Jan 25 2013

Unusual library services

The New York Times posted a lovely article this week about an American Girl doll that's available for checkout from the Ottendorfer branch of the New York Public Library in the East Village, where many of the library's clients are unwilling or financially unable to buy American Girl dolls (which retail for a jaw-dropping $110 apiece) of their own...

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Jan 24 2013

Fateful, by Claudia Gray

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Claudia Gray's Fateful must have had one hell of an elevator pitch: “It's a Downton Abbey romance! But with werewolves! And set on the Titanic!” Some of those elements are executed more successfully than others, but we always approve of an author thinking big...

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Jan 24 2013

Making science

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NPR posted an article this morning about Ewan Birney and Nick Goldman, two scientists from the European Bioinformatics Institute, who set out to explore the use of DNA as a method of storing information. Birney and Goldman decided to encode Shakespeare's sonnets, an audio clip of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, and a picture of their office, and sent all the data...

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Jan 23 2013

What did Anne Shirley ever do to you, cover artist?

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WHOA. Remember the collection of The Bell Jar covers we linked to the other day? Well, Jezebel was also thinking of Sylvia Plath this week, and found this edition, which manages to be both deeply unsuitable (considering the book's subject matter) and ugly. But wait, there's more...

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Jan 22 2013

Here's hoping the Korean drama lightning will strike twice.

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Dramabeans recently posted an article about a possible drama adaptation of Salon H, a webtoon from manhwa writer Park So-hee, best known for her silly-but-undeniably-entertaining series Goong...

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Jan 22 2013

Weekly Book Giveaway: Fateful, by Claudia Gray

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We're a day late, but here goes: our current weekly book giveaway title is Claudia Gray's Fateful, a YA novel about werewolves on the Titanic. (No joke.) Our review will go up in a day or two...

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Jan 18 2013

Semi-useful Valentines

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I volunteer at a local children's library, and we are definitely going to be making these Heart-Shaped Page Markers from the website How About Orange for Valentine's Day. They look mega-cute and super easy...

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Jan 17 2013

Like the geekiest bake sale ever

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According to Tech News Daily, a physicist and author is attempting to use his science fiction writing to raise money to build laser weapons capable of knocking out guided missiles with electronics-disabling electromagnetic pulses. Adam Weigold, author of the upcoming novel Dragon Empire, is hoping his book...

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Jan 17 2013

The Bell Jar revisited

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The Atlantic recently put together a slideshow of a "50 Year Visual History" of Sylvia Path's The Bell Jar, which came out in England a half-century-ago this week. (It was originally published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, which made the book sound like it was written by a soap opera ingénue.) The slideshow includes...

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Jan 16 2013

Shield your eyes

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I don't watch reality TV, but Entertainment Weekly informs me that the latest episode of The Bachelor featured the contestants dressing up as Harlequin romance cover models. (Because nothing says "proof of romantic compatibility" like a willingness to pose as a vampire or Southern belle or whatever.) The results, judging by the covers featured in the article, seemed uniformly awful...

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Jan 15 2013

Spring Fever, by Mary Kay Andrews

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Mary Kay Andrews's novels are the modern-romance equivalent of a plain cake doughnut: unexciting, yet undeniably tasty. Her latest effort, 2012's Spring Fever, is the story of Annajane Hudgens, a sweet-tempered advertising executive carrying a not-totally-extinguished torch for her ex-husband (and current boss), Northern Carolina businessman Mason Bayless. They've both seemingly moved on with their lives, but...

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Jan 15 2013

Hopefully there aren't many power outages.

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MySanAntonio.com has an article up about Bexar County's attempt to create the nation's first book-free countywide library system. The goal is to have a library designed for the digital age (rather than adapted to it), which apparently means A) an interior resembling an Apple Store, B) an exterior resembling a minimum-security prison...

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Jan 14 2013

Weekly Book Giveaway: Spring Fever, by Mary Kay Andrews

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This week's Book Giveaway title is Mary Kay Andrews's Spring Fever. (Our review will go up tomorrow.) To enter, just send us an e-mail connected to a valid address...

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Jan 14 2013

Reworking Cinderella

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I didn't even realize Disney was making a "revisionist" film version of Cinderella, but apparently the movie is running into problems. Cate Blanchett is still on board as the wicked stepmother, but director Mark Romanek (Never Let Me Go) has left, allegedly due to "differing views on how to tell the story" between him and the studio...

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Jan 11 2013

The Rabbi's Cat (film review), by Joann Sfar

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I was recently sent a DVD screener of The Rabbi’s Cat, a 2011 animated film adaptation of Joann Sfar's graphic novel of the same name. I'm no film critic, and my previous experience with Sfar's work is limited to reading his sword-and-sorcery-on-drugs series Dungeon (which he co-created with Lewis Trondheim, and I have always found more exasperating than amusing), but I'll try anything once...

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Jan 10 2013

A random but interesting glimpse of the past

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Speaking of Laura Ingalls Wilder (or at least speaking of Wilder's illustrator Garth Williams), Slate recently posted an image of Almanzo Wilder's 1884 “Homestead Proof”, the document that established his claim to a homestead in the Dakota Territory...

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Jan 10 2013

Want to buy a piece of history?

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A collection of rare illustrations by Maurice Sendak, Dr. Seuss, Beatrix Potter, Charles Addams, Ludwig Bemelmans, and Charles Schulz is about to go up for auction via the Swann Galleries in New York. The works include a first edition of Sendak's first book, Where the Wild Things Are, "signed and inscribed with a drawing", and the original ink drawing done by Garth Williams for the dust jacket cover for Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie...

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Jan 9 2013

Dr. Jekyll vs. Mr. Hyde on a weekly basis

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Well, Revenge proved there was an audience for heavily-altered TV adaptations of classic novels, so at the end of the month NBC is kicking off Do No Harm, a modern-day reworking of Robert Louis Stevenson's novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde...

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Jan 8 2013

Kinky! But not really.

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WHOA. This collection of Spanish-language e-book editions of Jennifer Crusie's older titles looks way racier than anything actually featured in the books. These are stories set in Ohio, people...

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Jan 8 2013

Daughter of the Centaurs, by Kate Klimo

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Kate Klimo, author of the popular Dragon Keepers series for children, has launched a new trilogy aimed at older teens. The first book in the Centauriad series, Daughter of the Centaurs, introduces Malora, a girl growing up in a hunter-gatherer village in a post-apocalyptic future. Malora dreams of becoming a master horse-trainer like her father, and when her tribe is slaughtered by monsters her affinity with horses is all that allows her to survive...

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Jan 7 2013

Weekly Book Giveaway: Daughter of the Centaurs, by Kate Klimo

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It's been a couple of weeks, but we're (mostly) back on our normal schedule, which means it's time to announce the book for our Weekly Book Giveaway. This week's title is Kate Klimo's Daughter of the Centaurs, which we are planning to review tomorrow morning. (Review here...

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Jan 7 2013

Cold open

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Okay, I'm really looking forward to seeing this. MTV Geek recently posted a clip of the first four minutes of Warm Bodies, the not-very-thinly-disguised zombie version of Romeo and Juliet, and it looks ridiculously fun. Also, uh, just plain ridiculous, but that's never stopped me from enjoying something before...

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Jan 4 2013

Cinderella, vastly improved

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The always-delightful webcomic Hark! A Vagrant recently re-interpreted Cinderella, and the results are glorious. I hope this is the beginning of an entire series of reworked fairytales...

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Jan 3 2013

Book cover twins

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Last week, Flavorwire posted a slideshow of 10 "Suspiciously Similar" book covers, which I totally enjoyed. My favorite is the pairing of George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones with Mark Lawrence's nearly-identical King of Thorns. I'm pretty sure this would be an easy win, Mr. Martin, if you're feeling litigious...

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Jan 3 2013

Absolutely necessary, I'm sure.

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Publishers Weekly recently posted an article attempting to define the new publishing sub-genre "New Adult", which apparently is a) ubiquitous, and b) a vital part of the publishing machine. I can sum it up for you, though: "New Adult" books are "Young Adult" books, but with explicit sex scenes in them...

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Jan 2 2013

An awesome sign of things to come

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Happy New Year, everybody! 2013 is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice, so I have sky-high hopes for this year. A major Pride and Prejudice anniversary means this is clearly going to be a great year for... something. No idea what (other than a bumper crop of scholarly P&P analysis, obviously), but I'm sure it will be amazing...

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Dec 27 2012

Winter break

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Hi, everyone! Wordcandy.net is taking the week between Christmas and New Year's Day off. I'm planning to spend it obsessively stroking my presents, which include four absolutely gorgeous new Jane Austen editions. (Clearly, my friends and family accept that A) I am a huge nerd, and B) they need to shop accordingly.)...

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Dec 20 2012

Rough Justice, by Alex Ross

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Comic book artist Alex Ross is best known for his work on Kingdom Come, a 1996 DC miniseries about a group of middle-aged superheroes battling a gang of new, amoral vigilantes (including, in some cases, their own children). Pantheon Books recently released a paperback edition of Rough Justice, a collection of images pulled from Ross's private sketchbooks, deleted scenes, and published work...

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Dec 20 2012

My Christmas list is complete!

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Man, this has been a great year for Pride and Prejudice cover art. (You wouldn't think you could measure years that way, but you totally can.) I'm currently staring in awe at this edition...

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Dec 19 2012

What You See in the Dark, by Manuel Munoz

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It's been several days of teen-oriented books, so today was time for a literary palate cleanser. After poking through some of the older titles on our “To Be Read” shelves, I pulled out Manuel Munoz's 2011 book What You See in the Dark, equally attracted by the novel's absolutely stunning black-and-white cover art and its official description, which sounds about as far from most YA novels as you can get...

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