Unabashedly Bookish

A Super-Bowl beer ad about guys crashing a book club has some book lovers tossing the penalty flag on what they consider the spot’s anti-reading bent. But I’m not sure this ad makes the cut for either the Pro-Misogyny or Anti-Illiteracy teams. After all, the guys were kind of cute, and the girls did have some extra beer on hand... Read more...

My disdain for Valentine's Day has made me the hero in every relationship I've been in (including my current one—you’re welcome, honey!). Telling a guy you’re not a big fan of February 14th is like telling him you LOVE when he goes to strip clubs. If you love me, you’ll tell me. If you want to buy me flowers, you’ll do it because you want to... Read more...

Vampires have ruled the supernatural roost for many years now – both in genre fiction and in pop culture. But with the release of the blockbuster motion picture The Wolfman (starring Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving) quickly approaching – it opens February 12th – it looks like 2010 may very well belong to the werewolves... Read more...

Ecopsychology is a branch of psychology that theorizes that our mental health is related to the health of the earth. Its main idea is that our moods and ideas are in fact related to the natural world as it lives or dies around us. Read more...

When I heard that Georgia-based small press Samhain Publishing was releasing the first installment of a new paranormal fantasy saga, I had to check it out…and I’m so glad I did. The tongue-in-cheek “warning” on the back of Blood Vice had me instantly intrigued: “Intense, graphic mafia-related violence, profanity, gangster slang, assassinations, fang punctures, explicit vampire sex, betrayal, greed, murder, gangland warfare, pervasive supernatural mayhem, large-scale explosions, and extremely expensive Italian suits.” Read more...

Maybe you only remember Opus the Penguin dolls, but for the kids of Generation X, Bloom County was a sublimely subversive, hilarious and endearing cultural icon that could be experienced every morning over Pop-Tarts. Read more...

Marilyn Brant has been living with Jane Austen (in her head!) for quite sometime ... Read more...

Which ebook reader? More important, which preposition? Shall I choose between nook, its old competitor, or its new one, or among them all? Read more...

Historical heroines who repeatedly trip into danger sometimes are described pejoratively as Too Stupid to Live (TSTL). And, sure, contemporary readers can be turned off by heroines whose time periods limit their options. But the Western romance heroine’s indomitable spirit turns the TSTL label on its head; she’s simply: *Too Stalwart to Loathe. Read more...

C.J. Omololu's debut Young Adult novel, Dirty Little Secrets, out today, features a protagonist whose mother's hoarding habits have turned her life upside-down. So how did her publisher design a cover that would convey the dark emotions of living with a clinically diagnosed packrat? C.J.'s here to tell us: Read more...