Tidbits

This link should prove to you how long I've been putting off this Tidbits post. Yeah. Christmas, 2013. Seems like just yesterday huh? It's like I'm a hoarder. Don't judge meeee!  

Books and Libraries

• If you need a very uh...saucy gift for Valentine's day for the book fondler in your life, try these.  The 50/50 slap vs chuckle is on you though!  
• 50 Shades of Linger-grey.  Eyeroll. Probably another V-day gift idea, but could be a loaded one. 
• For the more discreet yet naughty, NPR is onto what you're really reading on that cell phone!  
• Struggling with which great YA to pick up next?  Struggle no more!  Book Riot put together a very thorough flow chart to help you muddle through this crisis of great import.  
• According to the most recent Pew study on libraries, "Some 90% of Americans ages 16 and older said that the closing of their local public library would have an impact on their community, with 63% saying it would have a “major” impact."  Thank you for recognizing the importance of your library, Americans who took this survey!  Now please, go and make all your friends agree with you!
• I'm calling it a three way tie between Alec Baldwin, LLCoolJ, and Stephen Hawkings in theRead posters of the 1980s and 1990s, compiled by Book Riot.  
• I want all of these Harry Potter stilettos, or just an invite to this inevitably awesome wedding! 
• Here is a very delightful trailer for BJ Novaks new book, One More Thing, a review of which, I promise, is coming soon.     
• Behold, the worlds worst allergy.  

Food

• How great are these fantastic tea blends based on books and TV/movies/fandoms I am not cool enough to understand?  I want to try them ALL!
• I obvi want to try these literary cocktails (especially the Sherlock and Watson), but not as much as I want to go to Novela in San Francisco! 
• It's Girl Scout Cookie season, and I have as yet failed to mention that an 8 year old in the subway station selling me them tried to get me to give her my credit card...because they take credit cards now.  Those wily minxes!  Here are some wine (they're kind of gross, in my opinion) and beer pairing ideas to go with your cookies as you ponder a world in which you can instantly buy things on credit from children.  

Movies and TV

• I truly madly deeply hope the BBC plan to adapt Anansi Boys comes to fruition! 
• These Broken Stars has been optioned for TV, but I'm more excited for the sequel.  When's that happening already? 
• Remember Little Golden Books?  Here are some TV shows reimagined as Little Golden Books (or, perhaps, cautionary tales for children about dealing meth?).  
• Oooh, Daughter of Smoke and Bone has a director.  I am so hopeful!
• Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark has been optioned, because the illustrations weren't scary enough in 2D.  Fat chance I'll see it; still recovering from my 1994 reading experience.  
• Did you hear that Fault in Our Stars has a trailer?  Yes, yes you did, because everyone did.  Torn between being over it, and glad that people are picking up a book - hoping it leads to more exploration of YA titles!  Still kind of weirded out about the brother-lover sitch though...
• I've save the best for almost last.  OUTLANDERHASATRAILER.  Repeat, one more time, on the slow-like: Outlander has a trailer! Two, actually.  I'm embedding the better one. You know, the one in which Jamie talks and doesn't wear a shirt? Duh.  

Lastly, here is the one of the best things I've read on the Internet in a while, written by a teenage girl.  Suffice it to say, she's tired of being patronized:   

"When you applaud or critique a young girl’s taste based on how well or badly it aligns with yours, you are suggesting that your taste = THE RIGHT TASTE, because you are the one IN THE KNOW."

Huge high five to this young woman.  Well said!

These Broken Stars, by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner: The Titantic Sinks in an Outer Space Blue Lagoon!

These Broken Stars
Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
Hyperion: New York, 2013.
ISBN: 9781423171027

ARC provided by publisher
Book Club Recipe suggestion: These Broken Ration Bars (aka Date Bars with Almond and Coconut)

Ms. Lilac La Roux and Major Tarver Merendsen were passengers of the Icarus, the finest, newest and most technologically advanced spaceship across the many galaxies.  Tarver is a war hero, recently returned from battle and being paraded around and shown off by the military on tour.  Lilac is the only child of the richest man in the universe.  Now, though, they are the only two survivors after disaster befalls the ship.  Stranded on a strange planet, they must survive both the unknown planet, strange whispers they are hearing, and their mutual discord if they have any hopes of living long enough to repair the beacon that will signal their SOS.  But, as they grow to develop a slow-burning bond that is more than mere friendship, they begin to wonder: are they really better off being rescued?  Fast-paced, dramatic, and unexpected, this is a spectacularly fun, engrossing, and totally accessible Sci-Fi title filled with adventure, romance, and intrigue.   It is a STRONG recommendation for anyone who likes their Sci-Fi light on the Sci and heavy on snappy writing, adventure, high-stakes, and romance.  I’m looking at you, readers of this blog. 

This super title came into my orbit (see what I did there?) this summer when I was lucky enough to be working at the best bookstore in all the lands (all of them).  One of my fellow booksellers and I were chatting about what we’d been reading and she’d just finished it.  She summed it up as…Titanic in space.  And she’s TOTALLY RIGHT.  OMG you guys.  It was a tonic to my 13-year-old self, she of the three viewings of Titanic in movie theatres and listening to the CD so much it broke (that must have been awful, sorry, family).  I’m pretty sure I’d re-read this at LEAST three times in a row if I were 13.  I’d go one step further and add that it’s like Titanic in space with shades of Outlander and a healthy dash of Blue Lagoon… Which is why, readers of this blog, I suspect that the vast majority of you will more than dig this.  Even the dudes.  I’m not genderist (okay, well, ladies will probably dig it a little more).   

THIS IS WHY WE ARE BEST FRIENDS.

Now, let us take a walk with my brain through this super fun read together, in bullet form, because my brain is unable to form full paragraphs and desperate for some vacation!

Tidbits: Are you Hungry for the Divergent trailer or just drooling over butterbeer and Hobbit pancakes?

Movies and adaptations

• In case you've been camped out under a rock or working out your daddy issues on a deserted island like the stud my new favorite brain vacation show, The Arrow, the new  Hunger Games movie is about to drop, with the requisite frenzy and hooplah.  Here are some things:
• Oh good.  It appears that the crack marketing team at Subway received advanced degrees in not understanding what the Hunger Games is about!  
• Just like the braintrusts behind the Hunger Games summer camp and the plan to make an amusement park.  
• Shockingly, Finnick can't read good.  
• This is the best thing I think we'll all see, all week.  The Sesame Street Hungry Games

• Harry Potter stamps drop on my birthday aka today.  Thank you for the gift, universe!
• Butterbeer...at Starbucks?
• The Hobbit menu is baaaaccccccck, precious! 
• If they take pictures and put them on the cover, it has to happen, right?  Fifty Shades promo pictures (since you've never heard of it before and it needs the all the promotional help it can get).  I can't wait; it's not often to find such high potential to be a fantastic case of the terribles! Go Fug yourself agrees. 
• I'm way too excited by Four's back to wrangle sense into the English language; luckily the ladies at Forever YA have girded their loins against being Pamuked senseless and have done it for us, because you guys....DIVERGENT TRAILER.
• Bad accent, awesome costume alert (how great are those horns?): the trailer for Maleficent is out! 
• I've failed to adequately share just how flippin' excited I am about the upcoming Outlander series (aka my favorite not so secret shame).  Here are somethings that have me in a tizzy:
• Let's start with Jamie.  
• Or better yet, Jamie in the modern day.  Pretty sure that horse is panting. 
• And now Claire.
• And how about Jamie and Claire 2gether 4evah?
• And how about SIXTEEN episodes?  I'm so down.  
• And now this unsurprising yet terrible news from DGabs that she's delaying the publication of the next book in the series. Yet again. This is all I have to say about that.. It's only been like five years...why not make it an even six? (But please don't.)

Books

• Judy Blume's Forever and Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret, got a facelift.  Apparently AYTGIMM is being marketed to middle aged lady book clubs? 
• Eric Carle has a beautiful new book about friends titled...you guessed it!  Friends.

Misc and nonsense

• I have more questions than answers regarding an OkCupid first date to go traveling internationally together for a month bringing no luggage, and only plane tickets.  
• All you need to know about why this would make a great gift for a tea swilling book nerd is in the product description, if they were real.  Sadly, it appears to just be an idea in an art portfolio.  All I'm sayin' is...get at me:  
  

  Prologue is a series of fine teas inspired by literary classics. Each canister of loose leaves features a unique blend of flavors that characterizes the novel. The designs on the tins include motifs from the narratives and other elements that are a part of the reading experience. 

• Now I know why I always wanted to wash my hands when I checked in dog-earred Romance novels at the Public Library...If this isn't a case for more eBooks at libraries, I don't know what is! 

Tidbits:

Let's play two lies and zero truths: I haven't been hoarding these links since July or anything...it's also not September, and I'm not back at school. 

Mish mash and some bookish things

• I love to hear about things like this pseudo Little Library, real library, book store mashup happening in the Shanghai subway.  It sounds like a library done right! 
• I think I found my how to guide for my Halloween costume!
• I love running, but some days, some days it is hard, juno?!  Thank the sweet baby lord jay-zeus that Book Riot knows about our woes  and made us this handy guide to Fitness for Book Nerds, fellow fitness doing book nerds! 
• You guys already know how I feel about food, but I also think the best karaoke I've ever seen done was to Coolio's Gangsters Delight, in a bar that served jello shots and was best known by it's pet name, Uncle Stabby's. This makes me think investing my $12 of life savings in this venture is a great idea!
• Check out the first six chapters of the lovely Laurie Halse Anderson's upcoming book, The Impossible Knife of Memory. 
• Aziz Ansari is going to write about my, your, OUR life, amigos of my day and age (aka modern romance).  I'm kindasortareallyexcited!

Movies and  TV show galore!

• I was SO excited, I forgot to post about the news that Jamie had been cast in the thing I'm probably most anticipating since the last thing, the Outlander miniseries.  What do you think?!  It doesn't really matter, because DGabs seems to be pumped!
• And then I continued to forget...because they cast Black Jack/Frank Randall, and I missed my opportunity to ask, "Et Tu Brutus?" Such a rookie.
• I think my PopTart will be hella excited about the hills coming back to life - I know I am.  Do I smell a family slumber(less) party, or is that just some kielbasa you started to grill in anticipation?
• Uh - Laura Linney and now (okay, a few weeks ago) Sam Tramwell for Hazel's parents?  Well played, casting director casting a cast right into my heart.  (Except for the incest part.   Still TBD.)
• I'm pretty Undeclared, but it is unlikely chance that I will be able to watch 50 Shades of Grey from anything but behind my fingers while giggling nervously has greatly been increased by the casting news. 
• This trailer is such a tease, but it will prove Divergent to your attention for a moment.   
• Who want to go and cry in a movie theater with me?  This trailer for The Book Thief looks so true to the book, I suspect that will be the case!

Until next time I realize I've been hoarding links, I'm back to school, back to school.  If you need to find me in September, I'll be busy. 

Tidbits

Books

• It took me long enough BUT.  Best news ever red alert, via your, my, everyone's favorite Melina Marchetta:
  They’ve also come back into my life at an important time for writing because 24 year old Jimmy Hailler is camping out in my head.  It’s not just his story, but a bit of a four hander and it will definitely be an adult one rather than YA.  It’s interesting that I didn’t know where Jimmy and his life was until I played with circumstances in Froi and Quintana’s life.
  
  JIMMY HAILLER.  JIMMY HAILLER.  Plus, word on the street is soon even us Yanks will be able to hang tough with our favorite knocked-up pink taffeta dress wearing exiled princess, Quintana.  2013 is looking up!
• Meta alert! These works of art (books) have been turned into works of art (sculptures)!
• Things I am maybe embarrassed to totally get: Texts from the American Girl dolls (the OG's not these new poseurs).
• Somehow, I missed this most exciting news about Patrick Ness and the new books he's going to drop on us!  
• I'm one part jealous, one part judgmental (it's a private home, also she spit-shone his grave), and one part sorry for the people who live there now this is up on the interwebs - a blogger visited E.B. White's house in Maine.  But mostly...I want to live there?
• If you enjoyed Partials and want more, check out this preview of the sequel, Fragment.  
• Thank GAWD, DGabs. Fall is just around the corner, right?  Alls I'm sayin' is you best not Robert Jordan us, mmkay?
  
• The thievin' thugs of YA (Elizabeth Wein! Shock me, shock me, shock me, with that deviant behavior!)

Movies

• Divergent casting news about Four (Let's just say I saw a lot of Alex Pettyfer in Magic Mike that I can't unsee in picturing him as Four...)
• Don't really want to jinx it, but Y: the Last Man has a director.  Still think it would be better as a mini-series!
• I had no idea that Robopocalypse had even been optioned as a movie, let alone optioned by Spielberg.  
• Whhaaat? EW has some pictures of Catching Fire up (like four), but all you need to know is this:

"People are just worried that I'm not going to be as sex god enough as Finnick should be. I've literally had four months of eating nothing but chicken and asparagus. I just want a burger and a beer."

He's hungry behind the eyes, guys.  (Incidentally, does this picture remind you of anyone else? A certain pasty, Civil War era YA vampire, perhaps?)

Tidbits: Sloppy shuffle sorts the presidents and some adapation news

• The Island of the Blue Dolphins + Archaeology = Paperblog Nerd
• Having never been to Australia, the Jellicoe Road I constructed in my head stands to be corrected by author girlcrush Melina Marchetta's photographs of what she pictures the Jellicoe scenery to look like - which frankly is so much better than what I pictured (which kind of looked like Simba's backyard meets Crocodile Dundee).  Even better?  More news about the moooovvieeeeee! 
• Have you spent the past week in a yurt in Siberia?  Then you probably missed the news that the USA had a big to do about presidents.  So naturally, some YA nerds had a big to do about which USA presidents would be in which Divergent factions.  Which leads me to ask which houses former USA presidents would be sorted into in Hogwarts?  Deep thoughts, guys. 
• Oh, hello unrealized childhood dollhouse dream.  Meet the greatest Hobbit hole EVER. 
• In all the hullaballoo about Boy Meets World making an unnecessary remake, you may have also missed the news that Bridget Jones is making her glorious literary return (and obvi has a case of the Twitters). 
• OhEmGee, you guys.  The Ron Moore Outlander adaptation got a network; in related news, a tempered slow roll of jazz hands is making it hard to type this out. 
• Remember that one time I went to Egypt and mentioned the really uncomfortable harassment women face there?  This made my day.
• This little girl's note to Dwell Magazine is a feminist masterpiece.  Also great?  The photos of the over-girlification of toys at the bottom of the story.  Bring back that first Lego ad!
• Guys, confession time.  I have no idea why I find this very silly SNL video as funny as I do.  BUT I DO.  Someone please explain it to me; I'll be over here sloppy shuffling away. 
  
  
  

Tidbits: Ketchup on the week

I was away for a week, frolicking on the shore, reading boatloads, eating indecent amounts of ice cream (so much so that we're seeing other people for a while), and having close encounters with nature (had a dance off with a fisher cat, found a dead bird INSIDE THE HOUSE, and something touched me while I was swimming, leading me to think of this...before I realized I was in two feet of water).   Turns out I missed a LOT of things on the Internets, so let's have some ketchup, shall we?

• Best. News. Of. The. Week.  Ron Moore, he of the Battlestars Galactic, will be adapting Paperblog Guilty Pleasure Numero Uno (excluding food and YA):  OUTLANDER.  For HBO.  That squee you hear?  It is not a rogue piglet.  It's meeeeeee, snitches!
  
• The Hunger Games casting people went on a bender last week, and hot dog, they done good.  Meet Johanna Mason, Wiress (aka Nuts), and Plutarch Heavensbee, solid contender for best inexplicable name of a  Hunger Games character. 

• Everyone, and their mom, and their mom's mom have seen this by now, but I don't know why we don't have 6 year olds judge books by their covers more often.  If only her assessment of Fifty Shades of Grey happened to be true...("The book is about a zebra that wears pants.")

• YAY: Vote for your favorite YA novels in NPRs election for the best-ever YA titles!

• Donald J. Sobol, the man behind some of my favorite childhood books (The Encyclopedia Brown series), passed away.  (I really could have used Leroy Encyclopedia Brown to solve the curious case of why there was a dead bird inside my cottage - jury is still out.)
  
•  Guys, libraries have cool things in them.  Like say, the Boston Public Libraries digitalized vintage travel posters library, which claimed, oh, about an hour of my day.  This one totally qualifies for vintage Case of the Terribles status.  I dare you not to groan.  Really, America?)

• Are you a school librarian for a high-need public school in the United States?  Don't miss out on these  Department of Education grants, due August 10th.  

• The DoJ is moving ahead with the anti-trust settlement against the big three publishing houses.  They included this ruling, leading me to believe that none of them actually have e-Readers:

  It called arguments that Amazon will eventually monopolize the e-book market “highly speculative at best” and noted that with Apple, Microsoft, Google and Sony all in the e-book market “there is no shortage of competitive assets” being brought to bear on the e-book industry.”

  Yes, DoJ, there are competitive assets.  But what are the sales like in comparison? For serious...has anyone actually ever purchased a book off of the Googles?  I want to know who that one person is.  I didn't even KNOW that Microsoft was in the game... #librarianfail.  

• I'll leave you with an awesome tidbit.  Sherman Alexie wins a Gold Star for super sass this week!

Tidbits: PrE-Views, the Hunger gets Vain, Outlander gets a Kitchen, and there goes the COPPA, ruinin' Facebook for 12-year-olds EVERYWHERE

Peeta, why are you dead?

• Oh look, another movie has gotten on board with the zombie/vampire/ghost craze.  Just kidding.  But seriously, why does Peeta look dead?  There's more pictures and information in the Vanity Fair coverage, but really, this is all we need to talk about, other than Rue being appropriately tiny.
• This is actually a really interesting albeit long read on the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.  It's also totally about how parents are now not only totally salting the game of their prepubescent kids most days, but egads, also enabling them on the book of faces.  Enablers!  But what I'm really more interested is the eventual future study in the levels of embarrassment in teens whose parents have made and maintained a Facebook page for them from conception.  
• PrE-view:  John Green has made the first chapter of his newest book, The Fault In Our Stars, available online.  Lots of the usual quirky, romantical, witty kids, but definitely an interesting concept and already a good read!
• Outlander Kitchen: OMG. OMG. OMG YOU GUYS.  Someone has made a food blog with recipes she's created based off of the Outlander books.  It is totally wordy, but committed to the DGabs cause.  Brianna's Bridies look delish.  Personally, I want a recipe for the crazy potion that DGabs takes when she writes these.

A Discovery of Witches (and Vampires Who Do Yoga, Fondle Books, and Sniff Wine), by Deborah Harkness

A Discovery of Witches
by Deborah Harkness

New York: Viking, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02241-0

Guilty confession/secret shame: occasionally I read books for adults in addition to books for kids.  While there are some respectable titles in the mix (a recent brush with The Road comes to mind), more often than not they happen to have less literarily lofty ambitions.  Yes.  Are you ready for this jelly?  I'm coming out of the I-love-epic-time traveling-paranormal-historical-romance-fiction-novels closet.  It is true.   I love Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series.  But this is not a post about an awesome book about a WW2 era English nurse who trips and falls through a mini Stonehenge and time and into the arms of a be-kilted ginger Scot that you should read.  It is about another saccharine-y fun book for grownups that I read just the other day!  

When I saw a review for A Discovery of Witches in Booklist that compared it to Outlander, I felt I owed it to my freak flag to read it.  Abandon ye all hope of getting any sort of respectable, scholarly review below.  Pull up a couch and pour yourself a mouthwatering glass of red wine.  Appropriately, anytime I use the word mouthwatering, I have an overwhelming urge to say it like this:

Thanks for nothing, Twilight!  But why, why is this urge to talk like a ridiculous vampire in Twilight so appropriate?  Well, let me tell you all about it.

Ladies and ladies (since I doubt the gents picking this up are few and far between), this book is a mouthwatering mashup of Twilight, Outlander, The Historian, and The Da Vinci Code.  Yes.  Seriously.  Though nowhere near as insane as Outlander, it is epic, it is fun.   Our heroine is one sweet young thang, Diana Bishop, a witch hailing from a long line of other witches, including an infamous one in infamously witch-loving Salem, MA.   Since her parents bit it suspiciously on a trip to Africa when she was a kid, Diana has been denying herself and the world of her magical powerz through a combination of pensive pre-dawn rowing sessions and a historical study of alchemy.  Alchemy being the ye olde science equivalent of magic.  Clearly she's doing a great job!  On sabbatical to Oxford to fondle some dusty old books in Bodlean, Diana finds and promptly returns a freaky enchanted book, and immediately stumbles into the arms of a hot Doctor.  Suspect! Double suspect, he is not just a Doctor!  Oh ho! He is a hot VAMPIRE doctor!  Matthew Clairmont is impossibly fast and strong, his skin is pale white and ice cold, and sometimes he speaks like he's from a different time!  His powers include being hot, being a badass predator, being a doctor, being ascetic, being immortal, having lots of secrets, being part of a vampire gang, and having a penchant for fine wines.  If it weren't for the last, I'm pretty sure the Cullen's would have adopted him by now.  But I digress!  

Turns out a ancient pact of Witches, Vampires, and Ghouls want the book real bad - it may or may not have the secret to magical life tucked away inside and it has been MIA since nigh on forever - and now that everyone knows Diana fondled it, they're all after her.  To boot, said secret society also has a rule on intermagical species dating.  As the Germans say, VERKLEMPT! Oh snap.  But they are not the only secret ancient society out there, and lines are drawn (to steal yet another Stephenie Meyerism) irrevocably.  Our heroes are on the run to places near and far, bourgeois and swank, denying their love, proclaiming their love, doing yoga, and sipping wine throughout.  Will Diana ever embrace her magical powers?  Will Matthew ever not be hot?  Will you be able to avoid craving wine while reading this book?

This book is filled with many things you would expect of anything that has been hit with the romance or paranormal genre sticks:  hot vampires, breaking in to watch people sleep (aka studying at the school of Edward Stalker Cullen), longing looks, pensive walks in the woods, near death fights, surviving near death fights, dudes carrying girls, girls sitting on dudes laps all the time, declarations of true love, opulent vampire lifestyles, hot baths, etc.  But it failed majorly on one count.  I was expecting it to be much more smutty.  I love smutty books!  In fact, there is no. sex. at. all.  I'd have given you a spoiler warning, but consider this your sex disappointment warning.  What up with that Deborah E. Harkness?  No excuses!  What is this, Twilight?

At times the story can drag; there was probably way too much scholarly debate in the first half and not nearly enough action.  It also becomes clear with 200 pages to go that this book is going to be the first in a series.  However, there is a lot to redeem it and judging from the fact that I devoured this book, it's relatively captivating.  If you are anything like me, you will probably be amused by the ridiculous wine sniffing activities (turns out Ms. Harkness has a wine blog), Vampire yoga, convenience of Matthew knowing every historical figure mentioned, inclusion of gay primary characters, occasionally clunky dialogue, and (antiquated) semantics of (vampire) marriage. In short, this post is not short and neither is the book.  But if you at all like reading series or epic paranormal-time traveling-historical fiction books, this is a strong recommendation!