Mar 30 2017

A vast improvement

And speaking of Neil Gaiman, I didn't realize that there were more faux-vintage covers for his books! I had already seen (and loved) the new-old cover for Neverwhere, but full props to the publisher, the cover artist(s), and Gaiman himself, whom I would not have pegged as...

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Mar 30 2017

Colorful

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There are a bunch of really great character posters out for Starz's upcoming adaptation of Neil Gaiman's American Gods. As longtime readers of the site may know, I am not a fan of this book, but...

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Mar 29 2017

Assassin's Masque, by Sarah Zettel

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Assassin's Masque, the third book in Sarah Zettel's Palace of Spies series, is a fun, smart read with an eye-catching cover, but I suspect it lacks that special something that makes teen books fly off shelves. (It might look inadequately dramatic?) I'm sorry about this, because I've found all of Zettel's books solidly entertaining...

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Mar 29 2017

Weekly Book Giveaway: Assassin's Masque, by Sarah Zettel

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This week's Book Giveaway is Sarah Zettel's Assassin's Masque, the third book in her excellent Palace of Spies series. I'm not a fan of that title (which makes no sense and has almost nothing to do with the story, but I guess sounds cool?), but whatever: Zettel is a reliably great writer, so my expectations for this sucker are high...

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Mar 25 2017

I'm pretty sure you're fine judging this book by its cover.

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Wow. I suspect that this cheesy-looking romance novel from the Philippines is hardly the skeeviest thing out there featuring Justin Bieber...

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Mar 25 2017

Harrumph

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I was chagrined to discover that Sophia Bennett's young adult novel Love Song doesn't seem to be easily available here in the U.S. Love Song recently won the Goldsboro Books Romantic Novel of the Year prize. It's only the second time in the award's...

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Mar 24 2017

Topical!

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There have been a load of stories about best-selling dystopian novels since Trump's election, but some people have taken it a step further: political cosplay! According to Slate, a group of Texas women dressed as characters from Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale...

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Mar 23 2017

Ugh

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According to The Wall Street Journal, Richard Hickock—one of the two Kansas murderers made famous by Truman Capote’s true-crime story In Cold Blood—wrote his own book with a Kansas journalist, which was never published...

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Mar 23 2017

Bring hankies

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Oprah Winfrey is starring in a HBO adaptation of the 2010 nonfiction bestseller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. (Oprah will be playing Lacks's daughter. Lacks herself died when she was only 31.) Lacks's story...

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Mar 22 2017

Magic for Nothing, by Seanan McGuire

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Seanan McGuire's Magic For Nothing is my favorite installment in the InCryptid series to date... and that's saying something, because I've liked all of these books. But this book gives me something I didn't realize I was missing: a plausibly screwed-up heroine, despite her distinctly implausible circumstances...

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Mar 22 2017

Weekly Book Giveaway: Magic For Nothing, by Seanan McGuire

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This week's Book Giveaway is Seanan McGuire's Magic For Nothing, the first novel in McGuire's InCryptid series to feature Antimony Price, the prickly younger sister of previous protagonists Alex and Verity. A full review will follow shortly...

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Mar 17 2017

All kinds of no.

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Okay, this looks CREEPY AS HELL. There's an upcoming movie adaptation of Silvio Raffo’s mystery novel Voice from the Stone, which Entertainment Weekly describes as "a haunted house tale and a powerful meditation on grief, all in one." If the trailer is accurate...

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Mar 16 2017

Atmospheric

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I've been admiring the trailers for the upcoming Charlize Theron action movie Atomic Blonde, which I just learned is based on a 2012 graphic novel by Antony Johnston called The Coldest City. And I see...

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Mar 15 2017

I want to visit!

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There's a cool article in the Denver Post about the Rocky Mountain Land Library. The Land Library is described as "a collection of over 35,000 books and the shared dream of two bookstore employees: to rehabilitate a historic cattle ranch high in Colorado’s Front Range as a live-in library celebrating the West". The co-founders, Jeff Lee and Ann Marie Martin...

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Mar 14 2017

Try again

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Sony is apparently going forward with a long-overdue sequel to David Fincher’s 2011 adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, but with an entirely new cast. The movie is due in 2018...

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Mar 14 2017

Stay realistic, Julia

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This latest trailer for the upcoming Wonder Woman movie is getting my hopes ever higher. Unfortunately, it's still uncomfortably close to the grubby hands of Zack Snyder...

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Mar 13 2017

Heart of the Storm, by Michael Buckley

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Heart of the Storm is the final volume in Michael Buckley's Undertow trilogy. All of the books in this series have been a mixed bag—at times wildly imaginative and exciting, at others just a overstuffed mess—and this last installment is no different...

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Mar 13 2017

Weekly Book Giveaway: Heart of the Storm, by Michael Buckley

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This week's Book Giveaway is Michael Buckley's Heart of the Storm, the final book in his Undertow trilogy. I've never fallen as deeply in love with this series as I did with Buckley's Sisters Grimm stories, but these books are plenty fun in their own right. A full review will follow shortly...

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Mar 9 2017

Mass market

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It's Mickey Spillane's birthday, and there's a great description of his career over on The Writer's Almanac. Spillane sounds like the James Patterson of his day: his books were written fast and critically panned, he apparently never featured a character who drank cognac or had a mustache (because he didn’t know how to spell those words), and...

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Mar 9 2017

Good deal

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According to Entertainment Weekly, Barack and Michelle Obama have both signed deals to publish books with Crown Publishing Group. Crown has already published books by both Obamas: the former President’s 1995 memoir...

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Mar 8 2017

Yeah, right

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Publishers Weekly recently posted an explanation of the upcoming changes to the New York Times Book Review's approach to book reviews. According to editor Pamela Paul, the New York Times Book Review isn't "cutting back", they're just being "strategic", but...

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Mar 7 2017

The right call

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There's a great article over on Buzzfeed about the difficulties of casting John M. Chu's upcoming film adaptation of Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians. Chu promised “amazing Asian actors cast in EVERY SINGLE ROLE”, and there's a lot riding on him getting this right: Crazy Rich Asians will be...

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Mar 7 2017

Life in the virtual woods

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I... really don't know how I feel about this. A video game based on Henry David Thoreau's Walden? It's not that I'm opposed to a game that aims to "reinforce our connection to the natural world and to challenge our hurried culture" or "achieve work-life balance", but doesn't doing that via a $20 video game...

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Mar 6 2017

Utterly Uncle Fred, by P.G. Wodehouse

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Utterly Uncle Fred is an omnibus edition of P.G. Wodehouse's stories about the irrepressible Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, 5th Earl of Ickenham. This collection includes the novels Cocktail Time, Uncle Dynamite, and Service With a Smile, and well as the short story that introduced us to the character, "Uncle Fred Flits By"...

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Mar 6 2017

Weekly Book Giveaway: Utterly Uncle Fred, by P.G. Wodehouse

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This week's Book Giveaway is the P.G. Wodehouse omnibus Utterly Uncle Fred, which consists of one short story ("Uncle Fred Flits By") and three novels: Uncle Dynamite, Cocktail Time, and Service With a Smile. Any one of these, including the short story, would be well worth the cover price, so you can only imagine their combined awesomeness...

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Mar 2 2017

100% covetable

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I recently ran across these absolutely gorgeous new editions of four classic Mary Stewart novels via the website Mary Queen of Plots. A little poking around the internet reveals that the publisher, Hodder & Stoughton, was also responsible...

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Mar 2 2017

No, thanks.

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Well, I was never particularly excited about a TV miniseries adaptation of Jay Asher's YA novel Thirteen Reasons Why, and this new trailer is not doing much to change my opinion...

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Mar 1 2017

Immortalized!

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This is great news: according to NPR, Lego has just announced their "Women of NASA" set, which will include Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician whose story was featured in Margot Lee Shetterly's book Hidden Figures...

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Feb 28 2017

Hiding in plain sight

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According to the Guardian, a long-lost novel by Walt Whitman was recently discovered in the archives of a Victorian New York Sunday newspaper. Described as a "rollicking anti-lawyer revenge fantasy", The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle was published anonymously...

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Feb 28 2017

Tour guide

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Atlas Obscura recently posted an article called "Exploring Cuba, Guided by Graham Greene". Taking advantage of the recent reconciliation between Cuba and the United States, essayist Luke Spencer sets out to explore Cuba, using Graham Greene’s satirical 1958 spy novel Our Man in Havana as a travel guide...

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