Crazy Rich Asians, by Kevin Kwan
You know that bit in celebrity magazine interviews where they list in painstaking detail the outfit the actress is wearing? Or describe her utterly fabulous house? Well, picture an entire book composed of those paragraphs, and you'd be covering at least 75% of the plot of Kevin Kwan's 2013 novel Crazy Rich Asians...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Crazy Rich Asians, by Kevin Kwan
This week's Book Giveaway is Kevin Kwan's 2013 novel Crazy Rich Asians, the book that inspired the currently-filming movie of the same name. I'm fascinated by the casting process for this film (which has been full of drama), so I thought I'd better read the book. Our review will follow shortly...
Maybe one day he can play Colonel Sanders?
And in the second bit of unfortunate romance-novel news of the day, a male romance novel cover model was arrested in California this week and charged with robbing a series of banks and gas stations in Connecticut...
You get what you pay for
Well, this is nice of them: Kentucky Fried Chicken has written a romance novella featuring Colonel Sanders, and made it available as a free digital download. According to CNN Money, "Tender Wings of Desire tells the story of 'rebellious Lady Madeline Parker,' who falls for Harland Sanders, 'a handsome sailor with a mysterious past...
Just one!
The trailer is out for the upcoming movie adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower. The trailer looks cool (well... Idris Elba looks cool, anyway), but would it kill them to put a couple of girl characters in it? There are a few women hanging around in the background in poses that suggest...
Behind the scenes
There's a great article over on Buzzfeed by Anne Helen Petersen: "The Company Behind "The National Enquirer" Just Bought "Us Weekly" — Here's Why That Matters". The article goes into all kinds of details (everything from solid financial facts to...
I'd go
There's an article on Catapult called "Looking for Anne of Green Gables", about a trip two lifelong Anne of Green Gables fans took to L. M. Montgomery's (and her most famous character's) home. The essayist comes across as a rather unpleasant traveling companion...
Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
I am not a fan of re-editing published books. (This is mostly due to being traumatized by T.H. White's The Sword and the Stone, which has gone through several remodels. My childhood edition of White's book featured a bizarre scene involving singing minstrels in an evil ice cream parlor, but I've never found that sequence in any edition since. I'm 99% certain I didn't make this scene up, but... what if I did?) However...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
This week's Book Giveaway is this amazing new edition of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, which looks like the kind of gloriously trashy 70s paperback you find on the spinner racks in libraries, reeking of ancient cigarettes. A full review will follow shortly, but just look at it: no matter what I say, that's a book you're going to want to read...
Not quite satire, but...
There's a loving tribute up on Bon Appétit to Peg Bracken's The I Hate to Cook Book, the best-selling 1960s cookbook that features step-by-step instructions like "let cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink"...
Ink has been spilled
There are approximately one million solid think pieces being written right now about the Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, but these two particularly caught my attention...
More Mindy
According to Deadline, Mindy Kaling has optioned the TV rights to Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House, the memoir by Alyssa Mastromonaco, Barack Obama's former White House deputy chief of staff for operations...
Cute but questionable
Heeeyyy... Out of Print clothing has added a new bunch of shirts based on Pelican Books' latest editions of Shakespeare, featuring gorgeous artwork by graphic designer Manuja Waldia. I still totally love these designs, although...
Tabloid-lite
Everyone pokes fun at Lifetime dramas, but this upcoming 8-episode miniseries adaptation of Petra Hammesfahr's novel The Sinner actually sounds like a story People magazine would love...
Alice and Red Queen, by Christina Henry
I've read more than a dozen retellings of Alice in Wonderland, and they all too frequently rely on the same ideas: Alice as an amnesiac; Alice as a traumatized young adult; Alice in a madhouse; Alice and the Mad Hatter in a romantic relationship. Christina Henry's duology—Alice and Red Queen—checks off every cliché on this list, but Henry at least delivers her recycled material with style and energy...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Alice and Red Queen, by Christina Henry
This week's Book Giveaway is actually a two-for-one deal: we're giving away Christina Henry's Alice and Red Queen. I have been burned by many an Alice in Wonderland-themed re-write, but I just keep reading 'em. Clearly, hope springs eternal: maybe this one will be the update of my dreams...
Are we leaving any classic dystopian novels out?
Man, what a good day for an announcement regarding a story in which everything goes up in smoke. According to Slate, HBO is making a new film adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The movie is set to star Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon (two of my favorite acting Michaels!), and Ramin Bahrani will direct...
That poster's pretty great, tho.
So, there's a movie coming out called The Little Hours, based loosely on a story from Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, a 14th century collection of novellas. The movie (which stars about a million relatively big-name comic actors) is about a young man who gets a job as a gardener in a convent...
Good for the soul
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the "Midnight Confessions" segment from CBS' The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is going to be made into a book, coming this fall from Simon & Schuster...
Fascinating (but also grim)
I'm finally reading up on the new movie The Lost City of Z. I had a vague (and 100% incorrect) idea that it had something to do with zombies, but it turns out it is based on David Grann's 2009 nonfiction book of the same name. Grann's book focuses on the story of British explorer Percy Fawcett, who made numerous attempts to find a lost indigenous city in Brazil's Mato Grosso region...
Stone age melancholy
There's a glowing review over on Slate of DC’s "brilliant new Flintstones comic". If this essay is to be believed, DC has taken the formerly cheery Saturday morning cartoon and turned it into a social satire about...
Silence Fallen, by Patricia Briggs
Silence Fallen is the tenth novel in Patricia Briggs's best-selling Mercy Thompson series. In this fast-paced, action-heavy installment, shape-shifting VW mechanic Mercy is abducted from her home territory in the Pacific Northwest and spirited away to Italy, where she finds herself a pawn in a chess game being played by an ancient and powerful vampire...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Silence Fallen, by Patricia Briggs
This week's Book Giveaway title is Silence Fallen, the 10th book in Patricia Briggs's Mercy Thompson series. We rarely review such advanced series installments, but I have a soft spot for these books: they are set in my beloved Washington, they feature a Native heroine, and—judging on a scale of long-running urban fantasy series—Briggs's stories are approximately one bajillion times better than this...
Visual appeal
There's a great article over on Buzzfeed by Anne Helen Petersen called "The Radical Feminist Aesthetic Of The Handmaid’s Tale". (The article claims to be spoiler-free, but it does share quite a bit about the novel, so bear that in mind if you want to watch the TV series completely unspoiled.) Petersen talks about the visual way the filmmakers illustrate the characters' world...
Those hairstyles, though...
I just saw the trailer for Terrence Davies's 2016 movie about the life of poet Emily Dickinson, A Quiet Passion. It looks very elegant and tasteful, but maybe a little low on actual plot...
Festive
Someone decided to make an extremely detailed statue of Disney's Belle out of the world's second-grossest (after Circus Peanuts, obviously) candy: Peeps...
Grim AND expensive!
A British woman who recently bought a £14 box of books ended up with ridiculously valuable find: an English-language, first edition print of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. (I love that subtitle: "A Russian Realistic Novel".) The lucky woman chose...
The Dark Days Pact, by Alison Goodman
When I read the first book in Alison Goodman's Lady Helen series, I found it solidly written but over-engineered. The second installment, The Dark Days Pact, has similar strengths and weaknesses, but the deepening emotional stakes make the overall story far more satisfying...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Dark Days Pact, by Alison Goodman
Today's Book Giveaway is Alison Goodman's The Dark Days Pact, the sequel to last year's The Dark Days Club. I'll be posting my review shortly, but first I need to re-read the first book—Goodman's writing is best appreciated when one pays attention to the details...