Furies of Calderon, by Jim Butcher
I admit I'm a little behind the times when it comes to Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series, seeing as, uh, the final book was released in 2009. But you know what that means? No waiting, not even for public library editions! And if you want to buy your own copies, everything's in paperback now! You can probably even find used versions. Why, it's almost like I put off reading these stories for almost a decade... for you.
Weekly Book Giveaway: Furies of Calderon, by Jim Butcher
This week's Book Giveaway is the first book in Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series, Furies of Calderon. I'm only a few chapters in, but so far this appears to be straight fantasy, not the more tongue-in-cheek style featured in his Harry Dresden books. Who knows, though? Maybe he's just holding off on introducing a perverted, hard-to-shut-up skull sidekick until a later chapter...
Caaandy...
It's the 50th anniversary of the publication of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Publishers Weekly has posted a helpful round-up of Penguin's upcoming year-long celebration plans...
Mystery cake
I have an ongoing fascination with heritage recipes, despite being A) deeply lazy, and B) vegetarian, which severely limits the stuff I'm ever going to actually make. (Sorry, 1901 edition of The White House Cookbook; I'm never going to try that recipe for roasted squirrel.) So I was pretty stoked to pick up a copy of America's Best Lost Recipes, written by the editors of Cook's Country magazine, and read with purely academic interest...
Sign me up
The second trailer is out for X-Men: Days of Future Past, and I am so excited. Sure, I'll be there for the new Captain America movie... but I'll be thinking of X-Men. Everything about this speaks to me: the shamelessly melodramatic music, the glowering faces, the Buffy-esque power strides...
I do like the cover, though.
The website Word and Film recently posted an interview with Jennifer Graham, who co-wrote (with series creator Rob Thomas) the first Veronica Mars novel, The Thousand Dollar Tan Line. I admit I have my doubts...
The Mirk and Midnight Hour, by Jane Nickerson
When I saw the press notes for Jane Nickerson's The Mirk and Midnight Hour, which describe the book as a "haunting love story and suspenseful thriller" inspired by the Tam Lin fairytale, I applauded the author's ambition. She was taking a risk: Tam Lin doesn't have the universal appeal of, say, Cinderella, plus there are already two extremely well-regarded YA versions out there...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Mirk and Midnight Hour, by Jane Nickerson
This week's Book Giveaway title is The Mirk and Midnight Hour, the second YA novel from Jane Nickerson. Like her first book Strands of Bronze and Gold (which we reviewed here), The Mirk and Midnight Hour is inspired by a not-exactly-Disney-friendly fairytale: the Scottish ballad Tam Lin...
In a word: gross
I don't know why I'm so offended by the idea of a big-budget CGI Peanuts movie. I don't have particularly fond memories of the comics, and the strip has obviously inspired plenty of animated adaptations, but...
So ridiculous
Publishers Weekly has posted an update on the decision by the South Carolina House of Representatives to cut the College of Charleston's funding by $52,000 and University of South Carolina-Upstate's funding by $17,142...
This is my surprised face.
I am legitimately stunned to be writing this (seeing as I just gave James Dashner's The Kill Order my nastiest review of the year), but the full trailer for The Maze Runner actually looks interesting...
Season of the Witch, by Mariah Fredericks
Mariah Fredericks's Season of the Witch hopes for the literary equivalent of having one's cake and eating it too: the author tries to lure in readers with fantasy/horror stuff, but she also wants her story to be taken seriously as a real-world exploration of grief, revenge, and teenage power dynamics. I wish she had committed to one approach or the other, although the resulting mash-up is still remarkably entertaining...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Season of the Witch, by Mariah Fredericks
This week's Book Giveaway is Mariah Fredericks's Season of the Witch, which I'm told is a psychological thriller set in an exclusive New York prep school, not a supernatural romance. (I enjoy the way the cover art is purposefully vague, presumably in an effort to attract both audiences.) Our review will go up later today...
I want one!
Okay, I love this story: NPR's article "Advice For Eating Well On A Tight Budget, From A Mom Who's Been There" introduces readers to JuJu Harris, a "culinary educator" and SNAP outreach coordinator with the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture, a nonprofit group devoted to pushing for...
An impressively terrible decision
According to Variety, Warner Bros. is making a Peter Pan origin movie slated for summer 2015. They have already cast Hugh Jackman and Garrett Hedlund as pirates, and just announced that Rooney Mara will play Tiger Lily. Clearly anticipating some controversy, the studio was careful to describe their film as a "multi-racial/international" production, and mentioned...
Anne Rice tries again
According to Dread Central, Anne Rice is going to write another installment of her Vampire Chronicles series. The book will be called Prince Lestat, and the author briefly described the plot...
MTV shows its age
People have been justifiably incensed by the MTV Movie Award nominees for 'Best Hero', which are 100% male. (And no, there's no 'Best Heroine' category.) Despite the huge and ongoing success of the Hunger Games adaptations, Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen lost out to Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man, Henry Cavill's Clark Kent, Chris Hemsworth's Thor, Martin Freeman's Bilbo Baggins, and Channing Tatum's, uh, whoever he played in White House Down, which nobody saw...
The Kill Order, by James Dashner
In 1988, John Christopher wrote When The Tripods Came, a prequel to the Tripods series, his famous 1960s science fiction trilogy. Creepy and deeply weird, When The Tripods Came simultaneously established the post-apocalyptic world featured in the main series and worked as a standalone novel. James Dashner's novel The Kill Order attempts to...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Kill Order by James Dashner
This week's Book Giveaway is James Dashner's The Kill Order, the prequel to his bestselling Maze Runner series. I've never read the Maze Runner books, but I'm choosing to believe that makes me the ideal person to review a prequel (no preconceptions!), rather than, y'know, totally unprepared. My review should go up this evening...
Discount Armageddon, Midnight Blue-Light Special, and Half-Off Ragnarok, by Seanan McGuire
The third book in Seanan McGuire's InCryptid series hit bookstores last week, making it officially Way Past Time for me to feature this fantastic (in all senses of the word) urban fantasy series on the site. Do your best to ignore the cover art—I promise this isn't a R-rated story about an anime schoolgirl gone rogue—and believe me when I say this series is wildly fun...
Ah, singing gang members
According to Deadline, Fox is considering remaking West Side Story. While Robert Wise's 1961 version is the highest Oscar-winning musical in history and was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress, Steven Spielberg has indicated his interest in directing a remake, and that's all it took...
Books on walls
Apartment Therapy recently introduced me to the website FreeVintagePosters.com, which (as the name would indicate) offers "free downloads of high quality vintage posters and retro art prints." Not all of the images are available for commercial use, and I suspect the cost of having a high-quality print made will be painful...
Old and improved
I recently ran across these mega-cute reprints of the first four Nancy Drew stories: The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, The Bungalow Mystery, and The Mystery at Lilac Inn. They're Penguin editions, they seemed sturdy, and, at $7.99, they're the same price as the classic editions with school bus-yellow spines...
The man-pretty version of James Gordon
I didn't even realize Warner Bros. was making a "Batman-less Batman series", but io9 has casting news for it: in the upcoming FOX TV show Gotham, David Mazouz has been cast as the preteen Bruce Wayne, and acting newcomer Camren Bicondova has been cast as Selina Kyle. The press release emphasizes that this is meant to be the origin story of Commissioner James Gordon, not Batman, so...
Goodnight, some more
Today Sterling Children’s Books is releasing Goodnight Songs, a compilation of "lullaby poems" by Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny author Margaret Wise Brown. According to Publishers Weekly, the book features the work of twelve different illustrators and is packaged with a...
Chasing Shadows, by Swati Avasthi
Swati Avashthi's YA novel Chasing Shadows strongly reminded me of a movie that I haven't seen in fifteen years but will never, ever forget: Peter Jackson's 1994 film Heavenly Creatures. Like Heavenly Creatures, Chasing Shadows is an engrossing portrait of the kind of intense, heady friendships that teenagers are capable of—friendships that can be deepened even further by adversity, transforming into something destructive and codependent...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Chasing Shadows, by Swati Avasthi
This week's Book Giveaway title is Swati Avasthi's novel Chasing Shadows. Featuring graphic novel-style illustrations by Craig Phillips, this book uses elements of Hindu myth to "create a gripping portrait of two girls teetering on the edge of grief and insanity." Admittedly, gripping portraits of grief and insanity are usually something I do my best to avoid, but the reviews for this sucker glow like a 100-watt bulb, so I've decided to give it a shot...
A classy move
According to a New York Times blog, The National Enquirer recently ran an apparently 100% fictional article suggesting that the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and playwright David Bar Katz were lovers who freebased cocaine together. Katz, a longtime friend of Hoffman's, successfully sued the publication for libel...
Way to be all about limited government, guys!
Good Lord: according to Publishers Weekly, the South Carolina House of Representatives voted to cut the College of Charleston's funding in response to the school's decision to include Alison Bechdel's critically acclaimed graphic memoir Fun Home on their summer reading list for incoming freshmen...
Simple but awesome
I'm really liking these vertical book display shelves from Viktor Jondal/Miron Lior. They're only $15, and I'm pretty sure I see a little lip that supports the front cover as well as the bulk of the pages, so you wouldn't damage your books. (This is not true of many similar "artistic" shelving options.) Imagine one of...