Our Blog

[The Book of Dust]

Last month, fans of Phillip Pullman’s incredible coming-of-age fantasy series His Dark Materials were overjoyed to hear that Lyra Belacqua is coming back in a whole new series: The Book of Dust, which is set for release October 19^th, 2017. The upcoming trilogy starts ten years before the events of The Golden Compass, with the later novels to be set ten years after The Amber Spyglass. This news immediately set people wondering about what we’ll find out about Lyra’s story, both before and after the events that made her famous in so many worlds. Pullman created a beautifully detailed universe in Lyra’s Oxford, and in the many worlds that she and Will discover, so we always knew that there were still so many more stories to tell…and now we get to hear them!

Beloved books are popular for a reason, but what if those stories had gone just a little bit… differently? Just a few letters can make a world of difference to a story. We’ve taken a whack at pitching a few classic titles that have taken a bit of a turn for the silly, strange, and ridiculous!

Feel inspired? Share your own pitches for famous novels with a twist @QuirkBooks on twitter with #Pitchatwist!

Taylor, Dodge and Landon looked at the vast desert ahead of them. It looked remarkably like the desert they had just spent days trudging through. They’d be out of water soon.

Landon said, "I jus' don't know what this desert's comin' to. There’s bound to be life somewhere."

 
Dodge said, "I been walkin' aroun' in the same desert, saying the same thing. What we comin' to? Seems to me we don't never come to nothin'. Always on the way. Always goin' and goin'. Why don't folks think about that? They's movement now. People moving. We know why, an' we know how. Movin' 'cause they got to. That's why folks always move. Movin' 'cause they want some pin better'n what they got. An' that's the on'y way they'll ever git it. Wantin' it an' needin' it, they'll go out an' git it.”

Editor’s Note: In an effort to keep Quirk E. Cat from napping at his desk, we have assigned him to Advice Column duty. We apologize in advance.

Dear Quirk E. Cat,

I’m finding myself in a reading rut. I’m still reaching for my daily dose of literature, but staying focused and allowing myself to get lost in a novel takes so much more concentration these days. I’m all for reading at my own pace, but I’m a library purist and these days I feel like I’m cramming for an exam when I pick up a book. I used to read one or two books a week, but now I’m lucky if I finish a novel before my library’s three-week due date. Any tips for reigniting the flame that once burned for literature? I really don’t want to be fined by the library. I mean, it’s the library. They know me there.

[Movie still from Wonder Woman, Warner Bros]

We can hardly wait until the release of Wonder Woman, the first film in almost twenty years to be headlined by a female superhero. Yet in 2016, there was another movie about female superheroes—Hidden Figures, which highlights three amazing NASA computers. These women managed to overcome the intersection of racism and sexism to become essential personnel in the space program, with Katherine Johnson even personally calculating the figures for John Glenn’s historic spacewalk. Every bit as heroic as the Hulk smashing.

In honor of Women’s History Month, we have some other suggestions for historic women superheroes, women who went above and beyond to make a difference to the lives of those around them.

Of all the tens of thousands of manuscripts that were produced and copied during the Middle Ages, only a fraction have survived to our day. Some of these manuscripts are plain, written in black ink, and have no more than a few illustrations. Others are magnificent with colorful writings and illuminations plated in real gold. And then there are the manuscripts that are outright weird.

We would like to introduce you to four of the weirdest medieval manuscripts still in existence.