Unabashedly Bookish

Any fantasy and/or horror fan with an iota of curiosity in their bodies will be doing the “Snoopy Happy Dance” when they lay their eyes upon They Bite: Endless Cravings of Supernatural Predators, a meticulously researched and lovingly produced reference guide by Jonathan Maberry and David F. Kramer (both Bram Stoker award winners) to literally hundreds of different monsters. Read more...

I don't know about you but my appetite for genre fiction has definite seasonal idiosyncrasies. Although I ecstatically read all kinds of science fiction, fantasy, mystery and horror every month, paranormal fantasy and short story anthologies seem to go down best during the summer months. Read more...

With all respect to the Chinese zodiac, 2009 isn’t the Year of the Ox; it’s the Year of the Kat. Kat Richardson, that is. Since the release of her debut novel back in 2006, Richardson has published four novels in her Greywalker saga (Greywalker, Poltergeist, Underground and Vanished, which was just released a few weeks ago) and has done something very few paranormal fantasy authors have accomplished – she has made the jump to hardcover... Read more...

For many science fiction and fantasy fans – at least those of us firmly entrenched in middle-age – watching episodes of The Twilight Zone was one of our most vivid childhood memories when it came to experiencing thought-provoking, socially relevant speculative fiction. Aside from exploring (allegorically) significant issues of the day – the threat of nuclear war, prejudice, racism, the apocalypse, etc. – The Twilight Zone played a hugely significant role in bringing science fiction and dark fantasy to the masses. Of the 156 episodes that were written during the television show’s original run – from 1959 to 1964 – 92 of those stories were written by Rod Serling himself but many were penned by some genre legends, including Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, and Damon Knight... Read more...

As a lifelong genre fiction fan and a hardcore sports aficionado, I enjoy when the two seemingly divergent pastimes overlap each other. I particularly appreciate sports teams with fantasy or mythology influenced names. So with the start of both college and professional football right around the corner, here are some of my favorite fantasy-influenced teams as well as some interesting ideas for new and improved team names.... like the Cleveland Cthulhus! Read more...

Our featured title this month in BarnesandNoble.com’s Fantasy/Science Fiction forum is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss – unarguably one of the best debut fantasy novels to be released in the last decade – and during my research of the singularly brilliant Mr. Rothfuss, I experienced an epiphany of sorts: some of the fantasy genre’s best authors have crazy, “I’ve been living in the woods for the last ten years” beards... Read more...

In BarnesandNoble.com’s community forums, we’ve recently been discussing books that initially got us not only hooked on the fantasy genre but also motivated us to become lifelong readers – and many of those releases are categorized as children’s or young adult books: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, Deborah Howe’s Bunnicula, The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps novels, etc. Interesting thing about several of these classic life-changing reads – they’ve been on banned books or challenged books lists! Read more...

Thus far, 2009 has been a relatively strong year for zombie fiction. Armies of the undead have graced the pages of numerous new releases, most notably The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, Mario Acevedo’s Jailbait Zombie, Road Trip of the Living Dead by Mark Henry, and, of course, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. But the most interesting – and memorable – zombie fiction release so far this year has to be My Rotten Life by David Lubar... Read more...

The fantasy genre has been powered by serialized storylines ever since I can remember – Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Moorcock’s Elric novels, Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber, Le Guin’s Earthsea, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars (categorized as science fiction but replete with fantasy elements), McCaffrey’s Pern, etc. But it seems that over the last decade or so several authors (or publishers, I should say) just don't know when to suitably end a long-running saga – drawing out a series for the sake of more installments, it seems. (I’ve heard it been called “milking it” by a few not-so-politically correct genre fans.) Read more...

As thousands of you already know, BarnesandNoble.com recently launched its eBooks store and just yesterday sent out a mass email (Free B&N eReader -- Plus 6 eBooks on Us!) offering up a free eReader application for personal computers, iPhones and BlackBerry devices. The Barnes & Noble eReader gives readers access to 700,000 titles! Read more...