Results tagged “book”

So Eragon’s Guide to Alagaesia is out in bookstores now and so we thought it’d be nice to do a roundup of all the awesome things that are Alagaesia-related floating around on the web!

1. Check out a sneak peek of Eragon’s Guide to Alagaesia

2. Submit your questions for a monthly Q&A with Christopher Paolini over at Shurtugal

3. If you love games, we’ve got Become a Dragon Rider for you!

4. Rewatch the Live Chat with Christopher Paolini and Terry Brooks, then check out the follow-up post, Christopher Paolini Answers Your Questions

Here are the other book, DVD and movie releases for the week!

HARDCOVER BOOKS

• Absolute Death by Neil Gaiman

PAPERBACK BOOKS

• Terminator Salvation: Cold War by Greg Cox

DVDS

• Blood: The Last Vampire
• Plastic Man: The Complete Collection
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
• Waterworld [Blu-ray]

IN THEATERS FRIDAY

• Astro Boy
• Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant
• The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D
• Saw VI

Order a latte at your favorite coffee house, it comes right up.

Try to order an out of print book at your local bookstore, it might be coming up faster than you think!

I live in Seattle. It is easily one of the largest reader cities in the world. The gloom and gray of our extended winters makes it so. We drink a lot of coffee. We buy a lot of books. We drink the coffee while reading a lot of books. We simply love everything that comes with sitting and reading. It’s in our genes.

Note: I’m more of a hot chocolate kind of guy once fall arrives, but don’t tell the rest of the coffee-saturated, caffeine hopped-up folks around me…

I had drinks last week with a publicist friend I’ve known for almost ten years. She was in town visiting her best friends and, having been in the industry for some time, has made a lot of friends who have relocated to Seattle. Those she invited out: a current editor at one of the local publishers, a former editor from Del Rey, two of her up-and-coming writer clients, a legalese production gamer, and a long-time sci-fi/fantasy expert from one of the local bookstores.

A fun group, all of whom work or have worked in the book industry.

The last one, the sci-fi/fantasy expert, divulged his bookstore will be getting a very cool contraption in November, one he hopes will create not only a new revenue stream for their bookstore but one that will help countless Seattle readers in their pursuit for knowledge, entertainment and publishing.

The bookstore in question is receiving an Espresso Book Machine!

Well, what is it?

As you can see from the video, the espresso book machine does exactly what you imagine it to. It is literally a printing press, small enough to fit in a bookstore, that allows the store to print and bind an out of print edition or print an on demand book within 10 minutes of taking an order. And on top of that it is affordable.

This is powerful technology.

And here’s why.

Finally, Summer is ending. My apologies to those of you who relish and enjoy the season, but I’m excited for it to be over. There’s just too much to be excited about for the Fall.

Now, I’m jaded. I’ll admit I prefer Fall to Summer in every way. The weather, the colors, the smells*, the food (sure, you can make chili in summertime, but why would you?), the ability to wear sweaters. And Fall is when everything picks up again. Books, movies, television, events, we’re about to face another flood of them. Here’s some of what I’m looking forward to as we hike into the last few months of 2009.

Books

Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber (October)
(Click here for more details)

I’ll come clean. I’m a horror fan from nearly as far back as I can remember. To clarify, I’m a fan of horror fiction (I can’t do the movies though). Back in my high school days** as I was being barraged by reading assignments covering the Romantic poetry movement, or and endless array of long drawn out works, I nearly lost my interest in reading. Then I found Stephen King. It didn’t take long until I was raiding the county library and buying up paperbacks from genre racks near and far. But it was that first book, Tommyknockers that really gripped me. It intertwined horror and science fiction to make the story, equal parts Eureka and They Live, if you’re interested.

Well, Joe Schreiber will be taking horror to the Star Wars universe this fall and I’m excited to return to that particular part of the genre melting pot again. Schreiber is a writer who can turn a terse phrase and scare you with things happening on this world. I wonder (oh, how I do wonder), what he’s thought up for Death Troopers. We know there’s zombies. We know there’s Storm Troopers. But what happens when the two get together in deep space? Like you, I’ll find out next month. I can’t wait.

The Devil’s Alphabet by Daryl Gregory (November)
(Click here for more details)

His debut novel, Pandemonium, is the type of book you read and think, “Horsefeathers! This isn’t his first book!” Well, here he is again and I’m hoping for a similar ride. The brilliance of that first book, and what has me excited in the set up for this book, is that Gregory creates a world that is so very, very similar to ours. He just tweaks one thing here or there to set the stage and then his characters come forward and it isn’t long before you’re sucked in to the story, all sense of time gone, all hope of sleep abandoned as you push on for just one more page, just one more chapter.

That’s the kind of writer Daryl Gregory is. In this book, we come to a town that has been decimated by a mysterious virus. The virus has killed off a substantial portion of the population, mutated others, and occasionally left some residents alone. Or so it seems. Returning to this town is Paxton Abel Martin, who fled when he was 14 and the virus was raging at full tilt and fled town shortly thereafter. Paxton appears to be fine, but is he?

Here’s a bit from the book’s description that hooked me and vaulted this book to one of the highest spots on my Must Read list for 2009:

Having fled shortly after the pandemic, Pax now returns to Switchcreek fifteen years later, following the suicide of Jo Lynn. What he finds is a town seething with secrets, among which murder may well be numbered. But there are even darker-and far weirder-mysteries hiding below the surface that will threaten not only Pax’s future but the future of the whole human race.

Mmmmm…a town with mutants and deep-dark secrets. Sign. Me. Up!

Read on for a few TV shows worth watching (or Hulu-ing) this Fall as well as a couple movies I’m looking forward to.

What are you doing today? Like right now? Hmmm? Are you in Brooklyn? No? Well, get your butt out there as this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival (brooklynbookfestival.org) is going on right now outside Brooklyn Borough Hall. From 10 to 6 today, it’s a celebration of literacy in all its forms. Oh, and it’s free. That’s right. Free. Check out the BBF’s website for their full program and author list.

Also, check out our friends at New York Comic Con, as they’re new to the BBF this year with a whole stage and section of exhibitors devoted to comics and graphic novels!

Okay, so even though I haven’t ACTUALLY read Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games, it has been on my giant leaning-tower-of-TBR list for ages now. And I know the general premise. And from that information, I deduce that if you are a fan of Hunger Games, you will be a fan of James Dashner’s The Maze Runner. Logical Lucy, that’s me.

Let me set the stage for you. You wake up in a metal box that’s being slowly elevated. You have no idea who you are beyond your name or why you’re in said box. And you don’t know where you’re going to end up. The box stops and opens up and next thing you know, you’re with a group of teenage boys in a large area enclosed by giant stone walls. Turns out these walls close at sunset and you want to be within the walls by then or else…

Why are the boys trapped in a giant maze? And why does Thomas feel as though he’s been there before?

I, for one, picked it up thinking I’d read a few pages then set it down and rejoin my mother in cooking. Well, that didn’t happen. Instead I tore through the book in three hours. It’s fast-paced and definitely keeps you on the edge of your seat. I am now eagerly awaiting the sequels (it’s going to be a trilogy when it’s all said and done).

It’s not out yet - comes out October 6th, but I’d highly recommend keeping an eye out for it.

But to whet your appetite, check out an excerpt from The Maze Runner here. Or you could win an ARC (advanced reader’s copy) over at Random Buzzers!

It is a very good time to be a sci-fi/fantasy reader!

Over the last few years we have seen an influx of great blogs run by fans. These blogs represent normal readers wanting to help others with their reading habits. Eventually publishers decided to get into the blog game and now there are many more tools and resources for all sci-fi/fantasy readers!

The power of the people have helped the people out!

Tor.com, one of those new blogs, has evolved recently, adding a bookstore to their website. It only includes print books at the moment but it will soon expand to include ebooks as well. The coolest thing about their new store, however, is their Special Picks section where authors and editors suggest great books for everyone to read!

Definitely check it out!

Congratulations, Tor! Lookin’ good!

How excited are you for THE CITY & THE CITY? Only two more weeks… in the meantime, whet your appetite with this video of China discussing the book.