According to the publisher's description, Christopher Tolkien...
Kettles of DOOM
I finally saw the trailer for the soon-to-be-released film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel, and it looks very dramatic. I have never seen so many ominous-looking tea kettles in my life...
The Most Dangerous Duke in London, by Madeline Hunter
Madeline Hunter is not a romance novelist I read consistently, but she is high on my “reasonable impulse buy” list—the authors I save for beach vacations and particularly unpleasant head colds. Her books never blow my mind, but they never offend with hideous anachronisms or insane behavior, either, and sometimes that's all you can ask for...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Most Dangerous Duke in London, by Madeline Hunter
This week's Book Giveaway is Madeline Hunter's latest Regency romance, The Most Dangerous Duke in London. A full review will follow shortly, but spoiler: if this guy is the most dangerous duke in London, London's dukes are a singularly mellow bunch...
Couldn't they wait for the Black Panther movie trailer, at least?
A mere two issues in, Marvel has apparently decided to cancel Ta-Nehisi Coates and Yona Harvey’s Black Panther spin-off, Black Panther & The Crew. Marvel is citing poor sales, and that might well be true, but this decision is depressing as hell...
Carbs!
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of E. L. Konigsburg's From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler, the Guardian has devoted one of its ongoing "Novel Recipes" segments to New York Pretzels...
Overdue
WHAT IS THIS? A new book in Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series?!? It's been so long since her last book (2010's A Conspiracy of Kings) that I will have to completely re-read the entire series, but this is still GREAT news. The Queen's Thief is one of my all-time favorite YA fantasy series, and the only thing that...
I'd prefer a print edition, but...
Okay, this is awesome: there seem to be some fancy-looking (or at least non-cheesy) eBook editions of Mary Burchell's classic mid-century romance novels...
Best of luck
According to the Romance Writers of America, Harlequin is planning to shutter five series lines next year: Harlequin Western (June 2018), Harlequin Superromance (June 2018), Love Inspired Historical (June 2018), Harlequin Nocturne (December 2018), and Kimani Romance (December 2018)...
Octavia E. Butler's Kindred, adapted by John Jennings and Damian Duffy
Octavia E. Butler's Kindred is a classic for a reason: it's memorable and dramatic and utterly terrifying. And in Damian Duffy and John Jennings's excellent graphic novel adaptation of Kindred, you don't need to imagine the horrors in Butler's novel, you can experience them via full-color illustrations! (The better to keep you up at night.)
Weekly Book Giveaway: Octavia E. Butler's Kindred, adapted by Damian Duffy and John Jennings
This week's Book Giveaway is Damian Duffy and John Jennings's graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's 1979 book Kindred. A full review will follow shortly, but take warning: this book literally gave me nightmares.
Comparatively famous
According to Variety, Rosamund Pike is set to star in a film adaptation of Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout, Lauren Redniss’s 2011 nonfiction graphic novel. This movie will feature some big names in the graphic novel world: not only was...