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Ten best?

This is the kind of year-end list we can get behind: Flavorwire has asked illustrator and graphic designer Andrew Henderson (curator of Lovely Book Covers) to choose the 10 Best Book Covers of 2011.

Labels: lists

Wordcandy's Holiday Gift List: 2011 Edition

It's December, and that means it's time for Wordcandy to release our annual Holiday Gift Guide! We've chosen a variety of deeply awesome potential gifts for the bibliophiles on your shopping list, any (or all) of which we would be delighted to receive ourselves.

1. Chatty Nora posters (approximately $20)

These pen-drawn posters feature quotes from authors ranging from Mark Twain (above) to Dr. Seuss.

2. Coralie Bickford-Smith's F. Scott Fitzgerald "Hardcover Classics" editions ($25, but seemingly difficult to find)

Bickford-Smith is the designer responsible for Penguin's gorgeous line of Hardcover Classics, but these Art Deco-inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald editions might be her best work yet.

3. Caroline Hadilaksono's Harry Potter prints ($50)

We've geeked out over these prints before, so we were straight-up thrilled when Ms. Hadilaksono released a third image (above).

4. Book Rest Lamp (between $80 and $50, if you can catch it on sale)

Pretty snazzy, huh? It's unclear if this book lamp provides enough light to actually, y'know, read by, but it looks great.

5. Scout Books' "Good Inks" editions ($4)

The fine people at Scout Books have released a limited collection of short stories, each written by a classic American author and illustrated by a contemporary artist. They're eye-catching, and you can't beat that price.

6. White's Books "Fine Editions" (approximately $17)

How have I missed these? This UK publisher hasn't released many books in this line, but I need to own this edition of of Pride and Prejudice. Like, yesterday.

7. Library Candles ($25)

Of course, we're hoping these scents are inspired by the authors' work, rather than the authors themselves... because we suspect Edgar Allan Poe didn't actually smell that great.

8. Penguin's "Classics Deluxe" editions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach ($15)

Yes, I need to own these, too. And it's a good thing I'm stopping here, because the "buy one gift for someone else; buy one gift for myself" formula is sounding more and more attractive right now...

Labels: Gifts, Holiday, lists

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 frequently too gloomy for our tastes, but they've recommended a few books we're excited about, too: Manuel Munoz's What You See in the Dark (which we would buy based on the cover alone), 101Cookbooks.com blogger Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day, Dorothy Wickenden's Nothing Daunted, a nonfiction account of her grandmother's adventures as a pioneer schoolteacher, and Ben Mezrich's Sex on the Moon, which will also be turning up on our list of recommended Father's Day Gifts... if we get around to making one in time.

Labels: lists, NPR, Summer Reading

Left by the wayside

The Guardian has posted a great slideshow of their choices for the 10 Best Neglected Literary Classics. I'm a little taken aback by how many of these books are about young women living alone with unpleasant fathers (is that, like, a uniquely English scenario?), but I'll be keeping an eye out for at least three of 'em...

Labels: Classic books, lists

2011: A Preview

Well, dear readers, it's time* for our annual list of stuff to get excited about in the upcoming year. Here's our list of the ten literary events and releases we're most looking forward to 2011:

1. The film adaptation of Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Of course, it's possible this will turn into another Golden Compass, but it has an A-list cast and the early images look promising. The PTB at Warner Bros. and Columbia are aiming for a theatrical release on December 9th.

2. Jennifer Crusie's Liz Danger novellas

We don't know much about these, but they have fun titles, they're solo projects by Crusie, and they all seem to be coming out this summer, which is AWESOME.

3. Michael Buckley's last Sisters Grimm book

This is the most bittersweet item on our list. We're super-stoked about this release, but almost equally sad the series is ending. No release date has been announced yet, but if Buckley follows the example set by the previous eight books, we can expect it sometime this spring.

4. Kelley Armstrong's next young-adult series

The Darkest Powers trilogy was great, so we have equally high hopes for its continuation, kicking off with April 12th's The Gathering.

5. The K-drama adaptation of the classic 80s manga City Hunter

This manga was 100% ridiculous, but in a fun way, and we fully expect the upcoming TV adaptation starring smoking-hot actor Lee Min-ho to be our springtime drama addiction.

6. Flora's Fury, by Ysabeau S. Wilce

We've been waiting for the third book in this superb YA fantasy series for nearly three years, so we were thrilled to hear rumors that Wilce is planning a fall release. (We were considerably less pleased to see a release date of 2015 on her publisher's website, but we're choosing to believe that is a computer error. Please don't rain on our parade, Houghton Mifflin.)

7. The final Harry Potter movie

Admittedly, Potter fatigue has set in at Wordcandy HQ (which is why we haven't seen Part I of this movie yet), but we're looking forward to sending off this series in style. Some kind of viewing party on July 15th is definitely going to be in order.

8. The third Penderwicks novel

We've really enjoyed the first two books in this award-winning, wholesome-but-not-saccharine series, which means the upcoming novel The Penderwicks at Point Mouette is probably going to lead to an all-out fight over which of one us gets to read it first.

9. Rick Riordan's next two books: May 3rd's Throne of Fire and October's Son of Neptune

There would be a staff-wide fight over these books, but let's face it: we'll all end up buying our own copies. That's how impatient we are.

10. The next bunch of Puffin Classics editions

We realize that not everyone gets as excited over new editions of classic books as we do (particularly when the books in question have never gone out of print). But these cool, colorful, and inexpensive reprints make our hearts sing, and we are so grateful to Puffin Books for making these famous stories attractive to a new generation of children.

*It's actually a little past time.

Labels: lists, Upcoming Books

Setting yourself up for disappointment

The BuzzSugar staff has helpfully compiled a list of 15 books to read before their film adaptations are released. Considerate of them, although why'd they leave out The Invention of Hugo Cabret?

Labels: lists, Movie Adaptations, other websites

Wordcandy's Holiday Gift List: 2010 Edition

It's that time of year again, dear readers—time for our annual list of Wordcandy-friendly gift suggestions! Behold ten of our favorite book-related goods ranging in price from $10 to $100:

1.Jonathan Adler Bookends for Barnes and Noble, $39.99 We usually find Mr. Adler's mod-art sculptures adorable but overpriced, so we were delighted when he teamed up with Barnes and Noble to produce several items in the forty dollar range. We're particularly coveting these Dachshund bookends. Cute, huh?

*Please note that between now and December 2nd, B&N is running a buy one, get one 50% off promotion for all their "Home and Gift" items. See? We are all about saving you money.

2.Penguin Classic Editions for Anthropologie, $16.99 These beautifully embossed editions of five classic children's books will be widely available next spring, but for now you can only buy them at Anthropologie stores (which means, sadly, there's almost no chance of them going on sale):

3.The Little Prince: The Deluxe Pop-Up Edition, $35.00 Don't waste this gorgeous pop-up book on any little kids on your list (they'll just ruin it), but it would make a lovely gift for any grown-up art fans:

4.Book Safes by Pommes Frites, $20.00 to $40.00 As longtime readers of the site know, we usually disapprove of destroying books (even books we dislike). However, the proprietor of the Pommes Frites Etsy Shop states that all of their book safes are made from "ethically sourced" books—neither new nor rare, but books at the end of their life spans:

5. Hallmark Dr. Seuss ornaments Hallmark produced a line of Dr. Suess-inspired ornaments between 1999 and 2006. Hunting these suckers down can be a challenge (search online, and be sure to compare prices!), but the end product is colorful and sturdy, making it a great kid gift:

6. It's a Book by Lane Smith, $12.99 Okay, we think this book is utterly awesome, but if you're giving it to a small child, warn their parents that they might want to substitute the word "donkey" for "jackass" when they read it aloud. We don't want to be even indirectly responsible for some kid getting kicked out of preschool for quoting the soon-to-be-classic line "It's a book, jackass!":

7.Sense and Sensibility: the Graphic Novel, $19.99 Sadly, the text for this Marvel adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel was contributed by Nancy Butler (who also penned their mediocre-at-best Pride and Prejudice series), but the artwork is by Wordcandy favorite Sonny Liew, making it a must-buy for any Austen/comic book fan.

8.Ode to Julia Child in towel form, $10 Elloh's Etsy Shop offers several literature-friendly towels, and while we lean towards this Julia Child-inspired option, you could be drying your dishes with a Mr. Darcy-themed towel as well.

9.The Thomas Keller Boxed Gift Set: French Laundry Cookbook + Ad Hoc at Home, $100.00 Normally we would scoff at paying this much for a cookbook (and even online, this sucker is expensive), but Mr. Keller's chocolate chip cookie recipe—which we found on Baking Bites, much to our eternal gratitude—has made us believers. Those cookies are practically worth a hundred dollars by themselves.

10.Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts, $70.00 With a forward by Art Spiegelman, this box set offers all six of the gorgeous, wordless novels of wood engraver and illustrator Lynd Ward (1905-85), one of America's first and finest graphic novelists.

Good luck, happy shopping, and we hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season!

Labels: Gifts, Holiday, lists, Shopping

Ah, the pearl-clutching shockers of bygone generations...

The fine people at Entertainment Weekly recently put together a list of 24 Classic "Steamy" Books. The list is worth clicking through for the vintage covers alone, but some of the quotes are great, too. Wordcandy staffer Megan was named after the heroine of Steamy Book #15, Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds, which she's never read. (Neither have I, but my mother tells me it was my great-grandmother's favorite book, and the Wikipedia plot summary makes it look horrendously bad.) Anyway, Meg is currently on vacation, but I'm looking forward to showing her the featured McCullough quote the minute she gets back:

"Not, not tonight. On my mouth, Ralph! Kiss my mouth as if we were lovers!"

"Mary, I'm a priest! I can't!"

Heh. Yeah, Meg still hasn't forgiven me for mendaciously assuring her that Kathleen Winsor's 1944 novel Forever Amber (which was inexplicably left off EW's list) was "totally readable", but that's just too good to pass up.

Labels: Classic books, lists, Sex

Cookbooks for the ages

The Guardian has assembled a list of the Top 50 Cookbooks Ever. (Here's the top ten, for readers in a hurry.) Turns out I don't own a single one of 'em.

Labels: Cookbooks, lists

But why?

Whoa, there, Guardian.co.uk. Now, before I get all judge-y, is your "Ten of the Best" list of heroes in children's literature meant to be a guide to ten awesome characters, or is it meant to be a top ten list? Because if it's the first--two thumbs up! But if it's the second, we seriously need to talk. No Max from Where the Wild Things Are? No Princess Mia from The Princess Diaries? No Artemis Fowl, no Yotsuba, no Harriet the Spy? Are y'all nuts?

Labels: lists

Back on top

Megan informs me that Seattle currently ranks #1 on USA TODAY's annual list of the nation's most literate cities, thereby smacking down rival city Minneapolis (who actually dropped behind Washington D.C. this year) like the hand of God.

Labels: lists, Love of Reading

Literary gifts for our fellow procrastinators...

It's that time of year again, dear readers: time for us to post our list of Wordcandy-approved holiday gifts! Most of these presents are inexpensive, available online, and (should y'all get your acts in gear) should be deliverable well before December 25th:

1. Sherlock Holmes tickets

I read somewhere that studios are all excited about this movie because it's likely to appeal to all four primary demographics (men over 25, men under 25, women over 25, and women under 25). Give a movie gift certificate, wipe the sweat from your brow, and done.

2. Yotsuba&!

It's been a while, but we're fairly confident that this superb, all-ages-friendly manga is safely back in print. Yotsuba&! is modern equivalent to Calvin and Hobbes, so buy this series for anyone who appreciates awesomeness.

3. Charley Harper coloring book

Well, *I* totally covet this. If you give it to an adult, you might want to include a box of crayons.

4. D-I-Y book clocks

Feeling crafty? (Naturally, we only recommend doing this to books we dislike.)

5. The Bloom County Complete Library: Vol 1

Another item that would have featured heavily on my personal letter to Santa, had I sent one.

6. Baking Bites cookbook

Buy this excellent cookbook through the Baking Bites website for a slightly better price.

7. Cloth-bound Penguin classics

Anthropologie has been selling these elegant editions of assorted classic novels for $20 apiece, making them a good choice for someone who goes for that whole "serious library" look.

8. Pictorial Webster's Dictionary

This glorious picture-dictionary-for-adults features over 1,500 engravings originally found in 19th century editions of Webster's dictionaries.

9. Kindle covers

At $42 apiece, these Kindle Covers are the most expensive items we're featuring this year, but they'd make an awesome gift for any hardcore techies on your list.

10. Book Re-Marks

These bookmarks/8-page mini-notebooks cute, perfect for book-club people, and a mere $2.50. (They'd make great stocking stuffers, too.)

[Links to previous years' lists can be found here and here.]

Labels: Holiday, lists, Shopping

"Best of" goes graphic

Amazon's posted their nominees for the Best Book Covers of 2009, and while I've got to give a shout-out to Cynthia Rylant's All in a Day, which features lovely artwork by Nikki McClure (one of my neighbors), my heart was won by this sucker:

That could be 'cause of the title, though.

Labels: Book Covers, lists

Critics at work

Now that December's here, we're beginning to see all the "Best of 2009" lists roll in. Normally I end up sneering at these (hi, Salon!), but there are a couple from sources I trust. I was pretty stoked to see NPR's list of the Best Young Adult Fiction of 2009—naturally, I haven't read any of their selections (I almost never have), but they've picked some fun-looking titles. This doesn't mean that I'm sold on these books as being the best of the year, but I am willing to check 'em out the next time I'm at the bookstore.

Labels: lists, teen literature

Seducing Atticus Finch

Even reading Lemondrop's list of the top 15 Literary Characters We'd Totally Sleep With makes me uncomfortable. I mean, where to begin? The fact that they picked Macbeth as their #2 jumpee, or the fact that they ranked Logan from the Babysitters' Club series above both Mr. Darcy and Jay Gatsby?

Labels: lists, Such wrongness

Books for girls

People are all up in arms over the fact that Publishers Weekly's "Best Books of 2009" list features no female authors. I'd care, but I'm too busy shaking my head over the fact that they've got "best of" lists for mystery, sci-fi/fantasy, poetry, and comics, but not one for romance*, despite the fact that romance novels make up a huge percentage of total books sold.

*Romance novels are included, but they're shelved under the "Mass Market" section.

Labels: lists, Sexism

Time magazine can bite me.

I've been reading a lot about the new Watchmen movie adaptation, and nearly every article I've seen mentions that the Alan Moore-penned graphic novel it was based on was included on Time's List of the 100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century.

Frankly, I'm not surprised. Anyone who's seen Time's list knows that Watchmen is exactly the kind of thing Time loves: it's gloomy, it's self-consciously arty, and it was written by a white dude. Sure, Time includes a small percentage of token female and/or minority writers, but the vast majority of books on their list are bleak reflections on human suffering written by white guys with very little hands-on experience with the subject.

Books not featured on this list include, but are not limited to:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle
Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery
The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
Dune, by Frank Herbert
Nine Coaches Waiting, by Mary Stewart
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

See what I mean? Watchmen might fit right in with the Time list, but that doesn't automatically make it the greatest English-language graphic novel of the 20th century. It just means it's the kind of story that appeals to a couple of Time staffers who would rather feature two Saul Bellow novels on their "Best of" list than include a book like Dune, much less something like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Labels: lists, Magazines, Oh, whatever.

Them's fightin' words

The List Universe has made a list of the 10 Most Overrated Novels, and number one is Jane Austen's Emma, which they describe as "light summer reading for teenage girls".

Emma is my least favorite Austen novel, but... the most overrated novel of all time? Really? Have they never read anything by D. H. Lawrence?

Labels: Jane Austen, lists

2009: A Preview

Last week we talked about our favorite book-related things of 2008; this week we’re listing the stuff we’re most looking forward to in 2009:

Georgette Heyer's mysteries:

Starting in March, we’ll be getting beautiful new reprints of Heyer’s mystery novels, thanks to the fine people at Sourcebooks. In a perfect world, these re-releases would be followed up by the BBC announcing their plans to adapt Heyer's novels for television… but we’ll take what we can get.

The Where The Wild Things Are movie:
We're still a little stunned this movie is even getting made, and we have no idea how we’ll feel about it once we’ve heard more about the plot, but it sure looks pretty.

Boys Before Flowers, the K-drama adaptation of Hana Yori Dango:
We’re already two episodes in, and it’s just as ridiculous (and ridiculously fun) as we’d hoped!

The American release of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea:

There’s no exact release date yet, but we can expect to see Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, Hayao Miyazaki's lovely-looking adaptation of The Little Mermaid, before the year is out.

Nodame starting up again:
We don’t begrudge Nodame Cantabile creator Tomoko Ninomiya her maternity leave, but we’re really looking forward to her returning to work. We’re just not built for such hardcore cliffhanger action.

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer cartoon:
This project has been dead in the water for years, but it’s been showing some faint signs of life recently. Will 2009 be the year the animated adventures of the BtVS crew finally appear on our TV sets?

Follow-up books:

Suzanne Collins’s 12, Lisa McMann’s Fade, Kelley Armstrong’s The Awakening, David Anthony Durham’s The Other Lands, Rosemary Clement-Moore’s Highway To Hell... 2009 is giving us a bumper crop of hotly anticipated sequels.

The Eoin Colfer-penned addition to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series:
Douglas Adams, alas, has left us—but we have a lot of faith in Mr. Colfer’s ability to write a great installment for this iconic series.

Labels: lists, Year in Review

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Ten best?

Friday, December 02, 2011

Wordcandy's Holiday Gift List: 2011 Edition

Monday, June 06, 2011

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

Monday, February 28, 2011

Left by the wayside

Friday, January 21, 2011

2011: A Preview

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Setting yourself up for disappointment

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Wordcandy's Holiday Gift List: 2010 Edition

Monday, October 18, 2010

Ah, the pearl-clutching shockers of bygone generations...

Monday, August 16, 2010

Cookbooks for the ages

Friday, March 26, 2010

But why?

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Back on top

Friday, December 11, 2009

Literary gifts for our fellow procrastinators...

Thursday, December 10, 2009

"Best of" goes graphic

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Critics at work

Monday, November 16, 2009

Seducing Atticus Finch

Friday, November 06, 2009

Books for girls

Monday, March 09, 2009

Time magazine can bite me.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Them's fightin' words

Monday, January 12, 2009

2009: A Preview