So, need a break from playing the new World of Warcraft expansion (OMGPANDASFTWQUEEEEE!!!)? Here’s some other pixels you can rest your eyeballs on. Though really, I would recommend getting out of your chair, eating some fruit and going outside. That big glowing thing in the sky is called the sun.
Awesome Star Wars terrariums. Who knew you could make a Dagobah terrarium?
A new Hobbit trailer!
Over at #sffwrtcht, an excellent interview with Juliet Marillier, including her talking about what she’s working on now for readers to look forward to. You could spend hours going through his archives of interviews and chats.
The Enchanted Inkpot talks about non-fairy tale retellings. This seems to be a popular subgenre, especially lately.
In my nominee for best blog post title of the week, Hiromi Goto knocks it out of the park with “Why We Need More Writers of Colour and Indigenous Writers to Write Fantasy and Science Fiction” or “Can We Move Beyond Vampires, Hobbits and Witches? (Tho Trollhunter, the film, was damn fine, wasn’t it?)”. To get an idea what he is talking about, check out this review of Jay Kristoff’s Stormdancer by The Book Smugglers.
And Justine Larbalestier talks about how her book Liar got criticized for racism, and whether or not it was a valid complaint.
Finally, it’s the 25th anniversary of both The Princess Bride and Star Trek: The Next Generation. You should read or watch something related to them both this week. If you haven’t read William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, you really should. It’s even better than the movie.
Thanks for the signal boost. SFFWRTCHT http://www.bryanthomasschmidt.net/sffwrtcht (Soon to be http://www.sffwrtcht.com) does interviews every Wednesday live on Twitter at 9 pm ET and anyone is welcome to ask questions. But like the one with Juliet, who lives in NZ, we also do some by email. Thanks for checking us out.
I definitely agree that The Princess Bride book is better than the movie, and I’m not sighting the movie when I say that. One of the few times in literature/movie history where a movie was worthy of the book. Still, William Goldman was at his best when wrote TPR I think. I’d also recommend a lot of his other works as well, although they aren’t really fantasy. Marathon Man and Adventures in the Screen Trade are both worth seeking out.