Yet another Stephen King book will be hitting the small screen--in this case, his novella The Colorado Kid is being turned into an hourlong TV series called Haven.
According to Variety, "the project centers on a spooky town in Maine where cursed folk live normal lives in exile. When those curses start returning, FBI agent Audrey Parker is brought in to keep those supernatural forces at bay--while trying to unravel the mysteries of Haven."
That actually sounds pretty fun. King's had some mixed results with TV adaptations in the past, but I might check this out.
Oh, look. Another book about Elizabeth worrying that she has lost Mr. Darcy to the charms of another. Just what the world needs!
Five bucks says the central plot twist of this Pride and Prejudice continuation is "It was all a big misunderstanding, and Darcy's heart never faltered!" Any takers?
Before I get to the complaining, let me first state that I am sincerely delighted Yen Press has picked up the license for Yotsuba&!, which is one of our all-time favorite series. Thanks, Yen Press! You guys are awesome, and your slightly repackaged editions of Yotsuba&! are both shiny and adorable. Behold:
However... was giving Yotsuba her very own font really necessary? Her various pronouncements are usually strange enough without a quirky font emphasizing the weirdness. And did you have to provide so many footnotes? I mean, if you tell me that a t-shirt reads "Fifteen years old" on page 15, you don't really need to explain it again on page 17. And we actually would have been just fine if you had resisted the desire to translate nonsense Japanese sound effects ("Ba!") into nonsense English sound effects ("Wham!"). We don't mean to quibble, but that's what God gave us context for.
Wasn't M.T. Anderson promising to release this over a year ago?
We'd say better late than never... but this is VERY LATE, MR. ANDERSON.
Note: Also, what is up with burying Jasper Dash and The Flame-Pits of Delaware (the book's actual title) under that massive "Pals in Peril" thing? You can barely see it!
The above titles are part of Harlequin's "Vintage Collection"--six re-releases of some of their earliest books. The cover art is delicious... and how can we resist the casual misogyny of a plot description like the one for No Nice Girl?
When a thoroughly "nice" girl is clever as well, let her less strongly armed sisters beware.
Yet the arrival in town of Phyllis's little country cousin, Anice Mayhew, spelled danger for both Phyllis and Letty. For Anice was dewy-eyed, supersweet and diabolically innocent.
Nicole Weston, whose Baking Bites blog has been destroying diets since 2004, has decided to release a cookbook. The book is self-published and will ship in late October. It contains 51 recipes, each accompanied by a full-page, full-color photo. If you buy the book directly from the Baking Bites site it costs $16.95 and includes free U.S. shipping.
Even if you're not in the market for a new cookbook right now, dear readers, I seriously encourage you to check out this woman's site. Her stuff is awesome, and I for one fully intend to celebrate my Friday with some of those Halloween M&M cookies.
MTV's Movie Blog has announced an upcoming movie adaptation of Twilight author Stephenie Meyer's novel The Host.
Are there any actresses out there specializing in glum facial expressions and unwashed hair? Because while I highly doubt Kristen Stewart would be willing to sign up for another Meyer blockbuster, they are going to need another actress with a similar skill set.
Since Jennifer's Body tanked at the box office, Diablo Cody has apparently decided to inflict her (highly questionable) talent for creating teen-girl dialogue on a very different style of story: she's been tapped to produce and direct a new adaptation of the Sweet Valley High books.
I have a cold right now, so my head's a little swimmy... but I find this news totally hilarious.
Slate has set out to answer a question I've been wondering about myself: what's with all the recent articles proclaiming vampires some kind of "new craze"? Haven't they been a consistent craze? (There's certainly been a steady vampire-story presence throughout my lifetime.) Anyway, two Slate writers have mapped the ebb and flow of vamp popularity since the 1960s in their Garlic Years Timeline.
(Is it just me, or has Lisa Kleypas's website gotten more tasteful again? Man, don't you guys miss it back when it looked like this? Good times...)
Anyway, if you take a gander at Ms. Kleypas's site, she's celebrating the release of her new book, the just-out-today Tempt Me at Twilight, by offering readers a free short story. Details are available on her homepage and the price couldn't be righter, so enjoy!
Speaking of upcoming book releases, there seem to be a huge number of Wordcandy books coming out this fall/winter, many of which come as a pleasant surprise (and an overdue reminder that we need to update the calendar).
Sadly, however, there was a significant fly in our ointment: a staggered release date for the upcoming Diana Wynne Jones book Enchanted Glass. Readers in England will apparently get their hands on this sucker four months before those of us in the U.S., in a move that brings out our outraged-and-whiny inner thirteen-year-olds.
Note to Ms. Jones's publishers: Prettier cover art than that pictured above *might* make us quicker to forgive.
Heeeeey, they've finally reprinted L.J. Smith's Dark Visions series! I'm sure I can thank the success of the CW's cheese-tastic Vampire Diaries for this, and it raises a more important question: is anyone going to reprint her two children's books, Night of the Solstice and Heart of Valor? Because they are totally her best work, despite the fact that she apparently began the first one in high school.
And speaking of thank-yous, I'd also like to give a shout out to the person who decided to publish this sucker in a ten-dollar omnibus edition. Smith's stuff is very entertaining, but it is not great fantasy (except for the kids' books mentioned above!), so I am sincerely grateful to her publishers, who have given this teen-girl-friendly pulp fiction a totally appropriate price. Thanks, guys, for remembering that most allowances are not infinite.
This image of San Francisco was commissioned by the San Francisco Chronicle. Artist Ian Huebert borrowed literary quotes from a number of different authors, combining them into a colorful map of the city. Best of all, this sucker is free. All you have to do is download it and print it out!
Sisters Grimm author Michael Buckley has a new series coming out soon, and by "soon" I mean ON TUESDAY!!! I'm not sure how this slid past my radar, but check it out:
Admittedly, Amazon has Buckley listed as a "contributor", and the illustrator dude listed as author, but I have often wondered if Amazon employees do all of their data entry while drunk out of their gourds.
But when will they give us a manga version of Gossip Girl?
Yen Press has announced plans to publish a manga adaptation of the first book in Lisi Harrison’s massively popular series The Clique. Yen's adaptation will be released next July and is being illustrated by Yishan Li.
Garrison Keillor has written an essay for Salonabout his recent stroke. It gets a little political at the end (which I wouldn't object to, but his comments feel weirdly tacked-on), and he goes on at tedious length about how nurses are "attractive young women" with a "caring gene", apparently not realizing that some nurses are, uh, dudes.
Still, it's a nice enough essay... and when you consider that he had the stroke just over a week ago, I probably shouldn't quibble. Anyway, we here at Wordcandy wish Mr. Keillor the best of luck and complete and speedy recovery.
Slate is currently featuring an essay called "How I wrote Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters", by Quirk Books author Ben H. Winters. I'm still not paying to read his book, but I have to give the man credit: he comes across as charming and funny, and does a better job of selling the material than I would have expected.
Well, if people went to see a love story set on the Titanic, why not?
But if you like your movies sob-inducing, feel free to check out Bright Star, a biopic about the love affair of poet John Keats and the young woman who lived next door to him. Not to spoil things, but Keats died at age 25, so... well, don't get attached:
I'm sorry, Jim Carrey, but I don't like watching old people fall and get hurt. Not even cartoon old people. I only find slapstick funny when the participants are practically made of rubber, and I don't think it adds much to the classic story of a grumpy cheapskate learning the True Meaning of Christmas:
The Times has a nice obit up for Jim Carroll, poet, musician, and The Basketball Diaries author, who died on Friday at his home in Manhattan at age 60.
By the end of the month, I'm hoping to have realized a life-long dream: a real, grown-up library. After spending the past year remodeling my house, I finally have the space... but, sadly, my library-to-be is currently an empty room with a massive, uncovered window and about an acre of un-sanded wood floor. We still have several weeks' worth of work to do, not to mention figuring out a way to finagle things like, oh, bookshelves without breaking the bank.
But if money was no object (and I could convince my cat not to immediately throw up on it), I would totally buy this:
I have a sneaking suspicion it wouldn't actually be that comfortable, but all that orange squashiness speaks to my very soul.
Is anybody else having one of those weeks where they're constantly checking the calendar, wondering uneasily if they've lost time and it's suddenly April first?
Hmm. Penguin seems to have bumped up the release date for the second book in Nora Roberts's 'Bride Quartet'. Behold the cover for Bed of Roses, now coming out on October 27th:
That's... surprisingly ugly. I'm not sure why, but something about that image (The pose? The colors? The cleavage?) says "generic romance novel" much more strongly than most of Roberts's recent books, including the equally wedding-themed cover for the first title in the series.
Today's the last day for AllPosters.com's big poster sale, which includes a couple of awesome Ralph Steadman illustrations from Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Behold:
If you're looking to cover up some blank walls, Steadman + a $4.98 price tag + free shipping on orders over $14.99 is hard to beat.
Wow: According to the AP Wire, James Patterson has signed on to write seventeen(!!!) books for Hachette in the next three years--11 adult thrillers and 6 YA books.
I'm not much of a Patterson fan to begin with (I've only read his Maximum Ride books, which have always struck me as mildly entertaining but deeply stupid*), and I shudder to think how this new, break-neck release speed will be reflected in the quality of his work.
*Okay, mostly I hate the way he ends all of his chapters on dramatic pauses, most of which go nowhere. Seriously, there's about a thousand of 'em per book, and they all read like this:
End of Chapter 131:
...and then something hit the front door with a terrifying crash.
Beginning of Chapter 132:
It was the newspaper delivery. We split up the comics and went on with our breakfasts.
A quick reminder for disorganized Rumiko Takahashi fans: Inuyasha: the Final Act will begin airing in Japan on October 3rd.
People who watched the original TV series on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim or have been catching up on the episodes via Hulu (like me) might not realize that the anime, despite being a zillion seasons long, ended well before the manga. This new series will cover the story featured in volumes 36 through 56 of the manga, and will feature the same production staff and voice cast.
Neil Gaiman's long-hinted-at short film will happen, and it will apparently star ubiquitous character actor Bill Nighy. According to Cinematical, the movie will be a silent short described as "a love story involving two statues and Christmas shoppers".
Eh, it's a tough call. At his best, Gaiman can be adorable, but he can also be pretentious as all-git-out. However, I do like Bill Nighy, so we'll have to see....
Take note, dear readers: AustenBlog is saying that the BBC's new version of Emma is due to air "early in October". And while that means that us poor souls in the States won't get to see it until 2010, I imagine that some kind, generous, technologically savvy British people will upload it onto YouTube for us before that. So if you don't mind watching your Austen adaptations in nine- to fifteen-minute-long increments (and I find that I don't), mark your calendars now!
Robert Downey Jr. continues to work the comic book angle
Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr. has apparently signed on to star in a film adaptation of Cowboys and Aliens, a graphic novel created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg in 2006. I haven't read it, but I hear it's about an alien species landing in Arizona in the mid-1800s, which sounds kind of fun.
NPR is full of Suzanne Collins goodness right now: their site is offering both a sneak peek at chapter two of her just-released novel Catching Fire and a lengthy interview with the author.
The comic book world is all a-flutter with the news that Disney is buying Marvel for $4 billion... and while I don't have a big emotional stake in either one of these companies, if Disney casts any member of the Cyrus family in the rumored Runaways movie we will have words.
And in slightly bigger-budget promotional news, here's the trailer for the upcoming film based on Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox:
I was a little taken aback by the animation style, but this film looks like a lot of fun. We always go to the movies on Thanksgiving (helps work off all that family time), and this looks like it might be a contender.
Behold, it's the book trailer for Mr. Darcy, Vampyre, our current Featured Book:
I refrained from complaining about this in the review, because even I understand it's an awfully minor point, but I'm pretty sure cameos were more of a Victorian fad than a Regency one....
Yet another Stephen King book will be hitting the small screen--in this case, his novella The Colorado Kid is being turned into an hourlong TV series called Haven.
