bookshelves of doom

And the cast for the Captain Underpants movie...

...will include:

Fresh off the record-breaking success of “Ride Along,” Kevin Hart has signed on to voice one of the lead roles in DreamWorks Animation’s “Captain Underpants” along with fellow comedy superheroes Ed Helms, Nick Kroll, Jordan Peele and Thomas Middleditch, TheWrap has learned.

...

 

 

Hart and Middleditch will voice scheming fourth graders George Beard and Harold Hutchins, who love playing pranks, hiding in their secret treehouse and writing comic books. But when they accidentally bring their favorite comic book character, Captain Underpants, to life through a hypnosis accident involving their megalomaniacal principal Mr. Krupp (Helms), their elementary school life becomes anything but elementary.

 

Peele will voice George and Harold’s nerdy nemesis Melvin, while Kroll will voice the villain, Professor Poopypants.

I CAN'T WAIT.

(via Chrissy)

Least shocking headline ever.

From the CBC:

50 Shades of Grey movie will be less explicit than book

Better Late Than Never: Diary of a Wimpy Kid

I realize that it's semi-ridiculous to only now be jumping on this particular bandwagon, but...

It occurred to me last night that somewhere along the way, Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid has replaced Louise Rennison's Angus, Thongs, and Full-frontal Snogging as my go-to comfort re-read. 

The books are smart, and the illustrations don't just act as punchlines or to rehash what's already gone on in the prose—as in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, they serve to forward the story and the character development. Greg is an imperfect protagonist: smart but almost entirely unmotivated, a boy who doesn't appear to have an altruistic bone in his body, who occasionally acts ABYSMALLY towards others (and doesn't usually even entirely realize it), but who's easy to relate to and is almost always likable. The secondary characters are, like him, imperfect but mostly likable (especially his mother and Rowley, but even Rodrick, who just KILLS me).

As is the case with the traditional comic format, since Kinney forces the reader to rapidly alternate between mediums, they're deceptively complex reads, which makes me all the happier that they're so popular with reluctant readers. (Very sneaky, Mr. Kinney!)

They capture the day-to-day triumphs, embarrassments, and injustices that a middle school boy experiences (and in that last case, occasionally doles out), and they're mostly realistic and believable in a tall-tall kind of way, but more than anything else, they're FUNNY. Like, laugh-out-loud, shake-the-bed-until-Josh-is-forced-to-stop-reading-his-own-book-to-see-what's-set-me-off-this-time*, read-the-books-over-and-over-and-over-again-until-they-fall-apart FUNNY.

Anyway, I'm sure you already know all of the above. So really, what all of that boils down to is this: I JUST NEEDED TO SQUEE.

__________________________________

*The other day, he asked me who the author is, which means that he's TOTALLY considering reading them.

I think it was probably the name of Rodrick's band that finally tipped him over the line from finding the books Amusing-by-Proxy to Actively-Interesting.

I tried to play it cool, but I might have tipped my hand by tackle-hugging him and squealing, "ARE YOU GOING TO READ THEM? ARE YOU? ARE YOU? THEY'RE SO MUCH FUN, I KNOW YOU'LL LOVE THEM! HERE, LET ME READ YOU MY FAVORITE PARTS!!"

Hopefully I didn't scare him off...

Kindle Daily Deal: Lauren DeStefano.

Lauren DeStefano's Perfect Ruin is $1.99 today, and as I haven't read it, I snagged it.

DID I MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE?

More free resources!

Both links via Open Culture:

• Getty Publications' Virtual Library. From the introductory blog post: "The books in the Virtual Library come from three of the Getty’s programs: the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Research Institute, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. The over 250 offered here today—and the many more we will continue to add into the future—represent a significant portion of our publishing list. Still, they are just a modest part of what is becoming an important, informally networked library, spread across multiple institutions and spanning thousands of years of art historical knowledge."
• Wellcome Images. From the introductory blog post: "The [over 100,000] images can be downloaded in high-resolution directly from the Wellcome Images website for users to freely copy, distribute, edit, manipulate, and build upon as you wish, for personal or commercial use. The images range from ancient medical manuscripts to etchings by artists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Francisco Goya."

Wizard of Oz + Game of Thrones, brought to you by NBC.

From Deadline:

Emerald City is described as a modern and dark reimagining of the classic tale of Oz in the vein of Game Of Thrones, drawing upon stories from Baum’s original 14 books that include lethal warriors, competing kingdoms, and the infamous wizard as we’ve never seen him before. A head-strong 20-year-old Dorothy Gale is unwittingly sent on an eye-opening journey that thrusts her into the center of an epic and bloody battle for the control of Oz.

I kind of already want to skip it.

AM I THE CRABBIEST CRAB WHO EVER CRABBED?

Probably.

But, fair or not, the EDGY OZ description immediately made me think of this, which ewww.

By the catalog: Merit Press, Fall 2013.

Titles I've read from the Adams Media Fall 2013 catalog:

Poor Little Dead Girls, by Lizzie Friend:

Sadie doesn’t trust people blindly, and she makes a concerted effort to avoid making stupid choices—there are a few conversations about the idiocy horror movie heroines—and Friend works to give even the most two-dimensional of her characters at least SOME depth. (The British twins, granted, don’t get much in the way of fleshing out, but they are REALLY funny, and since they created their public personas as a very deliberate caricature, I gave them a pass.)

Unaccompanied Minor, by Hollis Gillespie:

Things that work: As long as you aren't looking for something SUPER realistic—the bad guys are all mustache-twirlers, for example—almost everything! It's funny, fast-paced, smart, witty, and just totally entertaining across the board. Extra points for the phrase "psychotic Bobbsey Twins".

No Surrender Soldier, by Christine Kohler:

There certainly are aspects of the book to appreciate and admire: most notably the depiction of the Guamanian culture, which combines aspects of the various colonial powers that have controlled the island over the years with the indigenous Chamorro culture that was there originally and is there still. The cast reflects that multicultural heritage—Kiko is Chamorro, as is his crush at school, while his best friend Tomas is of Japanese descent—as does, and often in a stomach-growling inducing way, the food.

Escape from Eden, by Elisa Nader: I read this one and loved it, and then never wrote about it! I'll have to go back and re-read so I can do it justice, because Nader BROUGHT THE CRAZY, and in a TOTALLY EXCELLENT WAY. It's about a cult, and escaping from a cult, and first love. It's action-packed and tension-filled and there are thrills and chills and GAHHHHs galore! Also, HUMAN FREAKING TRAFFICKING. *shudder*

Ahem. Yeah, so I liked that one. A lot.

Titles I want to read from the same catalog:

Twigs, by Alison Ashley Formento: Issues galore, but hopefully in a none issue-y way? I'm mostly intrigued because it's apparently an homage to High Noon.

Deceived, by Julie Anne Lindsey: A thriller about a girl in boarding school who discovers that her father might be a complete stranger to her. I'm always up for a new thriller set in a boarding school.

Anyone But You, by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes: I really liked Exposure, the previous installment in the Twisted Lit series, so I'll definitely be reading this one, which is a re-imagining of Romeo & Juliet in and around Italian restaurants. Suddenly I feel like I should dedicate a week or two to getting caught up on all of the Shakespeare rewrites that I've missed over the last few years. BECAUSE THERE HAVE BEEN A LOT.