Jen Miller

This week, I learned of this unbelievably awesome, beautiful, and fantastic thing that's happening in Scotland: someone is creating sculptures out of books, and leaving them around Edinburgh.

It started in March with a tree and an egg filled with words (that, when put in order, make Edwin Morgan's "A Trace of Words").

And, magically enough, it continued.  There was a scene where a movie comes to life, with horses and men running out from a screen towards the filmgoers.  There was a dragon nestled in a teacup.  Another showed a child in a forest, with the inscription bearing the words "LOST (albeit in a good book)."

I'm going to be very upfront about this.  I paid $20 for the full PC version of Plants vs. Zombies.

Now, you can give me a hard time about this--you certainly won't be the first, and you probably won't be the last.  And when I heard recently that the game had gone on sale for very cheaply, I myself was a bit sad that I hadn't gotten such a good deal.

But I will tell you something else.  I don't begrudge a single penny of that $20.

In the first several chapters of Devon Monk's novel Dead Iron: The Age of Steam, we meet the following characters: a werewolf, a man that comes back from the dead, a banished prince from another world, and a witch, to name just a few. 

We also meet three brothers who are associated with something called the Strange.

Oh, and the whole novel takes place in a setting that is both Western and steampunk.

It's a setup that seems like it has the potential to get very overwhelming, very quickly.

Do you like werewolves?

Do you like steampunk?

Do you like Westerns?

If you do, then Devon Monk's novel Dead Iron: The Age of Steam might just be the novel for you!  We'll have a full review of it for you this week, along with some other exciting things as well!

Happy Friday!  We hope that those of you who started school this week had a great first week, and that for everyone in education, the semester is off to a great start!

Now, I know we linked to a Woot! shirt last week to celebrate the start of our Doctor Who series, but we're going to do it again this Friday because it fits so well with our "Back to School" theme this week:

The Star Wars theme of the shirt also fits nicely with a lot of the links we have for you today: