And in other movie news...
Spike Jonze is really, truly, absolutely making a movie of Where the Wild Things Are. No, I can’t imagine it either, but MTV has pictures, so it must be true. The CW is NOT doing a Gossip Girl s...
Brendan Fraser: still out there.
Somehow I missed the fact that Brendan Fraser is going to be starring in the adaption of Jules Verne's novel Journey to the Center of the Earth. I really thought we'd seen the end of his career af...
Genius Squad, by Catherine Jinks
I really enjoyed Catherine Jinks’s novel Evil Genius, but its little-kid-friendly cover art and gimmicky opening failed to prepare me for the story that followed—it was tough to recover from the shock of finding such hardcore creepiness in a book with a cover that looked like a Saturday morning cartoon..
If you'd be so kind...?
I keep hearing that NPR commentator and librarian-at-large Nancy Pearl is going to be featuring Georgette Heyer's novel An Infamous Army: A Novel of Wellington, Waterloo, Love and War on her highl...
Johanna Spyri turns 181
The NPR feature The Writer's Almanac informs me that today is Heidi author Johanna Spyri's birthday.I haven't read Heidi in 15 years, but it's been lurking around in the background of my mind late...
The Prince of Midnight, Seize the Fire, and Midsummer Moon, by Laura Kinsale
If you like your romance novels high on action, low on plausibility, and full of darkly tormented heroes and heroines, check out Laura Kinsale’s books: they’re imaginative, they’re well-written, and every one of ‘em features a full soap opera’s worth of hardcore drama...
Laura Kinsale 2.0
The fine people at Sourcebooks will soon be releasing three reprints of Laura Kinsale's historical romances from the '80s and '90s. Kinsale has only written one new book in the past decade (2004's...
Twilight fans take heed!
The Twilight preview is out, and Edward's hair is magnificent:Aw, man... this looks so bad, and I know I'm going to see it. (I always do--I went to see Blood and Chocolate on opening night, and i...
His Cunning or Hers
The Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) has a wonderful new section of their website—an area dedicated to works published for their Annual General Meetings (AGM). These pieces are the cr...
Irritation factor increase: 19%
The manga blogs have been abuzz with news of Tokyopop's recent "restructuring". According to several sources, the Los Angeles-based manga publisher will divide itself into two separate divisions: ...
Inuyasha to end
After 12 action-packed years, comic goddess Rumiko Takahashi is ending Inuyasha. According to the Rumic World website:"Inuyasha is set to end after two more chapters with #558 wrapping up volume ...
Signs of life
I am a wee bit late to this, but Jenny Crusie recently posted* the first chapter of Dogs and Goddesses, her upcoming collaboration with Anne Stuart and Lani Diane Rich, and I am happy to inform yo...
Gossip Girl in a hoop skirt
Rumors, the sequel to Luxe, Anna Godbersen's 2007 novel about Manhattan debutantes at the turn of the previous century, is now out in stores:I loved the cover art for Luxe, but I couldn't get past...
"Writing as Ian Fleming", huh?
The new James Bond novel is out, and it's written by some guy named Sebastian Faulks: According to the veerrry fine, veerrry pale print between the two authors' names (can you guys even read that...
Runaways: the movie
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel's Runaways series will be getting its very own film adaptation sometime in the (probably very distant) future. Series creator Brian K. Vaughn is writin...
The Foundling: Monster Blood Tattoo, by D. M. Cornish
Poor Rosamund Bookchild. Orphaned and odd, he just can’t catch a break. He's scrawny and curious in a world where neither is desirable. Kids pick on him, potential employers pass him over, and al...
Naomi and Ely's No-Kiss List, by David Leviathan and Rachel Cohn
David Levithan writes about teenagers so well that I originally thought he must not be too far divorced from his own teen years. As it turns out, he’s thirty-eight—but his writing does an excellen...
Expanding the empire
According to Variety, Disney's plans for Kingdom Comics are progressing nicely. This new division will develop graphic novels for film adaptation (and turn past live-action films into comics). It...
Studio Ghibli takes on The Little Mermaid
We're seeing early images from Hayao Miyazaki's upcoming film Ponyo on the Cliff:Ponyo is a retelling of Hans Christian Anderson's classic fairytale The Little Mermaid. The plot centers on a gold...
Call of the Highland Moon, by Kendra Leigh Castle
Kendra Leigh Castle’s debut novel Call of the Highland Moon kicks off with a supernatural twist on the meet cute device: When werewolf Gideon MacInnes is attacked by his cousin’s minions during a ...
Julia Quinn picks up the pace
Speaking of Ms. Quinn...I am not a huge Julia Quinn fan--her books are pleasant, but rarely memorable--but I found myself unusually interested in the secondary couple in her just-released The Los...
Avon Books gets time out of purgatory
Avon Books has launched a charity called Love Gives Back. According to their website, "Love Gives Back [is] a new program where you'll get Sneak Peeks into upcoming releases and be able to read Av...
Excited about that 800-word-long Harry Potter prequel?
For those of you just turning on your computers, J.K. Rowling has written an 800-word mini-prequel to her Harry Potter series that will be auctioned off for a charity benefiting Dyslexia Action. I...
We’ll have YA fantasy coming out of our ears.
I’m still waiting to see what Megan Whalen Turner will publish next (where did that woman go?), but several other A-list fantasy writers are marching towards their next publication:1. Robin McKinl...
Princess Ben, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s new novel Princess Ben is a major departure from her earlier works, Dairy Queen and The Off Season. While Dairy Queen and The Off Season focused on the trials of a dairy-farming teenager with dreams of playing high school football in small-town Wisconsin...
Creeptastic
Check it out:Wow! I've never read Jeanne DuPrau's The City of Ember*, but Bill Murray? Tim Robbins? Martin Landau? Those are some big names for a kid movie--not that ths particular preview seems a...
Build-a-library
While wandering through my local bookstore last night, I came across the new line of Puffin Classics re-releases. Each of the titles featured below costs $4.99, and includes an introduction by a w...
I think we're reading these titles a little differently.
Check out this blog post on Guardian.co.uk about the sexism faced by female fantasy authors. I have no doubt female writers encounter considerable sexism*, but I'm not sure I agree with such stat...
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: 10th Anniversary Edition
Scholastic has announced an upcoming 10th Anniversary edition of J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The re-release will cost $30.00, feature new artwor...