Gift Tips for the Bookish: T-shirts

Jaime Hernandez 'Stussy' Tee: $28.00
Paul Pope 'Crepax' Tee: $20.00












Albert Camus Tee: $25.00
Shakespeare hates your emo poems Tee: $10.00












Movies: Ruining the book since 1920 Tee: $10.00
E.E. Cummings Quote Tee: $16.00














Kurt Vonnegut Tee: $16.00
William S. Burroughs Tee: $17.00














Charlotte Bronte Tee: $25.00
Yotsuba&! Tee: $15.00

Over-Priced Auction Results(or: some of the gifts you won't be getting this Christmas)

Reuters puts a pillow to the face of your absinthe soaked sense of entitlement, reporting:
A first edition of Lewis Carroll's classic book Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There -- dedicated to the real life Alice who inspired the story -- was sold at a U.S. auction for $115,000, auctioneers said on Thursday.
Click here to read the rest.


Get ready to see some eyeliner streak. Amoeblog dashes your inner goth's gimmie-gimmie fantasies, announcing:
At Christie's Auction House today in New York, an 1827 first edition copy of an Edgar Allan Poe poetry collection, Tamerlane and Other Poems, was sold for $662,500 -- the most ever for a 19th century book of poetry. The 40-page collection, and Poe’s very first publication, was inspired by the work of British poet Lord Byron.
Click here to read the rest.


Anne fans, put down your outstretched hands. The Canadian Press reports:
A first edition of Anne of Green Gables has sold for a record $37,500 at auction. The sale was made Friday at Sotheby's in New York and eclipses the previous record of $24,000 for the same title, which was set in June 2005. Sotheby's says only eight first edition copies of the Lucy Maud Montgomery book have appeared at auction over the last 35 years.
Click here to read the rest.


The AFP casts out the demons responsible for your unbridled lust over heathen texts, testifying:
A first edition of Charles Darwin's seminal On the Origin of Species found in a family's toilet in southern Britain sold for more than 100,000 pounds Tuesday, Christie's auction house said. The book, which was first printed in 1859, was bought for just a few shillings in a shop about 40 years ago, and kept in a bookcase in the guest toilet at the family's home in the Oxford area.
Click here to read the rest.

Happy holidays!

Book News, All Bad

Marvel Comics has announced a new superhero series written and drawn solely by women. Its name? Girl Comics. Johanna Draper Carlson rightly rails against this.


The city of Laredo, TX is about to become the largest city in the U.S.A. to have no bookstores. Boot shops, gun shops, and liquor stores, on the other hand, remain as plentiful as unpaid border guards.


Author Philip Pullman has copped to his disappointment over the failure of Hollywood to complete the film trilogy of his series of fantasy novels, His Dark Materials. Um, has he seen the first one? Cuz it sucked.


PW reports, "Bob LiVolsi, founder of independent e-book retailer Books On Board, grabbed the spotlight at the MediaBistro eBook Summit, charging Amazon.com with 'predatory Pricing' and lamented the lack of antitrust enforcement in today's marketplace." Amazon, unsurprisingly, has yet to respond, choosing instead to wait the year or two it takes for Books On Board to go bust. The bastards.

One Last Bit of Adaptation News

MovieWeb reports:
On the Official Avatar Myspace Site, director Bryan Singer (X-Men) dropped a major announcement about one of his next projects. It appears that the director is headed back to the franchise he pioneered...
"I just yesterday signed a deal to do an X-Men: First Class origins picture, which is kind of cool. I'm very excited."
X-Men: First Class is expected to inject a next-gen sensibility into the superhero series. - The studio has been leaning toward using the younger characters introduced in the previous films in future installments -- teenagers with powers taught at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning.
To read the rest, click here.

Adaptation News

Reason #23433 I'm glad that Robert Downey Jr. never OD'd: The trailer to Iron Man 2.



The LATimes proclaims, "Greek mythology makes movie and TV comeback!" Here's hoping Homer has hired himself a good agent.


Wanna know exactly how J.D. Salinger feels about a Catcher in the Rye film? Letters of Note has a copy of an anti-adaptation screed handwritten by the reclusive author.


The Independent UK has put together a slide show featuring "the changing faces of Sherlock Holmes." Dilettante detectives can search for it themselves, everyone else can click here.


My favorite type of adaptation can't be seen on the big screen or the little screen, but in the small glass window on the oven. Click here to salivate over Through the Looking Glass cupcakes.


Natalie Portman has signed on to star in and produce a film based on the best-selling, sub-genre-creating book, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. My note to Ms. Portman: Before they rip your flesh off, please have them gratuitously tear away your bodice.


CHUD's take on Disney's plans to adapt all four Fallen books seems pretty spot-on: "Well why the fuck not? Swap out retarded but lofty sounding vampiric and lycanthropic mythology for epic and highly-simplified biblical babble and voila, you've got some coattails to ride!"

My Favorite Comic Book Covers of 2009

Wolverine: First Class #19
Cover by Skottie Young
Strange Tales #1
Cover by Paul Pope















Punisher: Frank Castle Max #70
Cover by Dave Johnson
Punisher: Frank Castle Max #72
Cover by Dave Johnson















Detective Comics #854
Cover by J.H. Williams III
Detective Comics #855
Cover by J.H. Williams III
















Amazing Spider Man #578
Cover by John Romita Jr.
Justice Society of America: Black Adam & Isis
Cover by Alex Ross
















Amazing Spider Man #605
Cover by Mike Mayhew
Deadpool #11
Cover by Jason Pearson
















Lockjaw and the Pet Avenvers #2
Cover by Niko Henrichon
Runaways: Teenage Wasteland Vol. 2
Cover by Jo Chen
















Creepy #1
Cover by Eric Powell
Uptight #3
Cover by Jordan Crane
















If'n Oof
Cover by Brian Chippendale
Dark Reign: Sinister Spider Man #2
Cover by Chris Bachalo
















Lone Ranger and Tonto#2
Cover by John Cassaday
Looney Tunes #180
Cover by Scott Gross

See also: The Best Comics I Read in 2009

Book News, In Brief

A shout-out to the sell-out who spoke out about selling her soul to Chicken Soup For The Soul. Or: Victoria Patterson talks turkey about 'Chick Soup-ing' her story, The Kindness of Strangers.


Congratulations to one of my all-time favorite cartoonists, Gilbert Hernandez, on being awarded a 2009 Rasmuson Fellowship in the category of literature. If you haven't read any of Beto's Palomar stories yet, get to it!


A "microanalytical examination" of an "illustrated miniature manuscript" of The Gospel of Mark found the kid-sized codex to be a fraud. That said, the faithful don't give a f*ck what scientists are able to disprove, so who cares?


First Publishers Weekly made a Best Books of 2009 list that didn't have any women, now they've come under fire for their unintentionally offensive 'Afro Picks' cover. Quick, before Hanukkah's over, can they pull off The Whoopi Goldberg Trifecta?


Do you obsess over J.D. Salinger's copyright and speak fluent legalese? Then head on over to the law offices of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz's website, where they've posted the transcripts to the entire Salinger vs. that guy who wrote the unlicensed sequel court case.


A gold and ivory retractable toothpick belonging to Charles Dickens is going up for auction in NYC next week. A word to my Secret Santa: Although I enjoyed A Muppets Christmas Carol as much as the next guy, please remember, I want a case of Sugar-Free Red Bull, not this bit of bacteria-laden memorabilia.