In 2012, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (fondly known as LBD) brought the familiar and beloved novel Pride and Prejudice to a relatively new online platform as a webseries, and the results were nothing less than extraordinary. Jane Austen’s characters shifted into grad students, aspiring fashion designers, medical students, and CEOs, their lives and uncertainties closer…
All Ages Summer Book Club — August Pick
In the Twitter talk about our June pick, we discussed the prevalence of depressing plotlines in children’s fiction, such as death, disease, and abuse. Many books utilize these themes to give their stories empathetic pull; it’s near impossible to read about a kid dealing with mortality or exploitation without feeling invested. It’s a powerful tool…
The Thursday Book Beat: Kathy Lette Criticizes Man Booker’s Lack of Women On 2014 List
Edgar Wright To Direct Grasshopper Jungle Adaptation “Grasshopper Jungle” is a coming-of-age tale about an Iowa teen who, along with his friends, causes a deadly plague that unleashes an army of human-sized praying mantises, whose hedonistic lifestyle is admired by the young protagonist. – The Wrap
What Makes Someone a Hero?: The #WWACBookClub on Vicious
For our first #WWACBookClub chat we discussed Vicious by V E Schwab. A dark, action packed tale of two college roommates – Victor Vale and Eli Ever. Both driven by their brilliance and ambition they discover the secret to developing superpowers – adrenaline filled near death experiences. In their efforts to turn themselves to ExtraOrdinarys…
Queen Kelsea Is Here To Rule
The Queen of The Tearling Erika Johansen HarperCollins *Advance Reviewer’s/Reader’s Copy (ARC)
If You Went to SDCC, You’d Be Dead By Now!
Or, at least, shocked and horrified. That is, if you were a denizen of the Newsflesh-verse. The series, launched in 2010 by Orbit Books, is written by Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire) and explores multiple aspects of the world during and after a global zombie outbreak. The main trilogy focuses on the Mason siblings, bloggers…
Logan Pictures Options Kelly Thompson’s “The Girl Who Would Be King”
io9 announced Friday that author Kelly Thompson’s book The Girl Who Would Be King will be turned into a movie via Logan Pictures. The book takes on an interesting twist of the superhero mythos about two young women with super powers – Bonnie and Lola – and was more than successful in its Kickstarter campaign in 2012 (at…
Review: The Fourteenth Goldfish
The Fourteenth Goldfish Jennifer L. Holm Random House Books for Young Readers I received a copy of this book from the publisher for an honest review. The Fourteenth Goldfish is about valuing the natural order of life. Youth, puberty, young adulthood, regular adulthood, and old age are each equally as valuable (and awkward) as the rest….
Reading Diaries: Super Spies, Sexy Witches, and Shakesdude
Megan: This month I’ve been reading Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare bio. My reading time is still more constrained than I’d like, so I’ve been reading it on my Kobo whenever I can get a few minutes to myself. I’ve not read much Bryson but I’ve been told that this book is the Brysoniest. It feels like…
The Thursday Book Beat: The Problems With Traditional Publishing
Marvel & Little Brown Team Up on MCU Kids Books Marvel is collaborating with Little, Brown & Co on kids books that will act as tie ins to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They’ll start off with five Guardians of the Galaxy novels that will come out before its release in August. Titles include Guardians of the…
The Bone Clocks Author Writes A Twitter Short Story
@David_Mitchell is the author of the popular book, Cloud Atlas, which became a film in 2012. With his newest release, The Bone Clocks, on the horizon, Mitchell has begun penning a 6,000 word short story, The Right Sort, via Twitter every day as a companion to the novel. It’s set in 1978. Mitchell will unveil…
R/W: A Collection of Links On Language, Literacy, and Writing
Language For the language geeks, BuzzFeed contributor John Herman tells us Why We Sound Weird When We Talk About Tech. It involves, as you’d imagine, the verbing of nouns and adjectives, and our relative familiarity with these new verbs. Elegance? That’s mostly a matter of perspective, not an objective style fact.