Teenage girls read far more than teenage boys. Daniel Handler, author of the Lemony Snicket series and other fantastic tales, has a suggestion on how to increase teen boys' interest in books: more sex in the pages. From Daniel's essay in the New York Times:

It is a gross generalization, of course, to say that what young men want to read about is sex — or to imply that the rest of us aren't as interested — but it's also offensive to pretend, when we're ostensibly wondering how to get more young men to read, that they're not interested in the thing we all know they're interested in.

Diguo's Luxury Royal Family Balance Syphon Coffee Maker is an amazingly elaborate coffee siphon, a brewing method dating to the 1830s which is said to produce "a delicate, tea-like cup of coffee," albeit with the caveat that it is "quite persnickety."

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Home, the quirky triumphant solo debut of Carson Ellis, might look oddly familiar. You're not mistaken – you've seen this charmingly wholesome artwork before. And it's not because it looks as if it fell out of a Wes Anderson movie set and into your lap. — Read the rest

See sample pages from this book at Wink.

A cute cat wearing a scarf on the front cover, ABAB rhyming schemes, an amusing title that rolls off the tongue … yes, to the naked eye Amphigorey: Fifteen Books seems like the perfect book of books to calm a troubled mind before sleeping. — Read the rest

The legendary Lemony Snicket is headed to the high seas for a new adventure under his other name. But where's he coming from?

776 pages commemorating a quarter-century of Canada's outstanding, astounding indie comics press, including essays by Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Lethem and Lemony Snicket, and featuring seminal stories from Jillian Tamaki, Chris Ware, Adrian Tomine, and Art Spiegelman.

The Twitter Fiction Festival will return from May 11-15 for another a five-day celebration of creative work on Twitter.

We're proud to present the short animation, ‘I Have Your Heart’, a collaboration between New York illustrator Molly Crabapple, international rockstar Kim Boekbinder, and Melbourne animator Jim Batt.

Hal Johnson's Immortal Lycanthropes is a YA novel unlike any other. It's the story of Myron Horowitz, a horribly disfigured amnesiac orphan whose nice adoptive parents can't protect him from the savage beatings administered by the school bully every day. But then the bully is found bruised and battered and hurled through shatterproof glass, and Myron is found on the floor of the cafeteria, naked, with no sign of his clothes anywhere. — Read the rest

In my podcast this week, I read my story "Another Time, Another Place," recently published in The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, a companion volume to Chris Van Allsburg's classic Mysteries of Harris Burdick, a collection of illustrations and titles from a lost (imaginary) short story collection. — Read the rest

Today marks the publication of The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, an anthology of short stories inspired by The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, a much-loved book of illustrations and titles for short stories that never existed. For decades, writers young and old have produced their own stories to accompany the illustrations. — Read the rest

James Kennedy's debut young adult novel The Order of Odd-Fish is an extraordinary and delightfully weird romp that's one part China Mieville, one part Lemony Snicket, with trace amounts of Madeleine L'Engle and Roald Dahl.

Young Jo Larouche lives in a flyspeck town with her "aunt," a golden-age film star named Lily Larouche who disappeared for 40 years (along with her sprawling home) before reappearing in the middle of the desert with the baby Jo and no memory of the intervening years. — Read the rest

Nintendo today confirmed that it will indeed be bringing the downloadable face-tracking DSi game above — which drummed up quite a bit of buzz when I first featured it here in February — to the US on May 17th as Looksley's Line Up. — Read the rest

Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections. — Read the rest

Play This Thing has a review up for Gloom, a fun-sounding gothy card game that reminds me of the Lemony Snicket book — the objective is to make up miserable things to happen to your characters, and the most miserable wins. — Read the rest

I just finished "Capt. Hook: The Adventures of a Notorious Youth" by JV Hart (who wrote the screenplays for Hook and Muppet Treasure Island) and illustrated by Brett Helquist (who illustrated the Lemony Snicket books) — and I thoroughly enjoyed it. — Read the rest

In Salon today, Scott Lamb writes about "kindie rock," indy rock for youngsters of single digit ages (and their parents) who can't dig the cheezy kiddie pop found on most modern children's CDs. From Salon:

There may be no clearer sign of how big kids music has become than the long list of artists who, like They Might Be Giants, have surrendered to its allure.

A new Neil Gaiman tribute CD is coming out in July. One of the tracks is already available — "Mr Punch" by Future Bible Heroes, and it's a delight. Apparently, Stephin Merritt (from Future Bible Heroes) is also doing a Lemony Snickett-inspired CD in October. — Read the rest

Zach J sez: In what could only be called an advertisement for the upcoming film version of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Yahoo News has a story of a Benihana chef who tossed a shrimp tail at a man, which caused the man to reflexively jerk his head away from the incoming projectile, resulting in a neck injury. — Read the rest

Here's more on the Academy of Art College's ridiculous censorship campaign (which has so far resulted in the dismissal of an instructor for teaching a David Foster Wallace story, and the physical barring of Lemony Snicket from entering the school to give a talk). — Read the rest