Austenland

I want a Pembrook Park with Colin Firth...

Austenland by Shannon Hale
Booklist Reviews 2007 March #2
Suppose you're a huge fan of Jane Austen, and in particular Pride and Prejudice and in particular Colin Firth's portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the BBC adaptation, and nothing in real life quite measures up. And suppose your great-aunt's legacy to you is a three-week vacation at an Austen-themed resort. This is the situation in which Jane Hayes, New York graphic artist, finds herself. Pembrook Park is a kind of Austen Fantasy Island where the female guests are required to dress, speak, eat, and in every way conduct themselves like heroines in Austen's novels, with actors filling out the roles of eligible suitors. Jane, called Miss Erstwhile for the duration of her stay, tries to get used to corsets and other Regency amusements while sorting out whether the attentions of a Darcyesque Mr. Nobley, not to mention a good-looking gardener, are sincere or part of the show. A clever confection for fans of contemporary Austen knockoffs.

Feral Librarians

Portable Childhoods by Ellen Klages

Booklist Reviews 2007 April #1
Klages' stories contain marvels--small, strange things lurking on the edges of normal life. In the Nebula Award-winning "Basement Magic," a cleaning lady and a little girl build a friendship around housework and magic. "In the House of the Seven Librarians," which closes the book, is a charmer about the unconventional upbringing of a child raised by feral librarians. Not all the stories are particularly concerned with childhood. In "Time Gypsies," a woman travels to the past to recover a paper on time travel that was never delivered and instead discovers the failures of history. Of course, the woman who was to deliver the paper is someone the traveler has admired and researched for years, and what transpires is a case of how meeting someone known only through secondhand sources can change all sorts of assumptions. Klages creates wonder-filled and beautiful worlds in her short stories, making this a tremendously satisfying collection.

Feral librarians?!

Logorrhea: excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness

Recent Best Premise for a Book:

Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories ed. by John Klima (a librarian with a blog)
http://bookstoburn.blogspot.com/

"This book is a logophile's dream—a left-field collection of stories inspired by winning words from the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Anyone who has ever spent an hour or two happily browsing the pages of a dictionary will find something to love here."—Kevin Brockmeier, author of A Brief History of the Dead

Book Description: For most of us, these prizewinning spelling bee words would be difficult to pronounce, let alone spell. We asked twenty-one of today’s most talented and inventive writers to go even further and pen an original tale inspired by one of dozens of obscure and fascinating championship words. The result is Logorrhea–a veritable dictionary of the weird, the fantastic, the haunting, and the indefinable that will have you spellbound from the very first page. There’s only one word for such an irresistible anthology: Logorrhea

The Last Summer of You and Me

Ann Brashares (traveling pants author) was supposed to release her first adult fiction novel last year, but it was pushed back to this summer. Due out in June!

Gracie Martin, a New Yorker with a talent for finding missing objects, considers changing her vocation before discovering a lost backpack and embarking on a quest for its owner.

The Society of S

You can always count on me to let you know about a new vampire book that looks good, and with reviews referencing Special Topics in Calamity Physics, The Thirteenth Tale, and The Historian, I am hopeful about this one's goodness...

The Society of S by Susan Hubbard

Thirteen-year-old half-vampire Ariella Montero struggles with the realities of her condition while harboring a desire to unravel the secrets of vampire nature, a longing that leads her to learn about the gentle, wise, and even vegetarian lifestyles of vampires.

Dedication

The Nanny Diaries authors (movie out April 20) have a new book coming out in June called Dedication.

BL on Dedication: McLaughlin and Kraus, authors of the popular novel The Nanny Diaries(2002), venture back to the 1980s in their third novel. Kate Hollis fell in love with Jake Sharpe in grade school, dated him in high school, and at 30, has yet to get over him. How can she when Jake, now a rock star with several hit singles to his name, has spent the last 10 years singing about her and about their relationship? When Kate hears that Jake has returned to their hometown with his new fiancee in tow, she jumps on a plane, ready to confront him for exploiting their personal memories in his quest for superstardom. But when Kate sees him again, all her old feelings churn to the surface, and her resolve weakens further when she learns he feels the same. But just as the novel barrels toward what appears to be the most cliched of endings, the authors pull out a surprise and give the reader, and Kate, a completely unexpected and wholly satisfying conclusion. With the movie version of The Nanny Diaries due out this spring, expect considerable interest in the authors' latest outing.

Jodi Picoult writing Wonder Woman comics

While not quite as exciting as Joss Whedon writing season 8 of Buffy as a comic, I'm still very interested in reading Wonder Woman as written by bestselling novelist Jodi Picoult. Read DC's interview with Picoult:

http://www.dccomics.com/news/?nw=7097

The Children of Hurin

New Tolkien (sort of)!

LJ: Having rummaged through his father's multitudinous papers for 30 years, Christopher Tolkien was finally able to pull together the various pieces (some previously published) that make up this story-important background for the creation of Middle-earth.

The Raw Shark Texts

This book has some of the most strangely intriguing book reviews I've ever read. It apparently was a hit at the London Book Fair and has a 125,000 first printing.

From Kirkus: "If Paul Auster and Haruki Murakami collaborated on Moby-Dick crossed with The Wizard of Oz, they might produce something like Hall’s deliriously ambitious debut..."

From PW: "...a cerebral page-turner that pits corporeal man against metaphysical sharks that devour memory and essence...a fast-moving cyberpunk mashup of Jaws, Memento and sappy romance that's destined for the big screen."

Now You Love Me

Michigan author Liesel Litzenburger has a new book out called Now You Love Me, which the March 2 issue of Entertainment Weekly gives an A- and is the EW Pick for the week.

EW review: Annie, a 9-year-old in a Michigan resort town, narrates Lisel Litzenburger's Now You Love Me, the story of her broken family. Her dad skips town for an extra-long ''trip'' and never returns, leaving her mom to raise her and her 5-year-old brother. The focus is Mom, who drives too fast, dates a loopy electrician, and steals the neighbor's car. Litzenburger ingeniously refracts the familiar elements of a typical divorce tale through Annie, who lends both innocence and distance to the drama of, say, Mom's trip to rehab. Even small episodes are enlarged through the eyes of this insightful and totally believable little girl. A-

Then We Came to the End

People magazine says this fiction book about office shenanigans in a Chicago ad agency should be called The Office: Hardcover Edition. I am prepared to be amused.

The Year of Fog

According to LJ, a possible Jodi Picoult readalike...

Photographer Abby Mason's life is changed forever by the disappearance of the young girl with whom she had been walking on a cold and foggy beach, and her desperate search for the truth behind the child's vanishing.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

New book out in May from The Kite Runner author! (Yes, there's now an order record to place holds.)

The Spellman Files

This fiction debut has a 150,000 first printing with film rights already sold to Spider Man's producer and reviews and annotations referencing Nancy Drew, Bridget Jones, Stephanie Plum, Veronica Mars, and Buffy. I'm excited about this one.

You Slay Me

Feeling the urge to read about sexy dragons or laugh at a hilarious talking demon dog? Oh, do I have the book for you! I recently had to read You Slay Me by Katie MacAlister for a workshop, and I loved it! I'm now on book 3 in the series. I think fans of Charlaine Harris' southern vampire mysteries would also like this series. (And book 2 has a Buffy reference.)

While conjuring up a demon in the form of a shaggy Newfoundland, Aisling Grey, the Keeper of the Gates to Hell, in an attempt to prove her innocence, searches for the elusive and sexy Drake Vireo, a wyvern and head dragon, who is responsible for a series of murders in Paris's immortal underworld.

Jane Austen--Teenage Sensation!

Unfortunately, end of the year and beginning of the year ordering left me with no time to blog. However, things have calmed down a little, so hopefully I'll be able to blog again on a regular basis.

For my first post in a long time I just had to share an article that I read this morning from the UK's Telegraph about several new film, TV, and book editions of Jane Austen's works:

Jane Austen to be the latest teenage sensation
Step aside Britney Spears. Movie moguls, television producers and publishers believe this year's teen hit will be the 19th-century "lit girl" Jane Austen....













Read the article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/04/nausten04.xml

Best line: "A spokesman for Waterstone's, Britain's biggest bookseller, predicted it would sell more copies of Austen's works than at any time since Colin Firth emerged from a lake during the BBC's adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in 1995..."

Ah Colin Firth. Not sure how I feel about Anne Hathway as Jane Austen, though...

John Lange = Michael Crichton

According to PW, John Lange, author of the soon to be reissued Hard Case Crime edition of Grave Descend, is actually a pseudonym for Michael Crichton. Read the article here:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6374596.html?text=john+lange

Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Whenever I see a commercial on TV for a show or a trailer for a movie that's based on a book I feel compelled to yell loudly, "It's based on a book!" My latest proclamation of this was in response to Darkly Dreaming Dexter, which I would watch if I had Showtime. Sigh.

The Prestige

The movie tie-in edition of The Prestige by Christopher Priest has arrived. While I haven't read the book yet, I am looking forward to seeing the movie.

After clashing in the dark during a fraudulent seance in 1878, two young stage magicians find their lives deteriorating into webs of deceit and revelation as they vie to outwit and expose one another. (A Newmarket Films movie, directed by Christopher Nolan, releasing October 2006, starring Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, David Bowie, & Michael Caine) !!!

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

I just finished Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl last night. (Despite what the title sounds like, it is fiction.) High school student Blue Van Meer narrates her life story, which since her mom died when she was little, consists of moving every semester as her college professor dad takes a new lecturing job. (Her parents shared an enchanted love that "caused birds and other furry creatures to congregate on a windowsill.") However, for her senior year her dad has decided they should stay in one place for the entire year, and Blue will attend St. Gallway, where she meets the Bluebloods and teacher Hannah Schneider, who will die that year (first sentence of Part 1--I'm not giving anything away). The majority of the book is spent chronicling Blue's senior year, but the end takes a wild turn as Blue tries to solve the mystery of Hannah's death. The clique of students enamored of teacher plot and slightly dark tone is a bit reminiscent of Donna Tartt's The Secret History, but what I really love about this book are Pessl's clever descriptions and phrases. To read her description of someone as a Goodnight Moon or a walking wedge of Camembert are just so enjoyable. Her constant bibliographic references and tendencies to capitalize words for emphasis could almost be too clever, but it's part of what makes the book so good. The website is also entertaining:

http://www.calamityphysics.com/main.htm