Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde
Like my beloved Ysabeau S. Wilce, Jasper Fforde has a gift: his endlessly inventive books feel coherent, even when his actual plots are totally nuts...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Shades of Grey, by Jasper FForde
This week's Book Giveaway is Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey, which is not to be confused with any other shades-of-grey-related books. Instead, it's one of Fforde's trademark blends of fantasy, sci-fi, cultural commentary, and 100-proof weirdness, and I am quite looking forward to reading it. A full review will follow shortly...
Geek joy on tap
I need to go to this new Harry Potter-themed bar in Toronto, like, immediately. Sure, I don't drink alcohol, but I don't care. I will order whatever their themed version of a Designated Driver special is (and they better have one, damn it), and admire the decor...
Sad facts
SplitSider writer Priyanka Mattoo recently wrote a helpful explanatory article called "How Does a Book Get Optioned and Become a Movie?" If, like me, you don't really care about the how-to stuff for writers looking to sell their book(s) to Hollywood, skip to the paragraph that..
Sex, aliens, and videotape
And speaking of fantasy novels, io9 recently put together a great interview about the challenges (which range from "exciting" to, uh, "just plain challenging") facing the people attempting to adapt Octavia Butler’s novel Dawn into a TV show...
Silver Eve, by Sandra Waugh
Last year's Lark Rising was a delight—a dreamy, thoughtful classic fantasy novel aimed at middle- and high-school readers, with a complex heroine and compelling larger world. The novel wasn't perfect (it was too short to do full justice to the material, leaving large sections underdeveloped), but...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Silver Eve, by Sandra Waugh
This week's Book Giveaway is Sandra Waugh's Silver Eve, the sequel to last year's excellent Lark Rising. I'm still a little sad this book will shift the focus to a new heroine, but I'm hoping I'll like her just as well...
Devoted in Death, by J.D. Robb
Devoted in Death is the 41st installment of J.D. Robb's futuristic mystery/suspense “In Death” series, and—unsurprisingly—things are getting pretty damn stale. There are a couple of nice moments in this book, but 99% of it is the literary equivalent of a filler episode...
Ouch.
I've read some surprisingly positive reviews of Anthony Horowitz's new James Bond continuation, Trigger Mortis. Unfortunately (for him), most of the recent buzz around Horowitz...
Will I buy a ticket? Probably.
Funimation has released an English-language trailer for the live-action film adaptations of Attack on Titan, and I keep watching it, even though everything about this series grosses me out...
A recipe for success?
Chloë Grace Moretz continues her search for the teen literary franchise that will make her into a world-famous zillionaire. If I Stay was only a minor hit, but the recently-released trailer for The Fifth Wave looks like it's going for broke: a mixture of alien movies + survivalist adventure + doomed love triangle...
NOT. FAIR.
Huh. It seems there's going to not only be a Ready Player One movie (which: why? We already have two Charlie and the Chocolate Factory adaptations. Can't we just re-watch those?), but...
Congratulations
According to THR, today is the first day at Hogwarts for Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley's oldest son, James Sirius. J.K. Rowling announced via Twitter that he was sorted in Gryffindor...
Reawakened, by Colleen Houck
Several people have compared Colleen Houck's new novel Reawakened to Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson books. Both are aimed at younger teens, feature a mixture of human and demigod characters, and rely on a lot of PG-13 action sequences to push their plots along. Unfortunately, Reawakened doesn't share Riordan's greatest strength: his ability to create relatable characters, no matter how over-the-top their abilities or adventures...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Reawakened, by Colleen Houck
This week's Book Giveaway is Colleen Houck's novel Reawakened, the first novel in a "multibook series". (Note: this means I have no idea how long we'll have to wait for actual plot resolution. Sorry!) Reviewers keep favorably comparing Reawakened to Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, so I'm excited. A full review will follow later today...
Family-friendly!
I was rolling with the assumption that Berkeley Breathed's new Bloom County strips weren't appearing in major newspapers because they were being produced on an intermittent schedule, but now I'm thinking...
Dark Ages soap
Deadline recently posted an update on ITV's upcoming Beowulf miniseries, which they describe as a "Dark Ages Western". My hopes that this adaptation will be a hokey delight are high (the creators also produced Primeval, which pretty much rang the hokey delight bell, IMO), but..
Marvel's sound and fury
Last week, Pajiba posted an article called "The Life of Marvel Marketing and the Death of Marvel Story Telling", which presents the persuasive argument that Marvel is mostly concerned with hyping its larger universe, not the quality of its individual films...
We'll see...
Since we're a few years past the last one (which was what, Death Comes To Pemberley?), we are clearly past due for another rush of Jane Austen-inspired movies...
The Water Knife, by Paolo Bacigalupi
For a book blessed with interesting characters, a compelling conflict, and an absolutely spectacular hook, Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife isn't actually fun to read. I don't mind violence, but there's a fine line between suffering that serves the plot and straight-up disaster porn, and too much of The Water Knife feels like the latter...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Water Knife, by Paolo Bacigalupi
This week's Book Giveaway is Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife. My family owns, like, three copies of Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert (one signed! Because we're nerds!), so I have both high hopes and high expectations for Bacigalupi's book. A full review will follow shortly...
Bewildering
According to Deadline, Warner Bros. plans to make a film version of Dante’s Inferno that will focus on the poem's "epic love story", which the article summarizes as "Dante [descending] through the nine circles of hell to save the woman he loves." I am so confused about this...
One of many
This November will be the 150th anniversary of the publication of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and publishers are looking to mark the occasion with some truly gorgeous new editions. As an Alice mega-nerd, I'm particularly excited about this...
Maybe I'm missing the point?
io9 informs me that artist Thomas Lebrun is re-drawing Hergé’s most controversial Tintin comic, Tintin in the Congo. Hergé’s original story is infamous for its racist images, but Lebrun has a different focus—he is re-drawing Tintin as nude from the knees up in every panel...
Yet again
According to the Huffington Post, Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic series is getting yet another reboot, despite the fact...
Goodbye Stranger, by Rebecca Stead
This is going to sound a little random, but Rebecca Stead's Goodbye Stranger reminds me of a young-reader take on Jennifer Crusie's wonderful romance novel Bet Me. Both books focus on the various forms of love (familial, platonic, romantic), and both are simultaneously incredibly sweet and unexpectedly profound...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Goodbye Stranger, by Rebecca Stead
This week's Book Giveaway is Rebecca Stead's Goodbye Stranger. I'm only a few chapters in, but I'm already impressed by Stead's ability to capture the overwhelming emotional messiness of being a middle-schooler...
A yearly gift
And the best part of summer has arrived: the "winners" of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced! They're all pretty great, but here's a small sampling of my favorites...