Image Credit: Daniel Smith
Cassandra Clare recently opened up about Clockwork Prince, the newest installment in her Infernal Devices series. And on Friday the newest issue of EW, our Entertainers of the Year special, hit stands. So with the new issue on our mind, we decided to ask Clare about her personal favorite entertainer of 2011. Then, she offered up her picks for the best YA books of the year — other than her own, of course. Read on for Clare’s choices:
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Is making a cookbook inspired by a story about a serious lack of food a bit of a stretch? Probably, but The Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook is a fun if not quite practical treat for a ravenous fan of the novels. While many of the recipes allow you to replicate the rich, sumptuous dishes from Capitol banquet scenes (“Super Sweet Potato Rolls”), others require ingredients you’d have to kill in the woods with your own bow and arrow. Any dish that evokes Peeta’s near-magical baking skills sounds promising (“Peeta’s Cinnamon Bakery Bread”), but most of the concoctions inspired by food from the Districts (“District 4′s Seaweed Bread”) or gamey survivalist meals you’d have to make do with in the Arena (“Wild Squirrel & Sausage Gumbo” and “Wild Raccoon Sautéed in Bacon Drippings”) are only for the brave. READ FULL STORY »
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Stories I Only Tell My Friends, the first book by Parks and Recreation star Rob Lowe, spent 17 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and garnered strong reviews, even landing Lowe on GQ‘s “Favorite Authors of 2011″ roundup. Given the success of the first book, it’s no surprise that Simon & Schuster has acquired a followup from Lowe.
Stories I Only Tell My Friends fell purely into the memoir category, but the new book, titled Love Life, will “explore topics such as sex, marriage, money, work, fatherhood and sports, drawing upon Mr. Lowe’s own experiences and observations,” according to a press release. It’s notable that “sex” comes first in the list of topics for Lowe’s second book, considering that his memoir sidestepped any mention of his 1988 sex tape brouhaha or his 2008 nanny scandal.
Love Life is planned tentatively for 2013.
Are you looking forward to Lowe’s followup?
Ever wanted to fit your favorite authors into your back pocket? Now you can! If you need a little stocking-stuffer for the reader in your life, these tiny, handcrafted dolls (the manly men can call them literary action figures) by Debbie Ritter are available on Etsy. Click through below and tell us your favorites!
J.R.R. TOLKIEN
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Mourning in Gotham City, and across all of fanboy nation: Legendary comic book artist Jerry Robinson has died at the age of 89. Robinson, who was born in Trenton, N.J., on Jan. 1, 1922, was recruited to DC Comics by Batman creator Bob Kane and made key contributions to the character’s mythos. In addition to Robin the Boy Wonder, Robinson is credited with helping to develop Bruce Wayne’s butler, Alfred, and two of the caped crusader’s best-known enemies, Two-Face and The Joker, both of which were featured in director Christopher Nolan’s last Batman flick, The Dark Knight, played by Aaron Eckhart and an Oscar-winning Heath Ledger, respectively. (It should be noted that the business of determining who came up with what in comics can be tricky and contentious. For example, Bob Kane — who died in 1998 — claimed that he and original Batman scribe Bill Finger concocted The Joker.) READ FULL STORY »
Daniel Handler, the author who wrote the bestselling Series of Unfortunate Events children’s books under the pen name Lemony Snicket, is back with his first-ever young adult novel Why We Broke Up (Dec. 27). The book, beautifully illustrated by Maira Kalman, tells the story of first heartbreak through a series of ordinary objects that carry deep meaning for two teenagers, Min and Ed, who are ending their relationship. This concept has inspired an interactive website, WhyWeBrokeUpProject.com, where readers can anonymously share their own breakup stories.
To ramp up to the book’s post-Christmas release, Handler took to Grand Central Terminal to interview passersby about their tales of heartache. Check out the exclusive video below! READ FULL STORY »
Clockwork Prince, the second book in Cassandra Clare’s Infernal Devices series hit shelves Tuesday. She graciously took time out of her busy schedule to sit down with us and answer a few burning questions about Prince and her popular YA series, Infernal Devices and Mortal Instruments. If you haven’t had a chance to read the newest installment, there are a few minor plot spoilers ahead. Here, Clare talks about the heart-breaking ending of Clockwork Prince, and gives fans a few clues about what to expect for her next books.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I know it’s still early, but what kind of response have you received for Clockwork Prince?
CASSANDRA CLARE: I’ve gotten a great response so far. You always worry because every book is different. People are like, “After your sixth book in print you must be used to it.” But you never get used to it. It’s kind of like having a baby. Every emergence into the world is different and going to be met with a different response. I knew that I put a lot of my heart and soul into this book. I loved writing it, but it has parts of it that are very sad. When you tug on your reader’s heartstrings, sometimes they can get a little upset.
Speaking of, that was a pretty sad ending! How have people reacted to the Jem/Tessa/Will storyline?
Heartbreak. READ FULL STORY »
Inception star Joseph Gordon-Levitt isn’t just a consummate actor-artist himself — he’s inspiring a worldwide community of artists to create together through his online production company hitRECord. The latest spin-off of his collaborative multimedia project is the ingeniously illustrated Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1 (It Books), a print collection of works from the website. The title describes the book pretty accurately: Some of the stories inside are witty, some of them are meaningful, but all are very, very brief.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: For people who haven’t come into contact with hitRECord yet, explain what it is in your own words.
JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT: It’s an open, collaborative production company. As much as I love acting, I also like telling stories, making little short films, music, art, writing, etc. Normally when an actor starts a production company, it’s sort of an insular, Hollywood thing, but I wanted to collaborate with all of these artists all over the world who are making beautiful art and don’t necessarily have the connections to work in Hollywood. That’s why we use the Internet and we put these projects that we do online, and anybody can contribute to them. I’m there directing, participating, curating, and editing, and we make things together. “Tiny Stories” is our most popular collaboration that we’ve ever had. It’s really easy to contribute to it. As it says on the back on the book, we had 8,000 contributions that came into this collaboration. From that we edited it down into this tiny book. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Colin McPherson/Corbis Watchmen
The support of Moore and Lloyd is notable both because of the weight they carry in the comics community, and because it was their comic, V for Vendetta, which first introduced the Guy Fawkes masks regularly worn by Occupy Wall Street protesters. READ FULL STORY »
Goodreads, a social network of sorts for readers, has announced its best books of the year according to a poll opened up to more than 6.5 million users. More than pretty much any other literary award, the Goodreads Choice Awards could be considered the People’s Choice Awards of books, since it’s a list decided by user recommendations and votes rather than critical reviews. Think of the books below as strong recommendations from a whole lot of your reader friends: READ FULL STORY »
