Jun 6 2011

Needless to say, we will not be reading the sequel to Precious.

And speaking of summer reading, NPR has been putting together a number of genre-specific recommended reading lists, including crime fiction, cookbooks, and historical novels. Their selections are...

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Jun 6 2011

A word of advice

Lifehacker has put together a helpful guide for How to Create an Awesome Summer Reading List. They offer everything from basic tips ("First, tackle your reading backlog") to DIY-instructions for ...

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Jun 2 2011

Charming!

Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul has announced that there is no female writer whom he considers his equal. He specifically dismisses Jane Austen's claim to literary fame, saying he "couldn...

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Jun 1 2011

Faking It and Fast Women, by Jennifer Crusie

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The fine people at St. Martin's Griffin continue to trot out reprints of Jennifer Crusie's earlier work. Their latest offerings are freshly re-covered editions of 2001's Fast Women and...

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May 31 2011

Dreamy!

Last week, The Beat posted the cover image for Yen Press's upcoming Twilight: The Graphic Novel #2, and it is, frankly, hilarious. Behold:It's possible that Yen will shell out for a print job tha...

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May 31 2011

Cover your eyes, gentle viewers.

There's been all kinds of conspiracy-theory speculation as to whether or not Sony released this "pirated" red band trailer for their upcoming film adaptation of Steig Larsson’s The Girl With the D...

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May 26 2011

Generous millionaires take note:

My birthday is in January.A handwritten and incredibly rare manuscript of Jane Austen's unfinished novel The Watsons is going up for auction this summer. The manuscript (the only one still in pri...

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May 26 2011

Maggie Stiefvater tries on the one-book format

I've been keeping an eye out for news from BookExpo America, and Publishers Weekly did a nice summary post on the big announcements in YA and children's publishing. There are several titles I'm a...

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May 25 2011

The Little Mermaid gets even creepier

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sony is planning a film adaptation of Carolyn Turgeon's Mermaid, which is a "dark" retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's (already too dark for my taste) The L...

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May 24 2011

Exposed, by Kimberly Marcus

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Kimberly Marcus's Exposed is a YA novel written entirely in free verse. It's a gimmicky approach, but the poetry format proves to be a perfect fit for this book—it takes a dark, gripping story an...

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May 24 2011

Congratulations, Dr. Lacks.

NPR aired a news story yesterday about an honorary doctorate of public service from Morgan State University posthumously awarded to Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whose cancer cells ha...

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May 23 2011

Get out your magnifying glass and deerstalker

If you're interested in Tighter, the Turn of the Screw modernization by Adele Griffin currently featured on the Wordcandy main site, Ms. Griffin has written an iClue mini-mystery featuring two of ...

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May 23 2011

Happy 100th, NY Public Library

Wow... it sounds like the New York Public Library's 100th Birthday Celebration was epic. Here's hoping everyone lucky enough to attend had a wonderful time, and that the library survives for anot...

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May 20 2011

The CW goes with what works

One more Wordcandy-friendly promo, and then we're done. The CW has debuted the official trailer for The Secret Circle, their upcoming adaptation of L.J. Smith's series about teen witches. (Smith...

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May 19 2011

Oprah she isn't.

NPR posted an article last Monday about TV personality and best-selling author Chelsea Handler, who was recently given her own publishing inprint within Grand Central Publishing. Handler might se...

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May 19 2011

Anyone else seeing Anne of Green Gables with a bow?

Well, Entertainment Weekly has released their May 20th cover image featuring Jennifer Lawrence as Hunger Games heroine Katniss Everdeen. And she looks fine, I suppose, although something about th...

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May 18 2011

Once Upon a Fall Upfront

Fairy tales are clearly hot right now, at least if you're a network TV producer. NBC's Grimm looks straight-up terrible (although I enjoyed the creepiness of the mailman guy). The acting in ABC'...

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May 17 2011

Adele Griffin

Adele Griffin is the author of a number of critically acclaimed YA books, including Tighter, a modernization of Henry James's novella The Turn of the Screw and one of our Featured Books. Ms. Grif...

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May 17 2011

Tighter, by Adele Griffin

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I have always loved Henry James's 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw. When it comes to classic horror, this masterpiece of subtle, uncanny creepiness is the gold standard. Tighter, Adele Gr...

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May 17 2011

Tempest in a Barnes and Noble teapot

According to Jezebel, Barnes and Noble has decided to censor the latest issue of Dossier magazine, lest readers mistake the cover image—featuring the nude torso of androgynous male model Andrej Pe...

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May 16 2011

Borders trying the "everything but the kitchen sink" approach?

Publishers Weekly has done another post on the rumors surrounding the current state of the troubled Borders chain. According to their most recent information, some of the bookstores may be sold (...

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May 16 2011

And who doesn't love free nail polish?

If you're going to be in Southern California in early June, you might want to add the various promotional events for the Go Fug Yourself ladies' upcoming YA book Spoiled to your day planner. In a...

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May 12 2011

Watchponies

Someone has done a really, really good job mashing together last spring's Watchmen movie adaptation with the new My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon.

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May 12 2011

Wonder Woman: DOA?

Did David Kelley's oft-altered Wonder Woman reboot fail to make the cut at NBC? Variety thinks so. Too bad, because I hear the writers had toned down all the Ally McBeal-style fluttering and uppe...

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May 11 2011

Flight: Vol. 7, edited by Kazu Kibuishi

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The seventh volume of Flight is another solid installment in Villard Books' series of lavishly illustrated graphic novel anthologies. These sixteen short stories—edited by contributor and art dir...

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May 10 2011

The sex symbols of tomorrow?

I suspect this is one of those trends that are 99% fabrication, but the Washington Post assures me that publishers are bracing for a "flurry" of Navy SEAL-themed romance novels inspired by the dea...

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May 10 2011

Just keep hitting that Refresh button...

Hopefully everyone had a chance to check out Google's homepage yesterday, which featured 16 different "Google Doodle" shout-outs to Roger Hargreaves, the creator of the icon Mr. Men and Little Mis...

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May 9 2011

Eat like a superhero

Whoa: somebody from the site Branded in the 80s dug up a copy of DC Comics' Super Heroes Super Healthy Cookbook, a mini cookbook that appeared in the July 1981 issue of Woman's Day. Doesn't the m...

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May 9 2011

Pride and Prejudice: A Musical

I'm told that the first production of the Pride and Prejudice musical in Washington State is currently running at a high school about an hour away from my house. I'm not sure I'll have a chance t...

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May 6 2011

Clearly, Jason Momoa isn't worried about typecasting.

The first full-length trailer for the 2011 remake of Conan the Barbarian came out yesterday, and I'm almost impressed by how silly it looks. I've watched this sucker twice, and I still see absolu...

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