Oz Reimagined is a collection of short stories written by authors like Seanan McGuire, Tad Williams, and Jane Yolen set in alternate versions of the world of Oz. A hard copy will be out next month, but each individual story will also be sold separately for the Kindle. io9 has all fifteen of the covers (drawn by Galen Dara) for those ebooks and one sentence synopses at their post, but here are five of our favorites.

Jodi Harvey-Brown’s book sculptures might be a little cutting a little too close for any librarians out there. And here was where I was ready to make a lot of other “glued” and “stitched” references here about readers of different sensitivity to book destruction, but frankly all the jokes I was coming up with were dumb so lets just say: if you’re bothered by the treatment of books as materials in art (which is quite understandable), you probably want to give this post a pass. But if you want to see a Millennium Falcon made out of Heir to the Empire, journey on.

Last week we reported on the Bad Sex Awards, a program that “honors” not real people who have left their lovers unsatisfied in the past year, but writers who committed “crude and often perfunctory… redundant passages of sexual description” to page in their works of otherwise non-erotic fiction. 2012 saw a selection of nominees from repeat nominee Tom Wolfe, for his use of the euphemisms “generative jockey” and “pelvic saddle,” to Paul Mason‘s “chrysanthemum.”

But there can only be one 2012 winner of the Bad Sex Awards, and she is Nancy Huston, for her novel Infrared.

2012 marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Dawn, the first book in Octavia Butler‘s famous Xenogenesis series (also known as Lilith’s Brood). Butler was, and perhaps still is, probably the best known African-American female writer in science fiction. She’s also the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur genius grant, and a list of other science fiction writers who would list her as an inspiration is long. Here, author N.K. Jemesin (whose Inheritance Trilogy is very much worth the read) talks about the effect Butler had on her life and writing.

I am eternally amused by the existence of the Bad Sex Awards, a yearly attempt to crown the worst sex scene in an otherwise non-erotic work of fiction “to draw attention to the crude and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel – and to discourage it.” Every reader knows how fun it is to encounter a terrible sex scene in the middle of an otherwise adequate or even enjoyable book. You know, ones that look like they were created in a game of madlibs, which, by the way, is a game I have totally played with dollar store paperback bodice rippers.

The other thing I totally love about the Bad Sex Awards is that this is the one literary award list where I don’t mind if women are always underrepresented on it.

Page and Dexter are trying to explain different types of chemical bonds to me, with a little help from their owner, Lauren, who is a chemist when she’s not indulging in her hobby of teaching her dogs to do things like make toaster waffles. Guys, if I didn’t get this in high school, I’m not sure I’ll ever get it. It’s not your fault, though. You know what they say: you can’t teach an old… I mean.

Sorry. That was insensitive.

(via Boing Boing.)

Robin Brenner, YA librarian and former Eisner Award judge, did something special for her library’s teen anime/manga club lock-in. She took a bunch of old graphic novels that had been replaced after becoming too dog-eared and spine-broken to keep on the shelves (that would otherwise have been thrown away) and turned them into Book Hedgehogs. Then she turned those book hedgehogs into the Avengers, Nick Fury, and Agent Coulson. Prepare for cute, everyone.

English professor Natalie Phillips has more than enough time during her day to observe folks who aren’t particularly engaged in what’s going on around them. As an English minor, I can speak from my own experience and observations in many English courses. As an English professor, Phillips is intimately familiar with the ability of a good book to make one immune from many distractions, ironically for the works of Jane Austen, which she says feature distractibility a major theme, particularly in Pride and Prejudice. She began to wonder if there might be some unexpected science behind the character arc of the novel’s heroine… and decided to team up with some neuroscience professors to find out, with interesting initial results!

I am personally outraged that any serious contender for the White House would target as part of his campaign the children of America in this fashion. Educators across the country, as well as millions of children and adults know that the programming on PBS has been responsible for significant improvements in education, literacy, math, science and life skills for generations of our children. PBS represents .00016% of our nation’s budget, yet this free resource benefits kids across all economic circumstances. Defunding PBS directly punishes the less fortunate by removing this trusted and extraordinary educational resource available to all…

But you don’t have to take my word for it… Make your own decision about how you feel about Romney’s campaign against PBS, and act. - LeVar Burton.

To our nerdy selves, LeVar Burton is first and foremost Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge of the USS Enterprise. But to our inner children, he’s first and foremost LeVar Burton, host of Reading Rainbow, the third longest running kids series on PBS, behind Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood (and still alive and well today in best selling app form). And with the use of his Reading Rainbow catch phrase, you know he’s still got it.

Previously in PBS

Tammy Forsythe‘s Etsy shop Strikebooks sells, among many other different sorts of handbound notebooks, this to-scale imitation of a submachine gun that opens into a very long blank notebook. Sound like precisely the kind of thing Spider Jerusalem would need, if anybody still wrote things on paper in his stories. Just don’t try to take it through airport security, or use it to sketch in coffee shops, is my advice.

Previously in Books