Spoiled for choice
The fine people at Publishers Weekly recently posted a list of recommended summer reading, and, as usual, a number of tearjerkers made the cut. Book critics always think they're being so original and daring when they recommend bleak summertime reading, but this list alone includes...
65% weird, 35% awesome
The online design community Imprint recently posted an article about a "typographical experiment" called Page 1: Great Expectations. Each page of Page 1 is devoted to the work of a different graphic designer, but they all feature the same text: the first page of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations...
Recycling
I'm never going to be fully comfortable with the idea of "repurposing" a book, no matter how terrible the story or how awesome the new product. That being said, some of these ideas for using up old books are kind of cool... but only if you're using, like, Kathleen E. Woodiwiss novels.
The perfect spot to watch TV
If you're looking for the ideal finishing touch for your living room, may I suggest this $30,000 Game of Thrones "Iron Throne" replica? I'm pretty sure it's exactly what your home decor needs to feel complete...
Ray Bradbury: August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012
Ray Bradbury, author of The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, and the hugely creepy Something Wicked This Way Comes, died yesterday at age 91. He apparently wanted to be buried on Mars; here's hoping he ends up there.
Perhaps an improvement?
For those you who seriously disliked the trailer for Baz Luhrmann's upcoming Great Gatsby adaptation, do you like it better featuring the characters from My Little Pony?
Swashbuckling, etc.
Guy Ritchie has been hired to direct a new film adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. No word on whether or not it will be as smirkingly tongue-in-cheek as Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes movies, but since they're describing it as a "stylized" version of the novel, I'm assuming so...
Grimness abounds
NPR has started a new blog devoted to YA literature. It's called "PG-13: Risky Reads", and while I'm not overly impressed by the books they have featured to date (On The Beach, Rubyfruit Jungle, Gone With The Wind, and I Am The Cheese), I'll definitely be checking back to see if their subject matter improves...
Utterly generic
The trailer is out for the upcoming movie adaptation of Stephen Chbosky's 1999 novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I know people are excited about this, but I was rolling my eyes at the sight of Paul Rudd playing the requisite oddball-yet-understanding English teacher, and...
Busy, busy
Publishers Weekly is offering an exclusive sneak peek at the cover for The Mark of Athena, the third (or eighth, depending on how you look at it) installment in Rick Riordan's best-selling "Heroes of Olympus" series...
Meh.
The trailer is out for the upcoming movie adaptation of Les Misérables. I know some people are in a tizzy over the casting...
Could be worse, I guess
Esquire magazine recently announced it will be releasing a series of ebooks dedicated to men’s fiction. The first edition will be a collection of short stories that aspires to satiate "the literary appetite of the male mind–whatever that may be"....
Seriously abridged
If you're a fan of the Classics Illustrated series or the children's comics anthology Little Lit, you might want to check out the recently-released collection The Graphic Canon, Vol. 1. The trilogy will feature nearly 200 gorgeously-illustrated literary adaptions, ranging from the early epics...
Everything old
Lifetime Television is developing an ongoing drama featuring Clarice Starling, the main character from the horror/thriller The Silence of the Lambs. I'm not sure if the TV show will have much to do with Thomas Harris's books, but there's still obviously a lot of interest in the series...
Useful, adorable, and free
The website How About Orange has been on a bibliophile-friendly kick recently, posting links and how-to tips on a variety of book-related topics...
Sorry, Nordic Ware
Baking Bites gave this Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs "cakelet" pan a good review, but I find it straight-up disturbing.
So clever...
Check out this entry to Dwell's Live/Work Design Contest. Pretty brilliant, huh? Although any bendy items (like, say, magazines) would probably flop over that short little stopper.
Over the top, and then some
The trailer is out for Baz Luhrmann's upcoming adaptation of The Great Gatsby, and it looks exactly like you would expect: spectacular visuals, amazing costumes, and loads of Leonardo DiCaprio over-emoting...
Is there really a demand for this?
All Neil Gaiman fans for whom money is no object (and don't already own virtually identical editions) take note: DC has announced a slipcase edition of all ten volumes of Sandman. The set will cost $199 and be released on November 13th.
Another one I'll be skipping
Rupert Everett is planning to make his directorial debut with a movie about Oscar Wilde's final days. According to Variety, the biopic The Happy Prince will be a "comedy with tragic undertones", but if it's really a nonfiction account, I'm not sure where the comedy's going to come from...
Uglies: Shay's Story, by Scott Westerfeld and Devon Grayson
Uglies: Shay's Story is a graphic novel tie-in to Scott Westerfeld's popular Uglies books. It provides a backstory for Shay, one of the series' more interesting characters, and another trip into Westerfeld's dystopian world. Bored and rebellious, 15-year-old Shay is eagerly awaiting her next birthday and the socially mandated surgery that will transform her into a Pretty—a physically idealized version of herself...
A new, new Sherlock Holmes
I'm never going to be fully aboard the Jonny Lee Miller train, but I might check out CBS's Elementary. I really like Lucy Liu, and I enjoy the idea of a female Dr. Watson...
Still kicking
The Atlantic Wire has an impressively in-depth article up about the current state of "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. Turns out they're less dead than I thought.
Unnecessary
I don't know about this iPad cover, guys. It's snazzy-looking, sure, but "BookBook" is a ridiculous name, and "Curl up with a good BookBook" is an even more ridiculous tag line. Plus, $69.99 for a fancy iPad holder? Please.
The Nightmare Garden, by Caitlin Kittredge
Caitlin Kittredge's The Nightmare Garden is the sequel to The Iron Thorn, which I reviewed last year. Like its predecessor, The Nightmare Garden is a steampunk-infused fantasy set in an alternate-universe version of 1950s New England. It's the continuing (mis)adventures of Aoife Grayson, the half-Fae, half-human girl who was manipulated into destroying the Lovecraft Engine....
The Sons of Liberty, by Joseph and Alexander Lagos
Alexander and Joseph Lagos's graphic novel series The Sons of Liberty has a lot going for it: unusual protagonists, wonderfully vivid artwork, and an action-packed historical setting. It's the story of two runaway slave children, Brody and Graham, who escape from an abusive plantation only to find themselves in even greater danger—they're captured by William Franklin (Benjamin Franklin's illegitimate son), who uses them as unwilling lab rats in an bizarre science experiment...
Awkward...
Ouch: Jennifer Crusie's short story collection Crazy People: The Crazy For You Stories is allegedly (although one never knows with Crusie) hitting stores soon, and her graphic designer had chosen a perfectly lovely, Roy Lichtenstein-esque stock art image for the cover...
Tiffany's Table Manners for Teenagers, by Walter Hoving
Clearly courting the doting-grandparent market, Random House recently released a 50th Anniversary edition of Walter Hoving's Tiffany's Table Manners for Teenagers. Hoving, a former chairman of Tiffany's of New York, offers readers advice on a variety of fine-dining conundrums: how to eat asparagus; the proper way to tilt a soup bowl; what to do with an olive pit...
Cross My Heart, by Sasha Gould
Sasha Gould's historical mystery/romance Cross My Heart isn't perfect, but YA novels as ambitious as this one are rare*, so I want to give credit where credit is due: apart from some minor missteps, Cross My Heart is atmospheric and compulsively readable.
Cross My Heart opens in Venice, 1585, as sixteen-year-old Laura della Scala glumly counts down the days until she will be forced to become a nun....
Lords and Ladies, by Elizabeth Mansfield
As I read Lords and Ladies, a recently-released omnibus edition of three of Elizabeth Mansfield's Regency-era romance novels, one thought remained paramount throughout: I have got to learn more about copyright law. Because while I found the first two stories featured in the collection silly and far-fetched, the third was a shameless rip-off of Georgette Heyer's A Civil Contract*, minus all of the plot elements that made A Civil Contract so intriguing.