Welcome to the 74th Hunger Games.
Who else is ready to see the games on screen in just over a week? The Hunger Games trilogy captured my heart from the first few chapters, and I’m not alone. The series about a futuristic, dystopian society where the government pits its children against each other in a brutal battle to the death grabbed millions of readers. The heroine of the story, Katniss Everdeen, wormed her way inside our heads. The story begs to be examined, and The Girl Who Was on Fire: Hunger Games Anthology provides pages and pages of just that treatment.
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Being a painter myself, I have a deep love for art—especially in the classical sense. I also have a huge library of art books, but the one that I’m going to leave on my coffee table is definitely Drew Struzan’s Oeuvre.
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If you had the stamina to sit through the Oscars over the weekend, you might have watched Shaun Tan receive an Academy Award for the best short film. That film was called The Lost Thing, and it is one of three stories featured in his amazing new book Lost & Found.
And we are giving away copies to three lucky Nerd Approved readers!
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There is one rule that no vampire may break or it’s dead to me. Alright, for the most part they’re already dead, so let’s say I will not acknowledge it’s undead existence if it breaks this rule. What’s the rule? Vampires. Do. Not. Sparkle. That’s the only thing I absolutely demand in my vampire fiction. I can go along with all sorts of alterations to traditional vampire lore like having them walk in the sun, or eat food, or enjoy a bit of garlic on their pasta, but no sparkling. I’m happy to say that Lawson does not sparkle and, in fact, is now on my list of favorite vampires.
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The latest book in publisher Quirk Classics’ line of literary mashups comes to us courtesy of author Ben H. Winters, the same man behind another mashup classic: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. This time, his daunting task was to take Leo Tolstoy’s 19th century novel Anna Karenina, regarded by many to be the best novel ever written, and somehow turn it into a book with robots, cyborgs and interplanetary travel without ruining the essence of the original story.
Amazingly, Winters managed to pull this off and tell a pretty damn good science fiction story in the process. He also managed to spark in me a insatiable desire to one day own a companion robot, because if they ended up being anything like the ones featured in Android Karenina that would totally kick ass.
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If you count yourself among the legion of “Browncoats” devoted to the short-lived series Firefly, prepare to open up old wounds. But there is a reward—kind of like when the doctor (in this case Dr. Fox) gave you a small treat after stabbing you in the arm. Thanks Dr. Fox, you bastard.
I’m referring to the upcoming anthology dubbed Firefly: Still Flying from Titan Books. They’ve been kind enough to hook Nerd Approved up with an advance copy, and there is a lot for fans to enjoy here—including four new short stories from the series writers.
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Vern, the highly acclaimed and influential movie critic from such websites as Ain’t It Cool News, such blogs as Outlaw Vern, and such books as Seagalogy: A Study of the Ass-Kicking Films of Steven Seagal is back with a new collection of movie musings dubbed Yippee Ki-Yay Moviegoer! Writings on Bruce Willis, Badass Cinema and Other Important Topics.
And Titan books has honored Nerd Approved with a copy so that we may review this book about reviews.
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Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has started something of a phenomenon out of shoehorning monsters in contexts where they clearly don’t belong—a phenomenon that publishers have been quick to capitalize on. Generally, you would expect that cranking out material in this fashion would lead to some pretty horrible reads, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised with both Grahame-Smith’s follow-up Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, as well as Steve Hockensmith’s Dawn of the Dreadfuls prequel.
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“Abraham Lincoln would never take another life. And yet he would be one of the greatest killers of the nineteenth century.”
(Warning: minor plot spoilers ahead)
After reading Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I went into Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter with certain expectations. I expected it to be funny, violent and generally offensive to purists—but I was surprised to find that wasn’t entirely the case. Amidst all the absurdity, there is a serious, well-constructed story here.
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The folks at Archie McPhee, one of the world’s favorite purveyors of novelty products, were kind enough to send me a copy of their book “Who Would Buy This?” The Archie McPhee Story—182 pages of the most bizarre crap that anyone ever had the nerve to sell. Not surprisingly, we have discussed many of these products right here on Nerd Approved, but the book presents them in luscious detail—including big color photos and commentary about product origins and stories about both their successes and miserable failures.
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