Sooo gorgeous
I'm assuming this is an attempt to further mine the pocketbooks of Tolkien fans (in case dividing The Hobbit into three movies wasn't shameless enough): Penguin has released a series called Legends from the Ancient North, described as...
Tandem, by Anna Jarzab
Anna Jarzab's last novel, The Opposite of Hallelujah, was a thoughtful and original exploration of family, faith, and mental illness. I loved it, but it didn't exactly scream “Teen Blockbuster”. Her latest effort, Tandem, hews much closer to the tried-and-true formula of recent bestsellers: love triangles, fantasy elements, violence, and deeply stupid choices abound...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Tandem, by Anna Jarzab
Our current Weekly Book Giveaway pick is Anna Jarzab's Tandem, the first installment in a projected trilogy. Early reviews are mixed, but I've really enjoyed Jarzab's previous two books, so my hopes remain high...
Superheroism
In additional comic book news, DC Comics has hired Toronto cartoonist Jeff Lemire to create a new title inspired by a teenage girl from James Bay, Canada. The 15-year-old girl in question, Shannen Koostachin, was a member of the Attawapiskat First Nation who advocated for equitable education funding for native children...
Just what the world needs
Neil Gaiman gave NPR a lengthy interview about The Sandman: Overture, a prequel series to his long-running Sandman comic book series. I'm mildly stoked about the idea, but...
Everyone I know is getting this for Christmas.
At long, looooong last, Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and a Half book has finally arrived! The book was originally supposed to come out last fall, but...
Burnt offerings
In one of the odder marketing tie-ins of recent memory, high-end chocolatier Vosges has released a line of Hunger Games-inspired chocolates. I'm not sure what a bunch of poverty-stricken industrial districts in a dystopian society have to do with $5 candy bars...
The Dark Between, by Sonia Gensler
Apart from an overly poetic opening sequence that compares the heroine to a “leggy foal contorted in the womb” (seriously), Sonia Gensler's novel The Dark Between is an enjoyably atmospheric and unpretentious historical fantasy-adventure story...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Dark Between, by Sonia Gensler
This week's Book Giveaway pick is Sonia Gensler's gothic romance The Dark Between, which I'm hoping (based entirely upon its title and cover art, as I haven't actually read the official description yet) is a Halloween-appropriate choice. Our review should go up later today...
My eyes, they roll
I have serious doubts about this, you guys: BBC News recently posted a round-up article about the upcoming series of six contemporary re-workings of Jane Austen's books. The HarperCollins project kicks off this month with Joanna Trollope's version of Sense and Sensibility, due out on October 29th. Future authors include...
Big-screen Little Women
So... they're trying to make another Little Women movie. According to Variety, the Sony Pictures project has been handed to a newbie scriptwriter named Olivia Milch. There's no word on casting or director or anything, but seeing as previous incarnations have starred...
Awkward!
CNN informs me that reclusive To Kill A Mockingbird author Harper Lee is suing the Monroe County Heritage Museum for trademark infringement. Lee's suit hinges on the argument...
New, pretty, arguably improved
Anthropologie has a habit of trotting out adorably re-designed classic book reprints shortly before the holidays. I'm not as excited about the cover art featured on...
A fool and their money are soon parted.
I love soccer, and I love books, but I cannot imagine anyone shelling out for former Brazilian legend Pelé's new book 1283, which will apparently cost 1,225 euros (approximately $1700) and weigh over thirty pounds...
Across A Star-Swept Sea, by Diana Peterfreund
I seriously wanted to love Diana Peterfreund's 2012 novel For Darkness Shows the Stars—it's a post-apocalyptic YA reworking of Jane Austen's Persuasion, and who hasn't always longed for one of those? Unfortunately, the story suffered from the same problem I usually have with Peterfreund's writing: she has style, intelligence, and imagination, but...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Across A Star-Swept Sea, by Diana Peterfreund
This week's Book Giveaway pick is Diana Peterfreund's Across A Star-Swept Sea, a "companion novel" (in this case, that means "not a sequel, but set in the same world") to 2012's For Darkness Shows the Stars. Both books have enjoyably weird literary ambitions: For Darkness Shows the Stars is a post-apocalyptic YA retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion, while Across A Star-Swept Sea is an equally bizarre re-working of the Baroness Orczy's...
Discounted home decor for your inner goth
If you're a member of the discount-furnishings site Joss & Main, they're currently running a sale on Edgar Allan Poe-inspired furniture. (People frequently get confused on how to spell Poe's middle name—“Allan” or “Allen”. I'm pretty sure the former is correct, but J&M hedges their bets by spelling it both ways; “Allan” in the header and “Allen” in the text.) I've never thought of Poe as a "design icon", but whatever...
Non-shocking confessions
I can't stop myself from hate-reading NPR's My Guilty Pleasure posts, in which authors recommend their favorite "embarrassing, but addictive reads". As longtime readers of the site know, I feel strongly that you should never be ashamed of the things you like (as long as they're not, y'know, illegal or immoral), and describing intelligent, witty genre authors like Georgette Heyer as a "guilty pleasure"...
Pride and Prejudice reworked (some more)
There was some good news on the Jane Austen continuation/retelling front this week: AustenBlog posted a very positive review of Nancy Kelley's His Good Opinion, and I was pleased to see that Lara S. Ormiston's upcoming Pride and Prejudice retelling Unequal Affection has been blessed with lovely cover art...
Rick Riordan gives an update
And speaking of Rick Riordan's The House of Hades (which I was, at least in passing), the author recently gave a lengthy interview to Publishers Weekly, which included an update on his upcoming series about the Norse gods...
If that extra minute matters...
I'm definitely going to read Veronica Roth's Allegiant, but I'm not invested enough to go out at midnight on October 22 to pick up a copy. (In contrast, if Rick Riordan's The House of Hades had been available at midnight, I would have been there with bells on.) However, more hardcore Roth fans can now get a teeny-tiny head start on the story...
The Eye of Minds, by James Dashner
I have never understood James Dashner's success. He has some fun ideas, and his best-selling Maze Runner series definitely came out at the perfect, immediately-post-Hunger Games time, but his characters are incredibly boring. But he has zillions of fans who obviously feel otherwise, so I did my best to approach his new book The Eye of Minds without preconceptions...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Eye of Minds, by James Dashner
The first order of business after our unscheduled break: a book giveaway. This week's pick is James Dashner's The Eye of Minds, described as "the first book in The Mortality Doctrine, a series set in a world of hyperadvanced technology, cyberterrorists, and gaming beyond your wildest dreams . . . and your worst nightmares". I wasn't a fan of Dashner's earlier series, but maybe this will knock my socks off. Our review should go up later today...
A brief hiatus
Due to a death in the family, Wordcandy.net will not be updated until October 14th, 2013. We appreciate your support and patience!
The Giver to hit big screens
Cinema Blend recently posted an article about the Weinstein Company's upcoming film adaptation of Lois Lowry's The Giver, beloved by sixth-grade teachers everywhere (except for those sixth-grade teachers that think it should be burned because of its satanic agenda, of course). The movie will star...
Untold: The Lynburn Legacy, Book Two, by Sarah Rees Brennan
Sarah Rees Brennan's novel Unspoken was one of my favorite YA books of 2012. I objected to the twee cover art, the overly-mannered dialogue, and the underdeveloped antagonist, but I was utterly in love with the protagonists' romantic conflict: an example of teen angst done absolutely right...
Cooking with Roald Dahl
The blog Paper and Salt (which attempts to "recreate and reinterpret the dishes that iconic authors discuss in their letters, diaries, essays, and fiction") doesn't update often, and even more rarely does it feature authors that I like, but the author recently came up with a recipe inspired by Roald Dahl's "Frozen Homemade Kit-Kat Cake"...
Impractical storage
Most of me really likes this bookshelf, but even I have to admit it looks like the least-efficient book storage unit on the planet. The artist (Matt Innes) describes it as a "personal typographic bookshelf sized to fit just those books you go back to time & again", but I'm pretty sure that's just a fancy way of saying "ONLY FOR SHOW"...
Getting In, by Karen Stabiner
I found Karen Stabiner's novel Getting In surprisingly readable, despite the fact that fully 99% of its plot could be summed up with a dismissive “First world problems”...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Getting In, by Karen Stabiner
This week's Book Giveaway title is Karen Stabiner's Getting In, a novel about five Los Angeles families obsessed (to varying degrees) with getting their children into good colleges. I'm fascinated by the modern college application process—when I was applying, roughly fifteen years ago, it seemed like they took anyone with a B+ average and a pulse—but things are obviously verrrrry different now, and this novel explores those changes...