tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19731220953765192042019-01-08T02:12:41.116-05:00Reading Between the LinesAll books. All the time.Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.comBlogger509125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-55964029296745079422017-09-12T08:26:00.003-04:002017-09-12T08:30:52.521-04:00The Delight of Fall Reading<div class="tr_bq">Fall is almost here, and I couldn't be happier about it. I'm a temperate-weather girl, and so fall and spring are my jam. Especially since I can just put on a light jacket, make a cup of tea and maybe get myself a slice of pie, and grab a book, and take it all outside to sit and read. Delightful!</div><br />That's what I'd do if I had more free time, at least. So this fall, I need you to step up, dear readers, and let me live vicariously through your reading lists. If you need a hand deciding where to start,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/" target="_blank">Buzzfeed</a> has pulled together a list of <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/exciting-new-books-you-need-to-read-this-fall?utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Books%20827&amp;utm_content=Books%20827%2BCID_6923b1f362b119be8e3f71dbd7b8d7bc&amp;utm_source=BuzzFeed%20Newsletters&amp;utm_term=.bpnx57rjkD#.cxvxywA49z" target="_blank">"28 Exciting New Books You Need To Read This Fall."</a><br /><br />And if you have trouble deciding, Buzzfeed has even created <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/what-new-book-should-you-read-this-fall-2017?utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Books%20910&amp;utm_content=Books%20910%2BCID_4d95e7ef2482276de1adfcd567e3516c&amp;utm_source=BuzzFeed%20Newsletters&amp;utm_term=.dxzE1byX0l#.svY7Ed3em1" target="_blank">a quiz </a>to help you out.<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1485266434l/33375622.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="317" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1485266434l/33375622.jpg" width="133" /></a>&nbsp;<b><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33375622-her-body-and-other-parties?from_search=true" target="_blank"><i>Her Body and Other Parties</i>&nbsp;</a>by Carmen Maria Machado</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">[Machado] shows off her fresh new voice in H<i>er Body and Other Parties</i>, a genre-bending short-story collection that is part magical realism, sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. In Machado's imaginative, unsettling, haunting stories, she explores the violent realities of being a woman and having a female body in our society.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Publication date: Oct. 3</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: left;">&nbsp;<b><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33572350-my-absolute-darling?from_search=true" target="_blank"><i>My Absolute Darling</i>&nbsp;</a>by Gabriel Tallent</b></div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1498911183l/33572350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="313" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1498911183l/33572350.jpg" width="131" /></a>In [Tallent's] dark and gripping debut novel <i>My Absolute Darling</i>, Turtle Alveston is a 14-year-old girl who's lived in isolation with her survivalist father on the northern California coast since her mother's death. But when she finds a friend in a high school boy, she realizes she must escape her dysfunctional, abusive life with her father, using the survival skills he taught her and a whole lot of courage.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Publication date: Aug. 29</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1491880199l/34128285.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="474" data-original-width="318" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1491880199l/34128285.jpg" width="133" /></a><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34128285-the-golden-house?from_search=true" target="_blank">The Golden House</a></i>&nbsp;by Salman Rushdie</b></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">[Rushdie] makes a return to realism in <i>The Golden House</i>, a novel about an eccentric billionaire named Nero Golden and his three adult sons — who make quite the splash when they mysteriously move to a cloistered community in downtown Manhattan — and their aspiring filmmaker neighbor who chronicles their undoing. A tale of identity, reinvention, truth (and lies), and terror, The Golden House also captures the climate of American politics and culture from the Obama era to today — including the rise of a "narcissistic, media-savvy villain wearing make-up and with coloured hair" who embarks on a presidential run.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Publication date: Sept. 5</blockquote><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1487692305l/34368390.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="313" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1487692305l/34368390.jpg" width="131" /></a>&nbsp;<b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34368390-uncommon-type?from_search=true" target="_blank">Uncommon Type</a></i>&nbsp;by Tom Hanks</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Who knew beloved, Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks could also write?! In <i>Uncommon Type</i>, his debut short-story collection, Hanks explores what the American dream looks like for a multitude of characters, from an Eastern European immigrant to a war veteran. And, of course, Hanks' love for typewriters makes a cameo through each of the 17 stories.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Publication date: Oct. 17<br /><br /></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34381254-an-unkindness-of-ghosts?from_search=true" target="_blank"></a></i></b></blockquote><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1488470439l/34381254.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="317" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1488470439l/34381254.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34381254-an-unkindness-of-ghosts?from_search=true" target="_blank">An Unkindness of Ghosts </a></i>by River Solomon</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">In [Solomon's] highly imaginative sci-fi novel <i>An Unkindness of Ghosts</i>, eccentric Aster was born into slavery on — and is trying to escape from — a brutally segregated spaceship that for generations has been trying to escort the last humans from a dying planet to a Promised Land. When she discovers clues about the circumstances of her mother's death, she also comes closer to disturbing truths about the ship and its journey.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Publication date: Oct. 3&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><br /><a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1493407601l/34381333.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1493407601l/34381333.jpg" width="133" /></a><b><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34381333-mean" target="_blank">Mean</a></i>&nbsp;by Myriam Gurba&nbsp;</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">[Gurba's] <i>Mean</i> is a hilariously honest coming-of-age memoir about growing up as a queer, mixed-race girl in 1980s California. A fearless account of racism, homophobia, misogyny, sexual assault, and true crime that manages to be as funny as it is dark.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Publication date: Nov. 14&nbsp;</blockquote><br /><br /><a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1502482948l/15837671.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="314" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1502482948l/15837671.jpg" width="131" /></a><br /><blockquote><b><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15837671-turtles-all-the-way-down?from_search=true" target="_blank"><i>Turtles All the Way Down</i>&nbsp;</a>by John Green</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>[This is Green's] first novel since The Fault in Our Stars. Aza is a 16-year-old girl who finds herself investigating the mystery of a fugitive billionaire (for a hefty reward) with her best friend, while dealing with her own mental health struggles; at heart, a tale of the bonds of friendship and love.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>Publication date: Oct. 10</blockquote><br /><br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><b>To see the full list, visit the original post <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/exciting-new-books-you-need-to-read-this-fall?utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Books%20827&amp;utm_content=Books%20827%2BCID_6923b1f362b119be8e3f71dbd7b8d7bc&amp;utm_source=BuzzFeed%20Newsletters&amp;utm_term=.bpnx57rjkD#.cxvxywA49z" target="_blank">HERE</a>&nbsp;</b></blockquote><br /><br />Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-24490572799209744532017-09-06T11:40:00.000-04:002017-09-06T11:40:11.144-04:00Hello, It's Me. <span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So it's been over two years since I've posted directly on the Reading Between the Lines blog. I won't bore you with the details, but life has been pretty all over the place. In fact, a friend of mine recently came to this site for the first time and promptly informed me that I haven't blogged in a really long time.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I was immediately embarrassed, of course, but it got me thinking. And I realized that even though my life is insane and deadlines I deal with as an editor are sometimes ridiculous and incredibly stressful, I miss blogging, even if it's merely to share an article--something I also haven't even had much time to do. But maybe it's worth carving time out for. Life has changed so much in so many ways that I haven't been very good about letting myself have "me time." It's something I really need to work on.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In that spirit, I recently started going back to yoga (but very light, gentle yoga and restorative yoga only once or twice a week due to various medical conditions--they account for some of aforementioned craziness). And now I'm going to attempt to get back on the blogging horse, since really, it's an easy thing to do if I just <i>do it</i>.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, with all that said, I'm going to start off my sharing an article with you that the very friend who unknowingly nudged me back into blogging sent to me yesterday, written by his favorite indie writer, <a href="http://www.hughhowey.com/what-a-book-is-worth/" target="_blank">Hugh Howey, "What a Book is Worth."</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is something otherworldly about a book, something absolutely magical. This one simple container is somehow full of unlimited potential — you never know what awaits inside. What will you learn? What world will you be transported into? Whose life will you inhabit?</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Nonfiction books teach us new facts, but the real magic is fiction. Here, we zip another’s skin over our own bones and suddenly see through their eyes, learn what it feels like to be someone other than ourselves. Fiction imparts the gift of empathy. It’s also a vehicle for satire, for warnings, for reflection, and most importantly . . . for hope.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">An obsession for books binds millions of us together, all the avid readers and book collectors. In antique stores, we’re the ones ignoring the furniture and trinkets as we rummage through piles of musty tomes. We’re the ones at dinner parties standing in front of shelves and running our fingers across a stranger’s spines. We steal glances at jackets on subways. Used bookstores are mandatory stop signs. Piles of books stand like teetering monuments in our homes and on our bedside tables. Floor joists creak, bookshelves groan, and we sigh in contentment to be surrounded by all these stories and bound words.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My dream job was to work in a bookstore, something I was able to do in college and again while trying to make it as a writer. I couldn’t believe I got paid to open boxes of brand new books fresh off the press. I got to arrange them prettily on shelves. I also had the pleasure of working as a book critic, which lead to publishers sending me an unrelenting stream of advanced copies right to my door. Books newer than new! Not even out yet. I read and reviewed a book a day and still couldn’t keep up. The teetering monuments around my home grew taller, and I covered every wall of my house with bookshelves.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At some point, it becomes a fetish. The heft and feel of an old leather-bound book sends chills through me. I remember when Barnes &amp; Noble came out with faux leather-bound books of old classics for $19.95, and I wanted them all. Poe, Swift, Shakespeare, Twain. I would gladly pay a premium for books I’d already read, just because they were more booky than other books.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I won’t admit to having a problem, because I don’t see it as a problem. Books have defined and shaped my life. I always had one in my hand as a kid, and these days I pick out my clothes based on my reading habit. When I try on a pair of cargo shorts, the first thing I do is make sure my Kindle slips easily into the lower right pocket. That’s my holster; there’s an entire library locked and loaded.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Transitioning to ebooks was not easy for me, I’ll admit. I resisted. But the advantages eventually won me over. My Kindle allows me to read more books, more often, and more affordably. I started traveling for work, and now I could take plenty of books with me and also buy more from anywhere in the world. Living on a boat, this portable library is crucial. It also means a lot of thought and care goes into which physical books I keep. Most of my reading takes place on my Kindle, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever stop loving books. If anything, my appreciation has grown.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I’ve spent a lot of time over the years thinking about books and the book trade. As a reader, a bookseller, a writer, a publisher, an editor, and as a book designer. I ask myself questions about the value of books, the value of reading, the cost of publishing, and sometimes these questions lead me to weird answers. I’ve blogged about much of this over the years, and I’ve shared my strange ideas about books and bookselling as I describe my ideal bookstore or what I think publishers should do to reverse their falling fortunes.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My quest to understand the value of a book and reading has led me down many different and unusual paths. When it comes to my own work, I’ve long embraced piracy. I don’t see piracy as any different than a friend borrowing a book from a friend, or a single book making its way through a household or a school classroom. To me,&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">the value is in being read</strong>. The danger is in losing an audience. I do not speak for other authors or condone stealing in general; I’ve just never had a problem with it when it comes to my own works.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I also think books are both priceless and that they should be free if possible. I love&nbsp;<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page" target="_blank">the Gutenberg Project</a>, where you can download out-of-copyright classics at no cost. This website and an old ereader means a lifetime of reading and learning without spending another penny. My bestselling work of all time – the story that allowed me to become a full-time writer – has been free for years.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Wool-Part-One-Silo-Book-ebook/dp/B005FC52L0/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1503891169&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=wool+one+howey&amp;linkCode=sl1&amp;tag=hughow-20&amp;linkId=dcdd9453366475d7610ffa5618b1bde8" target="_blank">You can get it here for nothing.</a></span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But I also believe in supporting writers and paying what you can for a good book. When authors try to give me their books for free, I usually decline and buy a copy for my Kindle. I’ve paid more than cover price for an early edition, or a signed copy, or an especially beautiful binding. I guess I think books should be readily accessible to all, and those who can afford to be patrons should support the medium and the artists. And this is precisely the world I believe we’re heading towards.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Small bookstores with full-price books are rebounding, largely because affluent readers understand the value of these bookstores in their communities, and they are choosing to pay extra to keep them open. Amazon, meanwhile, is doing gangbusters with their discounted print book sales, ebooks, and Kindle Unlimited, because not everyone can afford current retail book prices, and not everyone lives close to a bookstore. Different needs and different means for different readers.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you haven’t heard of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Browse-Kindle-Unlimited-Books/b?node=9069934011" target="_blank">Kindle Unlimited</a>, it’s basically an all-you-can-read book binging buffet. $9.99 a month to access a metric ton of ebook electrons. Programs like this place a very&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">high value on reading</strong>&nbsp;by making more reading affordable to more people. And here is where the bizarreness of my philosophy on books arises: A high value for reading means a low price for books. A high value for books means the opposite.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here’s a Venn Diagram for avid readers and book nuts [below left]:</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0JCUvGD1kmA/WbATfcaVG0I/AAAAAAAAGZg/nPHnJQRz2qULbIQBJ-mC4BgNkeALJxNYQCLcBGAs/s1600/Venn-diagram.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="389" data-original-width="599" height="128" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0JCUvGD1kmA/WbATfcaVG0I/AAAAAAAAGZg/nPHnJQRz2qULbIQBJ-mC4BgNkeALJxNYQCLcBGAs/s200/Venn-diagram.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On the right side, you have people who decorate their house with books they’ll never read (There’s actually a company that sells books by the linear foot for decorating your home. They arrive in all kinds of foreign languages. Beautiful and unreadable). On the left side, you’ve got people who will gladly mainline books into their neck veins once Amazon perfects the technique; these are the readers who are causing ebook and audiobook sales to explode while print sales stagnate.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And in the middle, you have addicts of both. Here is where I think&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">we’re missing some potential in the book trade.</strong></span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The publishing market is bifurcating between those who are obsessed with reading and those who are obsessed with books. While there is common ground between the two sides, important differences remain. I know people who read several books a week, year after year. They can’t afford to buy full-priced books to support this habit.&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">Libraries, used bookstores, ebooks, free books, Amazon discounts</strong>, and programs like&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">Kindle Unlimited</strong>&nbsp;are what they need. If you look at this bolded list, you’ll see all the things publishers regularly complain about. And yet these are the readers publishers need the most. Again, these readers can’t afford their habits any other way.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The right side of the Venn Diagram also thinks of reading as a defining characteristic of their lives, and quite rightly. Reading a book is an enormous investment in time. These people might read a dozen books a year, or twenty books a year. Spending full price at the local bookstore, and working through a chapter a night, these readers attach a lot of significance to reading and to books. They have home libraries. They’ve even read half of what’s on their shelves. They can’t resist a bookstore and always find something new to purchase. They just wish they had more time to read. They&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">aspire</strong>&nbsp;to be like the first group, but life gets in the way. Publishers absolutely adore these readers and their value systems, even as these readers constitute a&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">dwindling</strong>&nbsp;percentage of publishers’ profits.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The difference between these two crowds explains some conflicting headlines. You may have seen that most people still read physical books. You may have also seen that most books sold today are ebooks. These two facts are neatly explained by the fact that&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">ebook readers consume far more books per person</strong>. It doesn’t matter how many people prefer physical books if they’re only buying a handful of them a year. A handful of books is a slow week for the group on the left side of the diagram. And&nbsp;<em style="margin: 0px;">ignorance of the existence of this group explains much of the ignorance and confusion within the book biz.</em></span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But what about the group at the intersection of these two groups? That middle slice of the Book and Reading Venn Diagram? Here is where you find the people who are both obsessed with reading and obsessed with books as objects. Here is much of the YA crowd and young readers in general, where solid objects provide highly prized substance for the expression of their individual selves. Here is where people who love one book in particular seek out&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">signed copies</strong>,&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">old copies,</strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">multiple copies.</strong>&nbsp;This is a crowd that ebooks can’t sate. For this group, current print book standards are falling short. In the pursuit of profit margins, the margins within&nbsp;<em style="margin: 0px;">actual books</em>&nbsp;are suffering. Fonts are shrinking, whitespace disappearing, paper and bindings getting cheaper, some formats disappearing altogether. Choices in print books are diminishing.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It need not be so.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Always one to experiment, I decided to take these ruminations and questions and put them to the test. I started asking myself what I would pay for my favorite books, the ones that truly shaped me. Years ago, Barnes &amp; Noble showed me that I would gladly pay $19.95 for a fake leather-bound copy of a book that I could otherwise legally download and read for free. That’s amazing when you think about it. It speaks to the value of the book as an object. The reading aspect costs&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">nothing</strong>. The $19.95 is all about the packaging. How far can we take this?</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/512Y0l2KMSL._SL1000_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="659" data-original-width="800" height="164" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/512Y0l2KMSL._SL1000_.jpg" width="200" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=hughow-20&amp;l=li2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B018IL7AQY" style="border: none !important; height: auto; margin: 0px !important; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: auto;" width="1" />There’s a Harry Potter hardback box set that comes in a special chest and sells <strong style="margin: 0px;">not as a route to cheap and quick</strong>, but as a route to&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">one-off and exquisite</strong>. A technology that publishers have avoided and frowned upon is one that they could instead use to cater to that overlap in our Venn Diagram.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">for around $130. This doesn’t seem unreasonable at all to fans of the series. For some of my readers, hundreds of dollars for a first edition of WOOL seems reasonable to them, even though the ebook is free. This got me thinking about print-on-demand technology&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Print-on-Demand (POD) means unlimited or zero copies, and both ends of this spectrum are important. Unlimited means never running out as demand goes up. Zero means not wasting a penny if there is no demand at all. POD is an end to&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">guessing</strong>&nbsp;what readers want and constantly getting those guesses wrong.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Check out this Print-on-Demand book:</span></div></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VUtPCYoOAWw/WbAS5cg0N3I/AAAAAAAAGZY/HSTLwvkqWsIKwdVqZHF6dDcr1KQHw8cAQCLcBGAs/s1600/ML-B-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VUtPCYoOAWw/WbAS5cg0N3I/AAAAAAAAGZY/HSTLwvkqWsIKwdVqZHF6dDcr1KQHw8cAQCLcBGAs/s320/ML-B-1.jpg" width="240" /></span></a></blockquote><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span></div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That’s a copy of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-New-Collected-Stories/dp/1328767531/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1503892995&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=machine+learning+howey&amp;linkCode=sl1&amp;tag=hughow-20&amp;linkId=b575d69c025d77ccdf1c7d69d4431ff2" target="_blank">MACHINE LEARNING, a complete collection of my short stories</a>. It will be released on October 3rd by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in hardback, paperback, and ebook. It was edited by John Joseph Adams, who also came up with the idea of publishing it. Before now, my short fiction has been scattered to the wind, published in so many places that I doubt anyone other than my mom has read them all. Some of these stories used to exist only on my old website; they became unavailable when I redesigned my homepage. Two of the included stories are brand new for this collection.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In addition to the stories, I wrote new thoughts about what each story means to me, or what I was thinking about or going through when I wrote them. These tidbits follow each story, and I think they add something to the reading experience. For those who are familiar with my work, you know how much the short fiction medium means to me. My success as a writer has mostly come through my short stories. I doubt any novel over my career will ever be as meaningful to me as this collection.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Which is why, when I needed to print out a proof copy of the manuscript to look over the final draft for changes and typos, I decided to do something a&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">little different.</strong>&nbsp;Instead of going to Kinko’s and binding this as cheaply as possible (my normal practice), this time I went all-out. I tried to marry my love of the contents with an exterior to match. And here’s what I learned from this project:</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I learned that I would have paid a week’s wage for a book like this, if it was the right book. As a bookseller, I used to make $10 an hour, and I worked thirty hours a week. Yeah, I was poor. But I spent what money I had on books, and I would’ve paid an entire week’s wage for a copy of ENDER’S GAME that looked like this – a one-of-a-kind hand-bound leather edition of my favorite read, signed by the author if possible. And I would’ve treasured that book for life and passed it down to a loved one. I’m one of those book freaks. I don’t think I’m alone. And I think it would cost precisely zero dollars for publishers to target this demographic using print-on-demand technology and by employing the fine folks who are keeping the art of bookbinding alive.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here’s how I would make it work: I would convince a publisher (or a number of them) to enroll a ton of books into this program. I would especially go after the books that have sold millions of copies and have meant so much to so many readers. But really, just make&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">every book available.</strong>&nbsp;It costs nothing, and millions of books are someone’s absolute favorite of all time. I bet every self-published author would add their works to the mix, and I bet Amazon would include their imprints as well.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next thing you do is sign up a handful of book binders and crafters to meet whatever demand arises. I think you could get the cost of these books down if the people making them had steady sales. The crafter I used was&nbsp;Lindsey of <a href="https://booksforalltime.com/v" target="_blank">BooksForAllTime</a>. Lindsey is a true artist, and working with her was an absolute joy. I got to pick out the leather, the type of paper, the design on the cover, the gold leaf inlay, all of it.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So the program would work like it does with BooksForAllTime: You pick out your favorite book, customize it to your delight, and it shows up on your doorstep a month or two later. Slow. Expensive. The&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">opposite</strong>&nbsp;of ebooks. But tapping into the same market of avid readers. That overlap in our diagram.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You might only own a dozen of these sorts of books in a lifetime. Or perhaps just one. Maybe you make a wishlist of your favorite books and make that list public for friends and family, so they know what to get you for Christmas or your birthday. Perhaps you have book clubs and programs that send you books on your wishlist every three months. Whatever you can afford. Maybe authors order one of each of their releases to have a library of their own books on display in their homes.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">These books might cost $200 to $400 bucks apiece. Crazy? Then you aren’t part of the crowd I’m thinking of. I’m thinking of the crowd that collects these slowly, saving up, to see a row of Harry Potter books on a shelf that look like they came from Hogwarts itself. A Tolkien trilogy that even an orc could love. A Foundation Saga that could last from one foundation to another. The ultimate copy of Dune, Cosmos, or To Kill a Mockingbird. Eventually, after decades of a reading and collecting life, a small bookshelf of absolute treasures emerges. If you’re smiling at this imagery, then&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">you</strong>&nbsp;are the crowd I’m thinking of.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But here’s where it gets very interesting: What if the author agrees to take a very small slice of that sale, a slice that would still be double the amount they make for a hardback (say, $3.00). And what if the publisher agrees to take the same measly cut (this would be a first). And what if the retailer did the same?</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In other words:&nbsp;<strong style="margin: 0px;">What if the book binder kept most of the profit?</strong></span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Why would this make sense? Because I think there would be enough demand for these books to employ a good number of book binders like Lindsey. I think keeping the price of these books as reasonable as possible would expand the number of people who fit into the middle of the Venn Diagram. These exquisite books will expand the love of reading, the fetish for books and stories, and they’ll last for ages.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The ridiculous and ultimate fantasy is that we parlay the untapped money in the pockets of book lovers worldwide, and we move that money into the pockets of people whose jobs are being displaced or upended by changes elsewhere in the global economy. Books being bound in developing countries. Books being bound by former coal miners. Would global demand for bespoke books be enough to move a million leatherbound titles a year? If so, that’s a living wage for thousands of people. Much more if you’re talking about developing countries.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This might sound crazy, but community bookstores are made possible in part by the willingness of some readers and gift shoppers to pay extra for something they love. The reason books make such great gifts is that we feel like we’re buying something that is good for the recipient, as well as bringing them joy. Parents of book-loving kids know what this feels like: it’s like having kids who beg for their veggies.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Imagine buying a loved one a book they’ll cherish forever, and knowing that the person making the book is having their life changed as well. Imagine spreading the joy of reading and the joy of books by using a technology that removes the risk from publishing, that allows us to create something not cheap and expendable, but rather exquisite and irreplaceable.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-57SuyUMyj3E/WbAUgPB-aFI/AAAAAAAAGZo/NyWjEpvyGM8x3-REPB9k03vqxsKtTLgwACLcBGAs/s1600/514%252BwdiDVRL._SX331_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-57SuyUMyj3E/WbAUgPB-aFI/AAAAAAAAGZo/NyWjEpvyGM8x3-REPB9k03vqxsKtTLgwACLcBGAs/s200/514%252BwdiDVRL._SX331_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="133" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When I’m done with this book, I’m going to do what we often do with physical <strong style="margin: 0px;">I’m going to pass it on.</strong>&nbsp;It’ll be a gift to someone who has furthered my writing career. If you want your own copy of&nbsp;MACHINE LEARNING, you’ll have to settle for the regular hardback, paperback, or ebook, which you can pre-order&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-New-Collected-Stories/dp/1328767531/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1503892995&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=machine+learning+howey&amp;linkCode=li2&amp;tag=hughow-20&amp;linkId=9293169b8f1f3496d63d77bc188f1559" target="_blank">here</a>. Or if you’re interested in something leather-bound and special, I own the print rights to lots of my works. Maybe Lindsey could make you a special edition of MOLLY FYDE AND THE PARSONA RESCUE or HALF WAY HOME. Or perhaps other indies will open their works, and other bookbinders will get in on the fun.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">books:&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This won’t be for everyone. Just the nuts in the middle.</span></div><div style="color: #222222; padding: 0px 0px 15px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So what would your favorite book be worth to you?</span></div></blockquote><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Howey has written an interesting piece here, and a lot of it I wholeheartedly agree with and find hopeful. However, I do think Howey is being a bit too idealistic when it comes to some things, particularly the cost of publishers creating POD books. The truth of the matter is, every book and every step of said book's sale, has overhead. It isn't <i>free</i>&nbsp;for publishers to do this sort of thing. So many people have the same view as Howey when it comes to things like POD and e-books because they think that once the book is written and formatted, there aren't anymore costs. Even turning an e-book into a POD requires more work and cost.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I do wish it could be as easy as he says, though, and that more people who can afford it would be willing to pay extra so that people who can't can pay less. But honestly, I don't think that's going to happen. People who can afford it may buy more expensive editions of books, but that doesn't affect people who need to buy less expensive editions. It doesn't work like a subsidy does, and publishers aren't going to have an expensive and a cheap edition for each book. And if they did, people are going to pick the cheap one, often even people who can afford the expensive one. So then we'll be right back where we are now, and publishers will continue to price books the way they need to in order to cover their overhead, advances, and make a profit. Because publishing is, after all, a business, even if it's one that has art at its core.</span>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-35556553173035107022015-05-08T09:20:00.001-04:002015-05-08T10:41:43.608-04:00Does (Book) Length Really Matter? <a href="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1421709869l/22557272.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1421709869l/22557272.jpg" width="132" /></a>It always surprises me when I poke around a bookstore and see super thick hardcover or even trade paperback bestsellers. I've noticed this particularly in the past year or so with books such as&nbsp;<i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17830123-we-are-not-ourselves?from_search=true&amp;search_version=service" target="_blank">We are Not Ourselves</a></i>,&nbsp;<i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22557272-the-girl-on-the-train" target="_blank">The Girl on the Train</a></i>, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3407877-the-forgotten-garden?from_search=true&amp;search_version=service" target="_blank">The Forgotten Garden</a></i>, and <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17333223-the-goldfinch?from_search=true&amp;search_version=service" target="_blank">The Goldfinch</a></i>. And quite frankly, it baffles me. I've read two of the aforementioned bestsellers, both of which I struggled to get through. Not because I have an issue in general with "long books," but because neither of them <i>needed</i>&nbsp;to be as long as they were.<br /><br />As an editor, I am keenly aware of these things, and it makes me cringe when novels meander and go off on tangents that are entirely irrelevant to the story. In fact, when I was working at Simon and Schuster, I once was tasked with taking a 700+ page women's fiction novel from overseas and paring it down to 400 pages at the most. Crazy, right? But the craziest part is that I actually accomplished it. Not only could the language itself be tightened on a sentence level but whole paragraphs could come out because they didn't tie into anything or have any real purpose. What was really shocking, though, is that I <i>kind of</i> killed off a character. o_O There was entire plotline and POV that was unnecessary to the story. It didn't weave into the main plot or character arcs at all, other than that character being related to one of the other characters. While the character certainly still "existed" in the story, every section with her POV narrating lifted right out. It was interesting plotline in and of itself, don't get me wrong, but it was its own story, not the one this book was telling. That plotline alone took up about 200 pages long and it <i>wasn't needed</i>.<br /><br />This is something I see a lot in early drafts of manuscripts and it's my job to address it, to make sure a reader is engaged from the first to the last page, that the pace is moving at a readable clip, and that the story is clear, tight, and moving along with each scene. So the fact that so many books go to publication with these sorts of issues--and do <i>well</i> sometimes--makes me kind of sit there and blink at the wall. My first question is always "what did the editor even do, then?" and second, "how on earth are all these readers getting through these books, especially in today's world of ADD?"<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://img1.imagesbn.com/p/2940014378826_p0_v1_s260x420.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://img1.imagesbn.com/p/2940014378826_p0_v1_s260x420.JPG" height="200" width="149" /></a></div>Of course, classic literature has always been on the longer side, so there's certainly a precedent of it. Just look at the unabridged versions of <i>Les Miserables</i>, <i>The Count of Monte Cristo</i>, and <i>Don Quixote</i>. They were all over 400,000 words. But note something I just said...these are&nbsp;<i>unabridged versions</i>. There are <i>abridged </i>version of all three of those classics. Meaning, if you think about it, that extra length...? Yeah, it wasn't necessary. It might have lovely language or a nice lesson or tangent behind it, but it wasn't telling the story the book was meant to tell.<br /><br />Now, don't get me wrong, it is incredibly impressive when people can write such tomes and find a way to keep readers' attention. But why is this mini-trend happening right now? Is it something people really like or is it just happening because of good marketing and reviews that focus on only the strong points? Just because people buy the books doesn't mean they enjoy them. It doesn't mean they didn't skim over half the book to get to the good parts (what I did with both those novels I mentioned earlier).<br /><br />A recent article by the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/" target="_blank">BBC</a>&nbsp;(and what do you know, like this blog post, it's a super long!) takes a look after hearing about the UK publication of &nbsp;an 800+ page novel&nbsp;called <i>Death and Mr. Pickwick</i>&nbsp;by debut author Stephen Jarvis. (They also mention an upcoming book that is <i>one million</i>&nbsp;words long. Yes, <i>one million words</i>. That is not a typo.)<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Debut novels don’t come more heavyweight than Stephen Jarvis’ <i>Death and Mr Pickwick</i>. Twelve years in the writing, it tells the story of the creation and afterlife of Charles Dickens’ own first novel, <i>The Pickwick Papers</i>, one of the world’s most written-about works of fiction. Pickwick was the book that made Dickens a celebrity, and it was published in monthly installments starting in March 1836, using his pen name, Boz.&nbsp;</blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span id="goog_1905436956"></span><span id="goog_1905436957"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a>Out this month in the UK and next month in the US, <i>Death and Mr Pickwick</i> is a gloriously meandering tour of 19th Century London that has already been dubbed <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/9780374139667" target="_blank">“a staggering accomplishment” by Publishers Weekly</a>.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1429101590l/22929571.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1429101590l/22929571.jpg" width="133" /></a>Yet it’s heavyweight in another, more obvious sense too. Lug this book to the beach and back every day, and you’ll be getting a full-body workout. Drop it, and you risk breaking a toe. Weighing two-and-a-half pounds, it’s a whopping 802 pages long – an audacious claim on readers’ time in an age when our attention spans are supposedly being whittled away to nothing by ever-more insistent digital distractions.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">There is plenty of longer fiction, of course. <i>Kelidar</i>, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s Persian language novel following a Kurdish family in the wake of World War II, is 2,836 pages. <i>The Son of Ponni</i>, a historical novel written in Tamil by Kalki Krishnamurthy, and published in the 1950s, is barely any shorter at 2,400 pages. And then there’s Proust, whose <i>In Search of Lost Time</i> is 3,031 pages long.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Don’t think it’s just a 20th Century phenomenon, either. Nothing compares to the 17th Century French novel <i>Artamène</i>. The tale of a shepherd’s son who’s really a Persian prince, its 2 million or so words (the average 280-pager contains just 80,000) fill 13,095 pages. Originally credited to Georges de Scudéry, these days it’s more commonly attributed to his sister, Madeleine.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><i>A bulky bedfellow</i></b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Though it can’t quite compete in terms of pagination, Jarvis’ novel is part of a mini-trend that seems to be gathering momentum – and bulk. In the next few months alone, playwright Larry Kramer publishes the first of his two-volume fictionalised history, <i>The American People</i>, which comes in at 800 pages (he’s been working on it for 40 years and at one point the manuscript was 4,000 pages long), Amitav Ghosh completes his <i>Ibis </i>trilogy (the final installment is 624 pages), and review copies of Hannah Yanagihara's <i>A Little Life</i> have been sent out filled with Post-It notes attached to flag representative passages, presumably because the book’s girth is so daunting (at 736 pages, it’s really not so little at all). In July, you can expect to hear bookshelves groaning as William T Vollmann’s new novel, <i>The Dying Grass</i>, is published. Set in the Wild West during the 1870s, it totals 1,376 pages. And next year, British graphic novelist Alan Moore publishes his second non-graphic novel, <i>Jerusalem</i>, which is billed as a fantastical exploration of his hometown, Northampton. It’s said to be a million words long.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Together, these bulky books call into doubt the received wisdom about our besieged attention spans. They might also make you wonder what editors are up to. And they question, too, the evolving role of the literary novel in the wider culture. Doesn’t there come a point at which the sheer scale of these works is so out of kilter with the reading time available to even the most dedicated bookworms, that they have to be seen as wilfully marginalising themselves? Think of this as well: every purchase of a novel over 600 long pages may well come at the expense of two or three others.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1410524246l/17333230.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1410524246l/17333230.jpg" width="132" /></a>If you wanted to pinpoint the start of all this, you could do worse that looking to 2013, when 28-year-old Eleanor Catton became not only the youngest author ever to win the Man Booker Prize, but did so with the longest book. <i>The Luminaries</i> is 832 pages long. Did the judges not deem its length problematic? Not according to their chair, author and academic Robert Macfarlane.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">“Length never poses a problem if it's a great novel”, he insisted. To prove his point, that same year, Donna Tartt’s <i>The Goldfinch</i> (760 pages) sold and sold.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">As a reader, you know what you’re in for when you begin a long book. It’s not that we necessarily expect more – after all, as much can be said in a poem, never mind a short story – but we do tend to indulge the author a little, allowing for the fact that in a longer work time can be taken establishing characters, and the subplots layered on with plenty of scope for resolution. It’s a different relationship. A novella may be read in a single sitting, making for a more intense reading experience. The bulky epic, meanwhile, inveigles its way into your life over a period of weeks or even months, becoming a travel buddy and bedfellow.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><i>Is bigger better?</i></b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">In genre fiction, big has never fallen out of fashion. Fantasy novels especially tend to run long, and plenty of airport paperbacks are so dense they look almost square. But then those tend to be vastly pacier affairs. In the US, too, there’s an expectation that a great literary work will also be physically imposing. Still, how many of even those wouldn’t be improved by a judicious nip and tuck here and there? <i>The Goldfinch</i> is one of my favourite novels of this century, but if I were forced to come up with a quibble, it would be that Tartt spends too long in Las Vegas in the middle section.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">“Very few really long novels earn their length. My fingers are always twitching for a blue pencil,” Ian McEwan told the BBC last year. He was speaking on publication of his own most recent novel, <i>The Children Act</i>, a work so slender it might almost be called a novella. The story of a high court judge who must decide whether to compel a young Jehovah’s Witness to receive a life-saving blood transfusion, it radiates brilliance, and yet weren’t there a couple of passages that felt too research-heavy? Sometimes, authors themselves simply become too big to cut. Remember how the <i>Harry Potter</i> books grew as JK Rowling’s fan-base exploded?&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1381585095l/18362144.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1381585095l/18362144.jpg" width="193" /></a>In an age of 140-character tweets and six-second Vine videos, it’s hard not to view the abundance of fat books as a throwback trend. A tome so heavy it’s barely portable is, after all, the ultimate anti-e-book. Novelist Naomi Alderman is well placed to comment, as she also creates video games, most notably the top-selling <i>Zombies, Run!&nbsp;</i></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">“The trend towards long books is a fascinating counterpoint to the suggestion that we're all becoming iPhone-junkies, with minuscule attention spans, twitchily unable to concentrate on anything longer than a tweet,” she told BBC Culture. In fact, she suggests, technology might be making us more ready to sign over large chunks of time to a novel. As well as the oft-cited influence of TV binge-viewing, made possible by streaming, she points to the fact that AAA video games – those with the highest development and promotion budgets – frequently demand upwards of 100 hours of gameplay.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">“The death of the ‘attention span’ might have been declared prematurely,” she adds. “But at the same time, novels are competing with other entertainment forms that provide a lot of instant thrills. To start a long novel these days, I think the reader needs to feel certain that the tale will be worth the journey.”&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/813us1QpYLL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/813us1QpYLL.jpg" height="200" width="126" /></a>Of course, Stephen Jarvis, who’s 57 and lives in Maidenhead in the south of England began writing his novel in 2001, in a world before Facebook. It was influenced, he says, by reality TV’s <i>Big Brother</i>. ‘It strikes me that there are parallels between <i>Big Brother </i>and <i>The Pickwick Papers</i> – both of them are plotless things which just sort of ramble along. There’s an emphasis on character and you don’t really know what’s going to happen.’&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">At one point, <i>Death and Mr Pickwick</i> rambled to 800,000 words, but he cut it back by over half in order to have it fill 802 pages – the exact same number as Dickens’ novel.<br />Jarvis has no worries about readers being put off by the novel’s length, though he does admit this wife has vowed never to read it. “She has special dispensation – her excuse is she doesn’t need to read it because she’s had to live it,” he says. She supported him while he wrote, and so it seemed only fair that he let her type the letter ‘d’ of the ‘The End’ before they went off to the pub to celebrate. When finished copies arrived, however, the words had been cut. Turns out it’s not house style.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">See the original article <a href="http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150507-the-never-ending-stories" target="_blank">HERE</a></blockquote><br />So what do you think, dear readers? Would you pick up (and read in its entirety) an excessively long novel? If so, what would compel you to do so?<br /><br />I am truly curious...<br /><br />Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-14294819933003372242015-05-07T10:34:00.000-04:002015-05-07T10:34:34.284-04:00Scholars Discover 150 Unpublished Stories by Mark TwainJust when you thought classic American Literature couldn't get any better with the upcoming second novel from Harper Lee, scholars at the University of California, Berkley proved that thought wrong. Just this week the news broke that they discovered over 150 unpublished stories by Mark Twain.<br /><br /><i><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/" target="_blank">The Guardian </a></i>tells us more:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Scholars at the University of California, Berkeley have uncovered and authenticated a cache of stories written by Mark Twain when he was a 29-year-old newspaperman in San Francisco. Many of the stories are 150 years old.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/5/4/1430776047550/9fba8bab-f569-44c5-896b-8643ae338d64-620x372.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/5/4/1430776047550/9fba8bab-f569-44c5-896b-8643ae338d64-620x372.jpeg" height="120" width="200" /></a>Twain wrote some of the letters and stories at the San Francisco Chronicle when it was called the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle, where his job included writing a 2,000-word dispatch every day and sending it off by stagecoach for publication in the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">His topics range from San Francisco police – who at one point attempted, unsuccessfully, to sue Twain for comparing their chief to a dog chasing its tail to impress its mistress – to mining accidents.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Bob Hirst is editor of the UC Berkeley’s Mark Twain project, which unearthed the articles by combing through western newspaper archives and scrapbooks. The author’s characteristic style authenticated some of the unsigned letters.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Hirst told the Guardian the digitisation of newspaper archives had been like “opening up a big box of candy”, allowing as it did Twain’s articles to be tracked down in a way that was not possible when archives were all on microfilm.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">The articles were written, Hirst said, at a time of great uncertainty in Twain’s life, when he was trying to decide in which direction to take his career.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">“It’s really a crisis time for him,” Hirst said. “He’s going to be 30 on 30 November 1865, and for someone not to have chosen a career by that time in this period was quite unusual.”&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Twain had been resisting becoming a humorist, according to Hirst, because at the time humor was considered a lower order of writing. He was in debt and drinking heavily, and even wrote to his brother that he was contemplating suicide, saying: “If I do not get out of debt in three months – pistols or poison for one – exit me.”&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Nonetheless, the articles, Hirst says, are brilliant examples of Twain’s inimitable style.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">“He knows the city, he’s a bohemian of a certain kind, he’s interested in what’s going on,” Hirst said. “He simply weaves that all together with the greatest clarity and the greatest humour that you could possibly imagine.”&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;">See the original article <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/04/mark-twain-cache-uncovered-berkeley" target="_blank">HERE</a></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I don't know about you, but I'm itching to get a look at these stories. Here's hoping his estate allows for posthumous publication!</div><br /><br />Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-86878998842873826192015-03-22T10:28:00.000-04:002015-03-22T10:28:14.046-04:00I'll Be There For You: A Harry Potter Promise*AHEM*<br /><br />I have been MIA, and I'm extremely sorry, dear readers. Life has been beating me up over the past year, making it quite difficult to stay on top of things. *hangs head in shame*<br /><br />Please allow me to give you this fun and straightforward peace offering and promise:<br /><br />"Tumblr user Jeremiah Rivera got 'bored' and made this absolutely perfect remix of the <i>Friends</i> intro, but with the characters from <i>Harry Potter</i>." (<a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/jemimaskelley/ill-be-there-for-harry?&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Books+322&amp;utm_content=Books+322+CID_6c5c692da2988db686475d4456fae023&amp;utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&amp;utm_term=Someone%20Put%20Harry%20Potter%20Scenes%20Into%20The%20Friends%20Intro%20And%20Its%20Perfect#.hlD5PnRYvO" target="_blank">Buzzfeed.com</a>)<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236.25" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wjNqa5mnVUU" width="420"></iframe></div>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-50992194812842501462015-01-23T12:21:00.001-05:002015-01-23T12:21:55.286-05:00National Readathon Day Takes Off Tomorrow<div class="tr_bq">Happy friday, fellow readers! This upcoming weekend is an exciting one for the book world, so I hope your week has prepared you to curl up on the couch (especially for those of you who are expecting a snowstorm this weekend!) with a cup of hot cocoa and a good book. And while I wish that type of relaxation for you all the time, there is an additional reason this particular weekend is so special...<br /><br />Tomorrow is the first annual&nbsp;<a href="http://global.penguinrandomhouse.com/readathon/" target="_blank">National Readathon Day</a>!</div><br />Initially created by the recently merged <a href="http://global.penguinrandomhouse.com/readathon/" target="_blank">Penguin Random House</a>, National Readathon Day is about more than just reading a book, though. It's also about fundraising for literacy, GalleyCat points out:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://global.penguinrandomhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/NationalReadathonDayThumb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://global.penguinrandomhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/NationalReadathonDayThumb2.jpg" height="100" width="200" /></a>Proceeds will support the National Book Foundation’s education programs, including an after-school reading program called BookUp. Fundraisers will win prizes from The National Book Foundation.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">More than 200 bookstores and libraries across the country will be participating in the event. To find out where to participate in your local area, check out this map.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Fifteen bestselling authors including: Khaled Hosseini, Jacqueline Woodson, Delia Ephron, Harlan Coben and Simon Doonan have supported the cause in this #timetoread video.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">See original post <a href="http://www.adweek.com/galleycat/national-readathon-day-teams-raise-20k/97768?utm_content=post4-title&amp;utm_source=galleycat&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=dailynewsletter20150119" target="_blank">HERE&nbsp;</a></blockquote><br />The National Book Foundation website tells us more about the celebration:<br /><br /><blockquote>Consider this: 53% of 9-year-olds read for pleasure daily, and by the time they turn 17, that number drops to 19%. Without your help, book worms may soon become an endangered species. &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>That's why Penguin Random House and the National Book Foundation are launching National Readathon Day. We're asking book lovers across America to pledge to read for four hours starting at noon (in respective time zones) on January 24, 2015.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>Make your commitment here on FirstGiving and fundraise to support the National Book Foundation's efforts to create, promote, and sustain a lifelong love of reading in America. Proceeds will support our education programs, like <a href="http://www.nationalbook.org/bookup.html" target="_blank">BookUp</a>, our after-school reading program which has given away over 25,000 books to middle schoolers since 2007.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>To show our appreciation, we're delighted to offer some exciting rewards at a variety of fundraising milestones.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>Individual fundraising premiums for National Readathon Day are awarded at the following levels: &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">$100 - an I Love Reading tote bag &nbsp;</blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">$250 - a copy of a 2014 National Book Award winning book &nbsp;&nbsp;</blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">$1000 - a tote bag plus all four 2014 National Book Award winning books.&nbsp;</blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">$2500 - 2 tickets to the invite-only 2015 National Book Awards ceremony, dinner, and after-party &nbsp;</blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">$7500 - 2 tickets to the invite-only 2015 National Book Awards ceremony, dinner, and after-party plus hotel and airfare (from anywhere in the continental United States)&nbsp;</blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Additionally, the top fundraising team will have the opportunity for an exclusive reading (in-person or online) with Phil Klay, author of Redeployment, the 2014 National Book Award Winner for Fiction.&nbsp;</blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>Thank you for joining us for National Readathon Day and in celebration of how important reading is to American culture.<br /><br />The mission of the National Book Foundation is to expand the audience for literature in America. Its programs include BookUp, 5 Under 35, the Innovations in Reading Prize, and the National Book Awards.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>If you need more information about the National Book Foundation or National Readathon Day, email bsamuel@nationalbook.org. And for press inquiries, email syoung@nationalbook.org.</blockquote><blockquote style="text-align: center;">See original post <a href="http://global.penguinrandomhouse.com/readathon/?cat=14" target="_blank">HERE</a></blockquote><br />As of a week ago, there were already more than 120 teams that had "raised more than $20,000 as part of the event" (GalleyCat). &nbsp;As of today there are 153 teams, raising more than $40,000 according to <a href="http://www.firstgiving.com/10658" target="_blank">the FirstGiving website</a>. There is still time to get involved and get excited, so hop to, folks!<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-23702311726762389302015-01-20T13:38:00.003-05:002015-01-20T13:40:42.323-05:00The Perfect Cookie for the Perfect BookLately I have been hearing an awful lot about Girl Scout cookies. And I always hear an awful lot about books, of course. So when I saw that someone over at <a href="http://bookriot.com/" target="_blank">Book Riot</a> put the two together, pairing different GS cookies with certain reads, I was delectably intrigued:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Girl Scout cookies are great no matter what they’re paired with, but I think we can all agree that everything is better with books. As a former Girl Scout, I know that people have their favorite cookies (Reppin’ Samoas, what what!). After some extensive taste tests, we here at Book Riot have found the perfect book/cookie pairings – no matter what your cookie preferences may be!</blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2982-presscdn-29-70-pagely.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/girl-scouts-cookies.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="1200" src="https://2982-presscdn-29-70-pagely.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/girl-scouts-cookies.png" width="243.75" /></a></div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">&nbsp;See the original post <a href="http://bookriot.com/2015/01/12/books-to-pair-with-girl-scout-cookies/" target="_blank">HERE</a></blockquote><br />Some of these pairings are utterly fantastic, I must say. Others, I admit, I don't quite get because I don't know enough about the book. :( Buuuut I do think a fun pairing for Savannah Smiles, though, would be <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7048800-the-particular-sadness-of-lemon-cake?from_search=true" target="_blank">"The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake" by Aimee Bender</a>. :-p Ahh irony. Gotta love it.<br /><br /><h3 style="text-align: center;">What would YOUR perfect pairing be?</h3><br />As a side note, my littlest sister, who has been selling GS cookies for years, won't be doing so this year. But I'm stoked that <a href="http://www.girlscouts.org/program/gs_cookies/digitalbuyer.asp" target="_blank">GS has finally moved some cookies sales online</a>, so those of us who don't know any Girls Scouts aren't missing out on the deliciousness itself <i>and</i> on helping out such a great organization!<br /><br /><br />Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-32821055975977002512015-01-08T09:55:00.003-05:002015-01-09T15:15:18.430-05:00Give the Man a Break <a href="http://ourfaithinaction.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/nicholas-sparks1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ourfaithinaction.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/nicholas-sparks1.jpg" height="200" width="133" /></a>And by "the Man" I mean Nicholas Sparks.<br /><br />Earlier this week my social media feeds blew up with "news" of novelist <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/06/nicholas-sparks-wife-split_n_6422840.html?utm_hp_ref=books&amp;ir=Books" target="_blank">Nicholas Sparks's marriage split</a>. I saw a lot of callous remarks being made about the irony of it with&nbsp;<a href="http://nicholassparks.com/" target="_blank">Sparks's</a> penchant for hopeless romanticism in his books, and it seemed the trend was to chastise him, many people almost reveling in his pain. And then there were those who claimed that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/06/nicholas-sparks-divorce-reaction_n_6424006.html" target="_blank">love couldn't ever last if Sparks couldn't make it work</a>. Honestly, I was ashamed to even be reading such commentary.<br /><br />That said, I'll keep this short and sweet.<br /><br />Leave the man alone. Just because he writes about enduring love doesn't mean he isn't human. It doesn't mean he has some magical power to make love last that the rest of us don't. He had a twenty-five-year marriage, which is more than most people can say.<br /><br />So, to Nick Sparks, wherever you are, I'm sorry for what you're going through. It's a sad thing for a relationship to unravel and it's painful and scarring and it takes time to heal, even when you're a bestselling author.Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-90952804850218670282015-01-02T13:06:00.000-05:002015-01-02T13:06:07.323-05:00Welcome to 2015With 2015 now upon us, "Best of 2014" lists are coming out our ears, making it hard to focus on what's to come in the year ahead. While I like "Best of" lists just as much as the next booklover, the start of a new year is a time to look forward, not back.<br /><br />But where do we start? There are so many amazing books hitting the shelves this year! If you're struggling like I am (despite the giant TBR pile that is basically every room in my home), Book Riot has given us readers a fun challenge to get us started with the "2015 Read Harder Challenge":<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.advertisewithin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/BookRiotCircle.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.advertisewithin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/BookRiotCircle.png" height="161" width="200" /></a></div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">Whatever your preference for reading challenges, we here at the Riot enjoy the odd challenge. We’ve written before about the benefits of a reading challenge; they can stretch your reading, whether the intention is to push you to read more of your TBR, more classics, more backlist, more new releases, or just to read more. Or even if the intention is to read less.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">January 1st brings with it both an abundance of challenges for the new year and an abundance of resolutions. These are often connected for readers, many of whom – Rioters included – make reading resolutions. As many of us here resolve to read more diversely, in any number of ways, we thought it would be a good idea to come up with our own reading challenge for 2015 to help you stretch your reading limits.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">I’ve included 24 tasks, averaging out to two per month, that will hopefully inspire you to pick up books that represent experiences and places and cultures that might be different from your own. We encourage you to push yourself, to take advantage of this challenge as a way to explore topics or formats or genres that you otherwise wouldn’t try. But this isn’t a test. No one is keeping score and there are no points to post. We like books because they allow us to see the world from a new perspective, and sometimes we all need help to even know which perspectives to try out. That’s what this is – a perspective shift – but one for which you’ll only be accountable to yourself.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">Where applicable, I’ve linked to previous Book Riot posts, to Goodreads lists, or other resources that might help you find books to fit the tasks.*&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">We hope this challenge will help you not only to read more, but to Read Harder.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">We’ll be checking in here on the Riot periodically throughout the year, but we’ll also be talking about this challenge on social media with the hashtag #ReadHarder. Share your books, share your challenge plan, share your recommendations.</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A book written by someone when they were under the age of 25&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A book written by someone when they were over the age of 65&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A collection of short stories (either by one person or an anthology by many people)&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A book published by an indie press&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A book by or about someone that identifies as LGBTQ&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A book by a person whose gender is different from your own&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A book that takes place in Asia&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A book by an author from Africa&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A book that is by or about someone from an indigenous culture (Native Americans, Aboriginals, etc.)&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A microhistory&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A YA novel&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A sci-fi novel&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A romance novel&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A National Book Award, Man Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize winner from the last decade</div><div style="text-align: left;">A book that is a retelling of a classic story (fairytale, Shakespearian play, classic novel, etc.)&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">An audiobook&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A collection of poetry&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A book that someone else has recommended to you&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A book that was originally published in another language&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A graphic novel, a graphic memoir or a collection of comics of any kind (Hi, have you met Panels?)&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A book that you would consider a guilty pleasure (Read, and then realize that good entertainment is nothing to feel guilty over)&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A book published before 1850&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A book published this year&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">A self-improvement book (can be traditionally or non-traditionally considered “self-improvement”)&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">*Goodreads lists are user-created and the books on them may not fit the challenge requirements. Double check any book you’re using, just to make sure.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Have ideas for what books you want to use for certain tasks? Leave 'em below!&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Editor’s note: we’ve created a <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/152441-book-riot-s-read-harder-challenge" target="_blank">Goodreads</a> group for this challenge! Give it a join!</div></blockquote><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">See the original post <a href="http://bookriot.com/2014/12/15/book-riot-2015-read-harder-challenge/" target="_blank">HERE</a></blockquote><br />I think I might give this challenge a try! What about you? Any books spark to mind when you hear these categories?<br /><br />Happy new year, dear readers! May your year be filled with books to make you laugh, cry, and feel all the feels. :)Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-55193029113778685292014-12-17T11:53:00.001-05:002014-12-17T11:53:30.895-05:00Clifford the Big Red Dog Creator, Norman Bridwell, Passes at 86I don't know about y'all, but I always loved Clifford the Big Red Dog. He was awesome--the size of a house but the gentleness of a mouse! (Why, yes, I did just make that silly phrase up just now. :-p) The Clifford books were excellent books for me--and remain to be for others--to not only practice reading but to get me interested in the stories being told between the covers. That's why it saddens me today to hear that Norman Bridwell, the Clifford book illustrator and creator, has passed away at 86.<br /><br />The <i><a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/" target="_blank">Boston Globe</a></i>&nbsp;posted a lovely article about Bridwell and his Clifford-driven endeavors online today:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2014/12/17/BostonGlobe.com/Metro/Images/bridwell7-775167.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_960w/Boston/2011-2020/2014/12/17/BostonGlobe.com/Metro/Images/bridwell7-775167.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">To hear Norman Bridwell tell the story — and hundreds of millions of children around the world have read his tales for more than 50 years — Clifford the Big Red Dog almost never came to be.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Mr. Bridwell was living in New York City in the early 1960s with his wife and their new baby, and money was short. He was working as a commercial artist when his wife, Norma, suggested he try his hand at illustrating children’s books.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">“I made some samples and took them to eight or 10 publishers and was rejected by every one,” he told the Globe in 2004. “One young editor said, ‘You’re not very good. No one’s going to buy your artwork. Why don’t you try a story, and if someone buys it, then you could do the art.’ She pointed to a sample painting, of a little girl and a big red dog, and said, ‘Maybe this could be a story.’ ”&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">At home, he wrote the first Clifford story, making the title character even bigger. As for the dog’s color, “it was red because I happened to have red paint on the drawing table that night,” he said in 2004.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">After the manuscript sat for a while in the slush pile of one publisher, a freelance manuscript reader handed it off it to Scholastic books, which offered Mr. Bridwell a $1,000 advance for the story and $875 for the art.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">That first story grew into an empire of more than 150 titles, 129 million books in 13 languages, a popular PBS TV series, and an ever-expanding list of merchandise. Mr. Bridwell, so modest about his creation that he told the Globe he had “never been able to figure out why it was so popular,” died Friday in Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, after a fall in his Edgartown home, the Associated Press reported. He was 86.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">“A lot of people were Clifford fans, and that makes them Norman fans, too,” his wife told the AP.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">The late actor John Ritter lent his voice to the PBS “Clifford” series, which debuted in 2000. The Clifford character also has been featured in a movie, popup books, and coloring books, as plush toys and beverage napkins, in postcards and puzzles, and as dinnerware and underwear.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">The smallest in a litter of puppies, Clifford grows to more than 25 feet tall and is cared for by Emily Elizabeth, a character named for Mr. Bridwell’s daughter, who was an infant when he wrote the first book. The book version of Emily narrates the stories, in which she and Clifford go about rather ordinary family activities that are complicated by his size.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">“The magic of the character and stories Norman created with Clifford is that children can see themselves in this big dog who tries very hard to be good, but is somewhat clumsy and always bumping into things and making mistakes,” Dick Robinson, chairman, president, and chief executive of Scholastic, said in the company’s statement announcing Mr. Bridwell’s death. “What comforts the reader is that Clifford is always forgiven by Emily Elizabeth, who loves him unconditionally.”&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Mr. Bridwell thought Clifford’s mistakes made him all the more appealing and hoped the books would help young readers become more forgiving. Though he brushed off suggestions that he based Clifford on himself, his wife thought otherwise.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">“He’s never been able to recognize that,” she said in an interview with the AP a few years ago. “Clifford tries to do the right thing, Norman tries to do the right thing, and he makes a mess of it. But he’s the most lovable grown-up man. He’s just a nice guy.”&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Their daughter, Emily Elizabeth Bridwell Merz of Carlisle, told the Globe in 2004 that “the whole spirit of Clifford is born out of my father’s sense of humor, which I always appreciated while growing up. To me, Clifford is sort of an extension of my Dad, and for that I have a great deal of love for the character.”&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Born in Kokomo, Ind., Mr. Bridwell took to drawing at an early age.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">“I was not good at sports and my high school shop teacher, after a few days of class, took my tools away, telling me, ‘Here’s a pad of paper instead. You seem to like to draw: stick to that,’ ” he said for his biography on the Scholastic website.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Aspiring to be a cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine, he studied at the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis before moving to New York City, where he took classes at Cooper Union.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">In New York, he met Norma Howard, who also was from Indiana, and they married.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51f1tOA2x-L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51f1tOA2x-L.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">When Mr. Bridwell wrote the first Clifford story, he initially called the title character Tiny, a name his wife found too obvious for a 25-foot-tall dog. She suggested Clifford, “after an imaginary friend from her childhood,” Mr. Bridwell said in his Scholastic biography.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Norma also bound the manuscript with a red gingham cover before they sent it to a publisher.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">“A lady called from Scholastic and said, ‘We have a book here called Clifford, and we’d like to publish it.’ I was completely stunned. It was a bad year, and we needed something. We had a new baby,” Mr. Bridwell recalled in 2004, adding that he “asked them, ‘If it doesn’t sell, do I have to give back the advance?’ ”&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">He was so sure lightning might not strike twice that according to his Scholastic biography, he told his wife: “Now don’t count on there being any more. This one is just a fluke. I don’t know if there will ever be another one.’ ”&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Dozens of books and decades after that initial sale, Mr. Bridwell had not tired of finding new adventures for Clifford or of creating books for children.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m very thankful,” he said in the 2004 Globe interview. “I love the kids. You couldn’t think of a better audience to write for.”&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">The Bridwell family moved to Martha’s Vineyard in 1969, keeping a place on Beacon Hill as well.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">In addition to his wife and daughter, Mr. Bridwell leaves a son, Timothy, and three grandchildren. Mr. Bridwell’s wife told the AP that a public service will be announced, probably next year.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Scholastic announced that before his death, Mr. Bridwell completed two Clifford books that will be released in 2015: “Clifford Goes to Kindergarten” and “Clifford Celebrates Hanukkah.”&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">When meeting with his young readers, Mr. Bridwell drew from his own experience of having manuscripts rejected to encourage children to persevere: “You might do a drawing today that you think is nice, and you show it to the other kids but they don’t like it, or the teacher won’t put it up. But don’t let that discourage you. That’s just today. You never know what you are going to do tomorrow.”&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">Even after filling shelves around the world with Clifford books, Mr. Bridwell was matter-of-fact about how he wrote and illustrated each one.&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">“A woman once asked me about my process in writing it,” he said in the 2004 Globe interview, “and I said, ‘No process at all. He just seems like the kind of dog it would be fun to own.’ ”&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;">Read the original piece <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/12/17/norman-bridwell-illustrator-who-created-clifford-big-red-dog-dies-martha-vineyard/8BBXKRa5biWUOf477FEA1N/story.html" target="_blank">HERE</a></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Thank you, Mr. Bridwell for your inspiring tales and characters. Rest in peace.&nbsp;</div>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-50514836964902879992014-12-12T16:34:00.000-05:002014-12-12T16:34:10.504-05:00INSURGENT Trailer Released by LionsgateOh man. Lionsgate Entertainment released the official <i>Insurgent </i>trailer today, and I cannot wait 'til this one hits theaters on March 20, 2015 (which is actually closer than it seems, and for once that thought is exciting! LOL).<br /><br /><i>Insurgent</i> is the second installment of the Divergent series, and this sequel looks even more intense and action-packed than the first. Such a great series to be adapted for the silver screen!<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236.25" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/suZcGoRLXkU" width="420"></iframe></div>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-65174840753476247972014-12-05T14:03:00.000-05:002014-12-05T14:03:49.581-05:00Hmm...What to Do With Those Letters You Never Sent...<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RGfOdZw5nQg/VIEyCO9feTI/AAAAAAAAABc/EjmrCimR_50/s1600/LINS2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RGfOdZw5nQg/VIEyCO9feTI/AAAAAAAAABc/EjmrCimR_50/s1600/LINS2.jpg" height="132" width="200" /></a>I recently found out that a dear friend of mine, Heather Winter, is working on a very cool nonfiction <a href="http://lettersiveneversent79.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><i>Letters I Never Sent</i>&nbsp;</a>will be a compilation of letters from people throughout the world, as well as from Heather herself, that were written in the heat of a moment, when wrapped up in the deepest emotions we possess as humans. Now <i>this </i>is a nonfiction book I can get behind for so many reasons.<br />book project. While I'm mostly a fiction gal, there are some NF titles that really speak to me and pull me in.<br /><br />Heather and I met online in a Canadian Forces military wives and girlfriends chat room (it sounds random, I know, but I was once intending to marry a CF member LOL Oh life... How you change...), and we instantly hit it off. Years later we are still in touch, and hopefully we will soon meet in person for the very first time. *squee!*<br /><br />Our friendship has always been filled with shared emotional experiences and helping one another not feel so alone. I was very lucky to have stumbled across her that day so long ago. And with her new project, people everywhere will be able to have that very same feeling, simply from reading a letter than someone wrote so purely from the heart and without censure.<br /><br />She is currently collecting submissions to be included in the book on a variety of topics, so if you have a letter you'd like to contribute, please<a href="mailto:lettersiveneversent79@gmail.com" target="_blank"> e-mail her</a>. She would be thrilled to read your work. All letters will be anonymous unless otherwise requested.<br /><br />Check out the project's website <a href="http://lettersiveneversent79.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">HERE</a> and consider getting involved! Not only is it a great way to get your words out there and potentially support a stranger who is going through similar experiences as you have but it is sure to be an excellent study of human nature as a whole.<br /><br />Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-57397831368283101632014-11-06T10:36:00.001-05:002014-11-06T10:36:24.813-05:00Some Hunger Games Silliness Hello, dear readers. I have returned! Well, sort of. I'll be in and out, as my recovery from spine surgery has been rougher than anticipated. :( But I thought I'd poke my head out this morning with something silly and <i>Hunger Games</i>&nbsp;related to bring us back full circle to when I went on hiatus.<br /><br />What I'm about to show you is not a trailer. It is not an interview. Instead, it is a silly parody. Or three, to be exact. According to <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/studio-c-creates-a-trio-of-hunger-games-parody-songs_b93178" target="_blank">GalleyCat</a>, the sketch comedy group Studio C has created three <i>HG</i>&nbsp;song parodies to help create buzz for the upcoming film release of&nbsp;<i>Mockingjay: Part I</i>.<br /><br />First, we have my personal favorite..."Peeta's song."<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236.25" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/JXO44xIvyuY" width="420"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Then of course, "Katniss' Song"... (I really want to correct that possessive soooo bad. *holds back editing fingers*)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236.25" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/am1tzttZ8Pc" width="420"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />And finally, "Gale's Song."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236.25" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/1cayQGVTwjs" width="420"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">While all three of these parodies are funny in their own ways, I've got to say the I'm not a fan of "Gale's Song" really at all. I also won't lie--I didn't even listen to the whole thing. That might be because I don't really like Gale, but who knows. :-p&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The one about Katniss cracked me up at first, and I was like,&nbsp;<i>Oooh this is going to be good</i>, but then it bummed me out that Studio C only focused on the love triangle part of the character's journey. There is so much other stuff in there to play off, too! Though, maybe it's not kosher to parody children massacring one another... Hmmm... LOL&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"Peeta's Song," however, I adored. Everything about it made me laugh on a day where laughter was much needed. I hope these videos do the same for you!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: center;">What do YOU think of these videos?&nbsp;</h3><h3 style="text-align: center;">Leave a comment and share your thoughts!</h3>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-84449263802357706822014-09-15T14:56:00.003-04:002014-09-15T14:56:39.479-04:00Official Trailer Released for Mockingjay Part IHow perfect that the day before I go in for spine surgery (<i>I will be taking a hiatus from the blog for a couple of weeks, as a result, just FYI!</i>) that I get to share something fun with y'all. The new <i>MockingJay</i>&nbsp;trailer!! Wooooo!!!!<br /><br /><a href="http://insidemovies.ew.com/" target="_blank"><i>Entertainment Weekly</i>&nbsp;</a>shares more:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">A full trailer for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 1 is finally here, and it offers a look at the war-torn land Panem has become as well as a poor, brainwashed Peeta, now acting as a mouthpiece for President Snow.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">In the trailer, Haymitch explains to Katniss that Peeta is the Capitol’s weapon, just like she is the rebels’. Katniss, however, uses Peeta’s plight as an ultimatum. “You will rescue Peeta at the earliest opportunity, or you will find another Mockingjay,” Katniss tells Julianne Moore’s President Alma Coin and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Plutarch Heavensbee.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">The trailer also gives fleeting glimpses at characters old and new, including Natalie Dormer’s Cressida. Effie Trinket pins a mockingjay pendant on Katniss’s armor, Gale shows off his talent with a bow and arrow, and Finnick gives Katniss a worried glance. It all ends with Katniss shooting down a plane with her arrow. We’ve always known she has great aim.</blockquote><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236.25" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/C_Tsj_wTJkQ" width="420"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">See original post <a href="http://insidemovies.ew.com/2014/09/15/jennifer-lawrence-new-mockingjay-trailer/" target="_blank">HERE</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: center;">CANNOT WAIT.</h4>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-91849730395606900522014-09-08T08:25:00.003-04:002014-09-08T08:25:44.798-04:00Television's Most Famous Bully Pens Kids' Book on Bullying<div class="tr_bq"><a href="http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/12200000/Sue-Sylvester-jane-lynch-12289706-350-450.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/12200000/Sue-Sylvester-jane-lynch-12289706-350-450.jpg" height="200" width="155" /></a>It's no surprise that nearly three years ago <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2316952.Jane_Lynch" target="_blank">Jane Lynch</a>'s memoir <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10604115-happy-accidents" target="_blank">Happy Accidents</a></i>&nbsp;hit the <i>New York Times</i>&nbsp;and <i>Los Angeles</i>&nbsp;<i>Times&nbsp;</i>bestseller lists, among others. Her candid and surprisingly relatable story was one every <i>Glee</i>&nbsp;fan was dying to get their hands on (myself included. It was amazing, FYI. I listened on audiobook).&nbsp;</div><br />Now, the comedic actress who plays television's most famous bully, Sue Sylvester, has written a children's book on bullying:&nbsp;<i><a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/book/234108/marlene-marlene-queen-of-mean-by-jane-lynch" target="_blank">Marlene, Marlene, Queen of Mean</a>.</i>&nbsp;(And yes, she did so after admitting that she herself was once a bully.)<br /><br />I've gotta say, I'm pretty excited to take a look at this one when it pubs later this month (9/23) from Random House Books for Young Readers. BuzzFeed tells us more:<br /><blockquote>In reality, Jane Lynch couldn’t be less like the character she plays on Glee. Sue Sylvestor is the oft mean-spirited high school cheerleading coach from hell. Lynch is a mild-mannered comedic actress and now, author. She did, however, spend some time as as a playground agitator as a child, which inspired her to write the children’s book <i>Marlene, Marlene, Queen of Mean </i>with consult from her then-spouse, psychologist Lara Embry.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>She and Embry were casually discussing their own childhoods when they came to the same observation about themselves as young girls. “We both admitted that we were kind of bullying. Especially when we were younger,” Lynch told BuzzFeed. Despite what their childhood behavior would suggest, both women admit they were actually just trying to make friends. “We found this the easiest way to do it because it works. Bullying works on a level. You get to be part of the group. The catch is, you’re never really equal. People are afraid of you. You inspire fear more than you inspire companionship.”&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><a href="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-09/4/16/enhanced/webdr01/grid-cell-13183-1409863132-18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-09/4/16/enhanced/webdr01/grid-cell-13183-1409863132-18.jpg" height="320" width="212" /></a>The book is gorgeously illustrated by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/126860.Tricia_Tusa" target="_blank">Tricia Tusa</a>, and Lynch is excited to praise the vision of Marlene that Tusa brought to fruition. “We wanted her to look awkward. She has a bow that’s way too big for her head. She’s got freckles and long limbs and she’s just a goofy kid. [Tricia] nailed it.”&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>In the book, the turning point for Marlene comes when another kid stands up to her. Big Freddy, another student, doesn’t challenge her to a fight or say mean things, he just points out what every other kid has failed to realized about her — she’s just not that scary.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>“There’s always one advanced soul,” Lynch says. “Just one of those kids who wants everyone to get along and has the wisdom of someone beyond their age. They can see into the heart of the person doing the bullying. ‘You’re not that mean and you’re not even that tall. Why don’t you just be friends with us?’ And it works.”&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>After her confrontation with Big Freddy, Marlene attempts to change her behavior with other kids, and mostly succeeds. It’s acknowledged that there is some backsliding, but Lynch says that was absolutely intentional. “We’re not going to turn her into a cardboard cutout of the perfect child. She still makes mistakes, like we all do, and she has to re-learn the same lesson over and over again. But she’s had the big epiphany. And that’s the important thing.”&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><a href="https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1310763938p5/2316952.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1310763938p5/2316952.jpg" width="167" /></a>In fact, Lynch believes that children who are bullies often show the signs of natural giftedness in leadership. She believes that while it’s important to correct the actions that victimize other children, it’s just as important to foster the awakening of something else in the child who bullies. There is a very positive trait — especially for girls — hidden beneath all of that overly aggressive demanding.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>“She is who she is. This is a little girl who is a bright light and is probably going to run a corporation someday,” Lynch said. “We don’t want to tell her that who she is at base is wrong. She has great leadership skills. Her natural gift is that she’s great at leading. She loves to be in an authority position. She just needed some redirection. Now, she’s just going to be a great boss who takes into consideration people’s individuality, and their feelings. But ultimately, she’s not going to change her stripes.”&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>You can preorder <i>Marlene, Marlene, Queen of Mean</i> <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/book/234108/marlene-marlene-queen-of-mean-by-jane-lynch" target="_blank">here</a>. Available everywhere September 23rd!&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote style="text-align: center;">See the original post <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/ashleyford/jane-lynch-wrote-a-book-about-bullies-because-she-used-to-be?utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Books+97&amp;utm_content=Books+97+CID_6f772f6a75df99ddfd04f4683a32e2c6&amp;utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&amp;utm_term=Jane%20Lynch%20Wrote%20A%20Book%20About%20Bullies%20Because%20She%20Used%20To%20Be%20One#t5f01z" target="_blank">HERE</a></blockquote>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-86179392032882540822014-09-06T08:49:00.000-04:002014-09-06T08:49:15.712-04:00Classic Novels Had Inspiration Too<div class="tr_bq">One of the questions I always ask authors is what inspired them to write their novels. All stories come from something, whether its the seed of a character, a plot, a theme.</div><br />I often wonder this same thing when reading the classics, with unfortunately no way to get that extra insight, that authorial intent. (That said, while I find it intriguing to know authorial intent, it doesn't mean I read the book that way personally, and that's totally okay.) And now, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/" target="_blank">HuffPo Books</a> posted an article yesterday about some of the true stories behind some of the great novels. Maybe not "inspiration" per se, but this more than whets my appetite:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">According to Jack London, "You can't wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club." London himself took the inspiration for <i>The Call of the Wild</i> (1903) from his time spent living in Canada and Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush when high-quality sled dogs -- like those that feature in the book -- were in impossibly high demand. The stories and inspirations behind fifteen more of literature's most memorable titles are explained here: &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://sotonettes.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Anna-Karenina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://sotonettes.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Anna-Karenina.jpg" height="200" width="128" /></a><b><i>Anna Karenina (1877), Leo Tolstoy</i></b> In January 1872, the death of a 35-year-old woman was reported in the Russian press: smartly dressed and carrying a bag containing a change of clothes, the girl had thrown herself under a freight train at Yasenki Station outside Moscow. The woman was identified as Anna Pirogova, a distant relative of Leo Tolstoy's wife and the mistress of his good friend and neighbour, Alexander Bibikov. It soon transpired that Alexander had told Anna that he planned to leave her and marry his son's new governess, and, unable to cope, she had left him a brief note -- "You are my murderer; be happy, if an assassin can be happy" -- and fled. Tolstoy himself attended Anna's post-mortem the following day, and by all accounts the sight of the unrecognisable body of a woman he had known so well stayed with him long afterwards, so that when he came to begin a new novel more than a year later he already had its tragic conclusion in mind.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><i>The Birds (1952), Daphne Du Maurier </i></b>Dame Daphne Du Maurier is well known for having taken inspiration for some of her most celebrated works from her adopted home county of Cornwall in the far southwest of England. Jamaica Inn (1936) was inspired by an overnight stay at the real-life Jamaica Inn, an isolated 18th century pub on Bodmin Moor, in 1930. Frenchman's Creek (1941) was inspired by Readymoney Cove, where Du Maurier owned a holiday home on the coast. And the imposing Manderley estate in Rebecca (1938) was at least partly based on Menabilly, a grand country house that Du Maurier herself moved into in 1943. It was while at Menabilly that she saw a flock of seagulls following a plow at a nearby farm and was struck by a simple yet unnerving thought -- what would happen if the birds attacked? The resulting story, <i>The Birds</i>, first appeared in Du Maurier's collection <i>The Apple Tree </i>in 1952.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><i>Catch-22 (1961), Joseph Heller </i></b>Joseph Heller joined the US Army Air Corps in 1942 at <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61k33tU1CaL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61k33tU1CaL.jpg" height="200" width="129" /></a></div>the age of 19, and went on to take part in more than 50 European bombing raids before the end of the Second World War. His military service affected him greatly -- he became an angst-ridden chronic nail-biter, with a habit for screaming in his sleep -- and it took him another eight years to begin dealing with his experiences in writing. After a few dreary post-war years working as a copywriter, one afternoon in 1953 a line simply popped into Heller's head: "It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, Someone [he had yet to name Captain Yossarian] fell madly in love with him." Heller wrote the first twenty pages of what he presumed would merely be a short story over the next seven days, but it took him another eight years to complete what would eventually become <i>Catch-22</i>.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><i>Crime &amp; Punishment (1866), Fyodor Dostoyevsky</i></b> When he began writing it in the early 1860s, Dostoyevsky originally envisioned <i>Crime &amp; Punishment </i>as a novella entitled "The Drunkard", in which he intended to explore the consequences of alcoholism on family life. That was until he discovered the writings of a French writer and murderer named Pierre François Lacenaire, who had been executed in Paris in 1836 for the brutal killing of a young man and his mother. While in prison, Lacenaire had written essays and poems, met with journalists and researchers, given interviews, speeches and press conferences, volunteered for psychological studies, and even offered to have a life mask made of his face, all on an apparent quest to become an icon of social injustice and guarantee his notoriety endured long after his death. It's unclear whether Dostoyevsky had already created the character of Raskolnikov by the time he heard of Lacenaire, but there are a number of striking similarities between his murder of the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna and her half-sister Lizaveta in <i>Crime &amp; Punishment</i> and Lacenaire's own crimes 30 years earlier.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><i>Frankenstein (1818), Mary Shelley </i></b><i>Frankenstein </i>was famously written in response to Lord Byron's suggestion in the summer of 1816 that the guests at his villa on Lake Geneva -- including the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his future wife, Mary -- should each write a ghost story to pass the time. After initial reservations, 19-year-old Mary more than rose to the challenge by penning what is now considered masterpiece of gothic horror, inspired by a single terrifying image that popped into her mind as she lay in bed. "When I placed my head on my pillow..." she recalled in the introduction to her novel, "I saw -- with shut eyes, but acute mental vision -- the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together." The first edition of <i>Frankenstein</i> was published anonymously just two years later, followed by a second edition in 1822, a stage version in 1823, and finally a revised third edition in 1831 dedicated to Mary's then late husband, who had died nine years earlier.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://www.novelguide.com/ckfinder/userfiles/images/The-Hound-of-the-Baskervilles%20Image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.novelguide.com/ckfinder/userfiles/images/The-Hound-of-the-Baskervilles%20Image.jpg" height="200" width="121" /></a><b><i>The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), Arthur Conan Doyle </i></b>In July 1900, Arthur Conan Doyle met an English journalist named Bertram Fletcher Robinson on board a ship returning to England from the Boer War. The pair quickly became friends and the following year Doyle agreed to visit Robinson at his home in Devon, southwest England, with an eye to collaborating on a new novel. Robinson took Doyle up onto Dartmoor, a vast ancient moorland (and now a National Park), and regaled him with an old folktale about a notorious local squire named Richard Cabell who had apparently sold his soul to the Devil -- when he died in 1677, local legend claims a monstrous pack of jet black hounds descended from the moors to escort his soul into Hell. Although Doyle had agreed to co-author a book with Robinson, after putting pen to paper the story quickly evolved into a new Sherlock Holmes mystery (his first in eight years) and Robinson's input was relegated, in his own words, to "assistant plot producer."&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><i>Jude The Obscure (1895), Thomas Hardy</i></b> It is unclear precisely who inspired Thomas Hardy's tale of a young working-class man's struggle to become a scholar, but it seems likely that the eponymous Jude Hawley was at least partly based on Hardy's tragic friend Horace Moule. Born in 1832, Moule earned a place at Oxford University in 1851, but failed to receive his degree. Moving to Cambridge University three years later, it took him another 14 years to finally complete his studies, during which time he battled alcoholism and severe depression until finally, in September 1873, he committed suicide by cutting his own throat as he lay in bed. He was just 41 years old.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/files/2012/05/LittleWomen4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/files/2012/05/LittleWomen4.jpg" height="200" width="131" /></a><b><i>Little Women (1868-9), Louisa May Alcott </i></b>The four eponymous March Sisters in Louisa <span id="goog_1437400364"></span><span id="goog_1437400365"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a>May Alcott's <i>Little Women </i>were all based on the author and her three sisters. Louisa herself was the strong-willed protagonist Jo; her elder sister Anna was Meg; her youngest sister May was Amy; and her middle sister Elizabeth, who died at the age of 23, was Beth. The setting and the sisters may have been the alike, but the events and circumstances around them were not: the Marches were by no means rich, but the Alcotts lived in near abject poverty for many years during Louisa's childhood. What's more, the March family's father -- a philanthropic and scholarly Civil War hero -- was strikingly different from that of Alcott's own father, Bronson, a pacifist vegan schoolteacher and an early advocate of transcendentalism.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><i>Middlemarch (1872), George Eliot</i></b> In January 1869, George Eliot wrote a list of tasks in her journal that she wanted to complete in the coming year, one of which was "a novel called <i>Middlemarch</i>." Although Eliot seemed determined to set to work, progress on the new novel was slow and when her son Thornie contracted a fatal case of tuberculosis later that year she ceased writing completely; by the time Thornie died in October, Eliot had produced just three chapters of what would eventually be an 86-chapter work, and she promptly shelved the project. By all accounts Eliot did not recommence writing until more than a year later, when, in November 1870, she began an entirely new work entitled Miss Brooke. This new story introduced an eponymous character named Dorothea, but sometime during Miss Brooke's development Eliot saw the opportunity to merge its narrative with that of the three chapters she had shelved the previous year, and <i>Middlemarch</i> was born.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><i>Moby-Dick (1851), Herman Melville </i></b>Herman Melville's own experiences on board a Pacific Ocean whaling ship, the Acushnet, in the early 1840s provided the primary inspiration for his novel <i>Moby-Dick</i>, and later editors and commentators have since even been able to draw parallels between Melville's real-life fellow crewmembers and the characters in his book. The Acushnet was far from his only inspiration, however, as Melville was doubtless also influenced by the true story of a whaling ship named the Essex that was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in the central Pacific in 1820. Melville later met the son of one of the Essex's eight surviving crewmembers during his time on the Acushnet, and after the publication of <i>Moby-Dick </i>in 1851 met with the ship's captain, George Pollard, whom he later described as "one of the most extraordinary men I have ever met."&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><i>Robinson Crusoe (1719), Daniel Defoe </i></b>It is widely believed that Daniel Defoe's <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> was based on the true story of real-life castaway Alexander Selkirk, but that's by no means guaranteed. In fact, there are such telling inconsistencies between the two tales -- Selkirk was voluntarily marooned in the Pacific, while Crusoe was shipwrecked in the Caribbean; he was stranded for just four years, compared to Crusoe's 28; and Selkirk was alone, while Crusoe's tale involves encounters with natives, cannibals and pirates -- that some editors have suggested Defoe likely had another story in mind. It may be that Crusoe's tale was based on the 17th century sea captain Robert Knox's 19-year imprisonment on Ceylon, which was published as An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon (1681), or else on the British doctor Henry Pitman, who escaped from a British penal colony in the Caribbean before being shipwrecked on a nearby island. Alternatively, there could be some truth in Defoe's own claim that Robinson Crusoe was the true story of a man he knew personally, and for whom he simply served as memoirist. Whatever its true inspiration, there's no doubting the success or impact of Defoe's novel, which ran to four editions in its first year alone and has remained enduringly popular ever since.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://prashantb.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/jekyll-hyde.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://prashantb.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/jekyll-hyde.jpg" height="200" width="118" /></a><b><i>The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Robert Louis Stevenson</i></b> Robert Louis Stevenson had already written a play about Deacon Brodie -- an 18th century Edinburgh city councillor who led a double life as a burglar -- when in 1885 he had a dream about a mild-mannered man transforming into a monster. His wife Fanny later recalled how, "In the small hours of one morning... I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had had a nightmare, I awakened him. He said angrily, 'Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey-tale.'" She had woken him, she later discovered, at what would eventually become Jekyll's first transformation into Mr Hyde.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><i>The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), John Buchan</i></b> John Buchan was recovering from a stomach ulcer at a nursing home in Broadstairs on the far southeast coast of England he began work on what he referred to as his first "shocker" in 1914. Buchan reportedly took the title of the novel from a wooden staircase that once ran from the clifftops at Broadstairs down to the beach, although there are several conflicting accounts: one version of the story has Buchan's young daughter running down the stairs two at a time and announcing that there were "39 steps" down to the beach, while another claims that as there were actually 78 steps Buchan either halved the number simply to make a snappier title, or else changed it because he was 39 years old at the time.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><i>Three Men In A Boat (1889), Jerome K. Jerome </i></b>In the mid 1880s, Jerome K Jerome came up with the idea of writing a straightforward travel guide to the River Thames, including descriptions of several historical sites along its course. As he began to compile it, however, Jerome's guide became increasingly filled with humorous anecdotes and bantering conversations recalled from boat trips he had taken along the river from London to Oxford with two of his friends, George Wingrave and Carl Henschel. Together, the three men became the eponymous <i>Three Men In A Boat</i>, with the addition of Montmorency the dog having, "as Jerome admits, developed out of that area of inner consciousness which, in all Englishmen, contains an element of the dog", according to Oxford World's Classics.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/79/To_Kill_a_Mockingbird.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/79/To_Kill_a_Mockingbird.JPG" height="200" width="135" /></a><b><i>To Kill A Mockingbird (1960), Harper Lee </i></b>Harper Lee has long denied claims that <i>To Kill A Mockingbird</i> is an autobiographical work, but rather a reflection of an author simply writing about what he or she knows and has experienced first hand. Either way, it's hard not to see parallels between her Pulitzer Prize-winning classic and her childhood growing up in Monroeville, Alabama. Just like Scout, Lee's father practiced as a lawyer, and in 1919 was faced with defending two black men accused of the murder of a local white shopkeeper (both men - a father and son - were later hanged). Moreover, Lee, like Scout, was a tomboy in her youth, and her eldest brother Edwin, like Jem, was four years her senior. She wrote the book in the years following the death of her mother in 1951, and in the story Scout too has lost her mother. And even the character of Dill, who lives next door to the Finch family during the summer, is modelled on her childhood friend Truman Capote, who would spend the summer with his aunt in Alabama while his mother visited New York.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">See the original post <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-anthony-jones/stories-behind-novels_b_5762018.html?utm_hp_ref=books" target="_blank">HERE</a></blockquote>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-70894800356910704542014-09-05T19:02:00.001-04:002014-09-05T19:02:37.851-04:00Giveaway Results: "Desperately Ever After" by Laura Kenyon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513KHT3APBL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513KHT3APBL.jpg" height="200" width="129" /></a></div>Okay, lovely readers. I know it's a bit past my 12 p.m. EST deadline for announcing our <a href="http://readingbtwthelines.blogspot.com/2014/08/new-release-giveaway-and-q-damsels-in.html" target="_blank"><i>Desperately Ever After</i> giveaway results</a>, but I was being poked and prodded at the hospital for my pre-admissions testing (surgery next week on my spine! Eek!). Not nearly as much fun as giving away free books! :-p<br /><br />That said, with no further ado.....our winners are.....<br /><br />Sarah Guttenplan and Lauren Marler!<br /><br />Woop!<br /><br />Please email us at <a href="mailto:readingbtwthelines@gmail.com" target="_blank">readingbtwthelines@gmail.com</a> so we can arrange delivery of your new eBook!<br /><br />I hope you enjoy the first book in Laura Kenyon's awesome series as much as I did!Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-26814821876417636482014-09-03T09:11:00.000-04:002014-09-03T09:31:35.019-04:00Blog Tour Kicks Off for "The Other Side of Gemini"Happy September, everyone! This month is an exciting one. First because I am having spine surgery <span id="goog_195964924"></span><span id="goog_195964925"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a>to address a problem that has been torturing me for months and months (Yay! But scary!), second because autumn begins (my fave season), and <b>third</b> because my dear friend <b><a href="http://www.lgmccann.com/" target="_blank">LG McCann</a> just kicks off her blog tour today! Woop!</b><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://static.wixstatic.com/media/d63448_bc0769b84ab44eb48a99ba1cc3bfc6ed.jpg_srz_p_319_449_75_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_jpg_srz" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://static.wixstatic.com/media/d63448_bc0769b84ab44eb48a99ba1cc3bfc6ed.jpg_srz_p_319_449_75_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_jpg_srz" height="200" width="141" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">LG McCann</td></tr></tbody></table>You may recall my <a href="http://readingbtwthelines.blogspot.com/2014/07/bff-lg-mccanns-debut-novel-is-on-sale.html" target="_blank">posting a little happy dance</a> back in July when&nbsp;<i>The Other Side of Gemini</i>, her debut women's fiction novel, hit the virtual shelves, and now here is another one...<br /><br /><b>*happy dance wiggle wiggle happy dance*</b><br /><b><br /></b>And here's a little sneak peek at today's review from Chick Lit Plus... "What LG McCann gives us [...] is a compelling, emotional, and honestly a bit of a dark story about friendship and life in general. [...] I was won over!"<br /><b><br /></b>Below are her upcoming blog tour stops, so mark your calendars. Her guest posts and Q&amp;As are fantastic (one of which I've gotten a sneak peek of!) so you definitely don't want to miss those! Aaaaand she will be wrapping up her tour here with us, at RBtL with an interview <i>and</i>&nbsp;an excerpt on September 24!<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">September 3 - &nbsp;Review at <a href="http://chicklitplus.com/" target="_blank">Chick Lit Plus</a></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">September 4 - Guest Post at <a href="http://www.doorflower.com/home/" target="_blank">Doorflower</a>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">September 8 - Review and Q&amp;A at <a href="http://ai-books.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Ai Love Books</a>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">September 9 - Guest Post at&nbsp;<a href="http://connect.chicklitclub.com/wp/" target="_blank">Chick Lit Club Connect</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">September 13 - Review and excerpt at <a href="http://readinginblackandwhite.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Reading in Black and White</a>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">September 17 - Excerpt at <a href="http://skiweesbooks.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Ski-Wee's Book Corner</a>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">September 18 - Review at <a href="http://www.thephantomparagrapher.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">The Phantom Paragrapher</a>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">September 19 - Review and Excerpt as <a href="http://theworldasiseeitbloganddesigns.com/" target="_blank">The Word as I See It</a>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">September 22 - Review, Guest Post, <i>and</i>&nbsp;excerpt at <a href="http://jerseygirlbookreviews.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Jersey Girl Book Reviews</a>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">September 24 - Q&amp;A and excerpt right here at <a href="http://www.readingbtwthelines.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Reading Between the Lines</a></blockquote><br />For those of you who haven't read my earlier post and don't know what I am even talking about, here is more about <i>Gemini</i>, which <i>USA Today </i>bestselling author <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6903785.Lyla_Payne?from_search=true" target="_blank">Lyla Payne</a> called "a surprise in all the best ways!"<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://static.wixstatic.com/media/d63448_529c096056c04f3dab32a46f54ffdaad.jpg_srz_p_319_465_75_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_jpg_srz" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://static.wixstatic.com/media/d63448_529c096056c04f3dab32a46f54ffdaad.jpg_srz_p_319_465_75_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_jpg_srz" height="200" width="136" /></a>Sylvia Miloche is a successful book editor by day, D-list party girl by night, and has been dating New York City’s favorite playboy James Ryan for five years. But things are far from perfect. When the New York Post catches James with an intern, Sylvia’s already precarious life comes crashing down.<br /><br />Lindsay Sekulich is a high school science teacher, wife, and mother of three in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona. Her high school reunion is quickly approaching and that means the secrets of her bad-girl past, all of which she’s kept hidden from her husband, could come spilling out, revealing who she once was and the horrible things she’s done.<br /><br />When Sylvia emerges in Scottsdale, seeking refuge in her hometown from the relentless gossip blogs, Lindsay finds herself alternately elated and terrified. The two were inseparable as teens, but a tragedy just before their senior year tore them apart. Sylvia, once a carefree, joyful girl always up for adventure, is a beaten down and broken adult. Now Lindsay must make a choice: rescue the friend who saved her in high school, or keep it all hidden to save her marriage from almost certain destruction.<br /><br />Anything goes–and everything does–in this story of New York gossip and suburban oppression, a tale of sex, secrets, rebellion, and how your true soul mate isn’t necessarily the love of your life.</blockquote><h3 style="text-align: center;">Have an awesome tour, LG!&nbsp;</h3><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><!--EndFragment--></div>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-66510872998748851672014-08-28T13:04:00.001-04:002014-09-02T08:38:32.627-04:00New Release, Giveaway, and Q&A: "Damsels in Distress" by Laura KenyonI've been anxiously awaiting the release of <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Damsels-Distress-Book-Desperately-After-ebook/dp/B00N2Y3684/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1409245109&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=laura+kenyon" target="_blank">Damsels in Distress</a></i>, the second book in <a href="http://laurakenyon.com/" target="_blank">Laura Kenyon</a>'s Desperately Ever After series for a while &nbsp;now, and it is finally here!<br /><br />Yay!!!!! *Kermit flails around the house*<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pTPdt62Dt7o/U_tILueOQjI/AAAAAAAABpk/TrgRAfTpcn4/s1600/unnamed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pTPdt62Dt7o/U_tILueOQjI/AAAAAAAABpk/TrgRAfTpcn4/s1600/unnamed.jpg" height="320" width="204" /></a></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">After watching her fairy tale go up in flames, Belle is finally starting over. With a baby on the way, a business to run, and a new love interest she just can't shake, things are finally looking up. That is, until she learns her independence might revive broken curses the world over. Could "happily ever after" really mean staying with her unfaithful husband? Or will Belle and her steadfast friends find another way?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Meanwhile, Dawn still longs for the life she had three centuries earlier--before her sleeping curse ended in two kids, an unfamiliar era, and a husband she barely knows. So when the childhood sweetheart she believed to be dead resurfaces, she must suddenly choose between the past she once wanted and the present she never knew she did.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As both women struggle between love and obligation--between what's right for the world and what's right for the heart--they fail to see a great danger brewing in the capital. One that could change everything forever.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">With the wit of authors like Jennifer Weiner, the vision of ABC's <i>Once Upon a Time</i> and the imagination of Gregory Maguire's <i>Wicked</i>, <i>Damsels in Distress </i>picks up where the original tales left off--and twists them every "witch" way.</div></blockquote><br />I'm so excited to read this book, you have no idea. With a unique twist on the fairy tale princesses we all know and love, the first book in the series, <i>Desperately Ever After</i>, is packed with good laughs, some heart wrenches, and all the things we adore about women's fiction. And&nbsp;<i>Damsels in Distress</i>&nbsp;is sure to be just as fun and fabulous, so don't miss it!<br /><br />Laura Kenyon is an awesome and talented author whose books you're going to want on your "keep shelf," and I'm thrilled to have her here with us today for an inside look at the series, her inspiration, and what's coming next. Aaaaand we have two eBooks of <i>Desperately Ever After</i>, book one in the series, to give away! Woop woop!<br /><br />So without further adieu, let's get Q&amp;Aing!<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kyLtnGZynN0/U_tMJ9Mv66I/AAAAAAAABpw/oVnqEW56ABU/s1600/IMG_4618---square%2Blow%2Bres.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kyLtnGZynN0/U_tMJ9Mv66I/AAAAAAAABpw/oVnqEW56ABU/s1600/IMG_4618---square%2Blow%2Bres.jpg" height="200" width="195" /></a><b>RBtL: Welcome, Laura! Now,&nbsp;<i>Damsels in Distress</i> is the second book in your Desperately Ever After series to be out in the world. Congratulations! How does it feel?</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Well, I'm exhausted from publishing my first novel, surviving my first pregnancy, and writing <i>Damsels in Distress</i> ALL at the same time! But finally sharing these characters with readers (and having so many people embrace them!) is an absolutely amazing feeling. They've been part of my life for so long—as real to me as flesh and blood friends—but I couldn't introduce them to anyone until now.<br /><br /><b>RBtL:&nbsp;What inspired you to write this series?</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">The idea actually came to me decades ago (the result of a Disney-obsessed kid growing up) and was continually fueled by life and by shows like <i>Desperate Housewives</i> and <i>Sex and the City</i>. I loved the happily-ever-after Disney films, but couldn’t stand how quickly the characters always fell madly in love. The implication was that because they were physically attracted to each other, they were perfectly matched in every other way … and their lives were going to be filled with butterflies and rainbows and infinite happiness forever after.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Real life just doesn’t work that way. So I began to imagine what happened after true love's kiss. Would Cinderella be happy ten years down the road, when she had four kids, could no longer fit into her ball gown, and was responsible for running a kingdom? How long would it take “Beast” to go right back to his old, selfish ways after Beauty broke his curse? And for Book Two, how would Sleeping Beauty fare being uprooted from the life she knew, tossed centuries into the future, and ushered into marriage with a stranger who went about kissing comatose women in the woods?&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>RBtL:&nbsp;Your writing is so much fun, so relatable and full of hope and humor. Who are your muses? And I mean that not only in terms of your personal life, but also, your literary idols, of course.&nbsp;</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">What a fantastic compliment, Danielle. Thank you! As far as muses go, I wouldn't be able to write about such a fun and supportive group of friends if I didn't have some in real life. Same goes for my own handsome prince (husband) and noble steed (a silver Labrador retriever on whom I based Belle's own canine companion). &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">In the literary world, I adore Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, and the Bronte sisters for their timeless stories and great characters. But when it comes to writing style, I prefer the melodic and relatable prose of authors like Allie Larkin and Jennifer Weiner. Jennifer Egan's <i>A Visit from the Goon Squad</i> and Elizabeth Gilbert's <i>Eat, Pray, Love</i> are also among my favorites.<br /><br /><b>RBtL:&nbsp;</b><b>Most of your characters are based off of famous fairy-tale heroines. Why did you pick the ones you did to include? Is there a specific character that you relate to more than the others?</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513KHT3APBL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513KHT3APBL.jpg" height="320" width="207" /></a></div><blockquote class="tr_bq">The most important thing Desperately Ever After readers should know is that the characters aren't based on the Disney films. I wanted to mold them from the original tales because: 1) they're so open to interpretation, 2) I could take what I wanted from the various versions and fill in the rest with my own ideas, and 3) I'm pretty sure it would be copyright infringement if I named Sleeping Beauty Aurora or gave Belle a talking teacup with a chip in it! &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Cinderella became one of the five main characters when I saw my prom dress in my closet one day and wondered whether it still fit. Plus, she's sort of the Queen of fairy tales. Just look at how many cultural phrases we gleaned from her story! Rapunzel and Penelopea (The Princess and the Pea) appealed to me because Disney hadn't yet reinvented them, so the canvas was practically blank. I had so much fun imagining how Rapunzel's sheltered youth (imprisonment in the tower) would affect her adult life (especially in terms of men), and how Penelopea could spend the night on a death-defying tower of mattresses without wanting to pummel the prospective mother-in-law who put her there. Belle actually began as a minor character, believe it or not, but somehow took over the entire series. And the past-vs-present angle of Sleeping Beauty's tale was just too good to pass up. So many of us have trouble letting go of the past as is. Imagine having it torn away and flung 300 years into the future!&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">It's hard to say which of these women I relate to the most. There are bits and pieces of me in all of them. But if I had to choose, I'd go with Cinderella. She puts far too much weight on her shoulders, stresses easily, and is a full-blown perfectionist. But despite all that, deep down she knows how lucky she is to be loved and to love in return.<br /><br /><b>RBtL:&nbsp;Now, it has to be asked...what is your favorite Disney movie?</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>The Little Mermaid</i>. No question. Yes, I also loved Belle's affection for books in Beauty and the Beast, but I've got red hair and spent all of my childhood summers at the beach. I seriously used to clap my ankles together and swim around pretending I was a mermaid—singing "Part of Your World" in my head and watching my hair whoosh through the water. If I had the authority, I might have legally changed my name to Ariel.<br /><br /><b>RBtL: What’s in store next for the D.E.A. series? Any secret morsels you can share with us to whet our appetites? ;)</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Let's just say I'm a big fan of love triangles, unexpected twists, and "bad boys" who could just as easily be heroes in disguise. But even though Book Three (<i>Skipping Midnight</i>, 2015) is the last novel in the main series, there are so many characters that could use some extra time in the spotlight! And while I'm eager to try my hand at something new, I doubt I can ever fully leave Marestam behind. That's why I'm also planning several novellas—starting with Grethel, the woman who kept Rapunzel in that tower for all those years.</blockquote><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcROUOND64XoquCM8nhta9HzdNO0ukz3yTUcLKJnk7qEbZdyHiT2" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcROUOND64XoquCM8nhta9HzdNO0ukz3yTUcLKJnk7qEbZdyHiT2" width="200" /></a></div>Now, dear readers, if that hasn't whet your appetite for some fab new fairy tale fiction, I don't know what will. <b>Tell us who your favorite fairy tale princess (or prince!) is in a comment this post for your chance to receive one of two available eBooks (US only, unfortunately--sorry, folks!) of <i>Desperately Ever After</i>.&nbsp;</b>Recipients will be randomly selected at noon on <b>Friday, September 5th</b>, so get commenting!</div><div><br /></div><div>More about <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Desperately-Ever-After-Book-One/dp/1494953285/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1409245262&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=laura+kenyon" target="_blank">Desperately Ever After</a></i>:</div><div><blockquote class="tr_bq">Imagine what might happen if our most beloved fairy tale princesses were the best of friends and had the dreams, dilemmas, and libidos of the modern woman. How would their stories unfold after the wedding bells stopped ringing? Set in a fictional realm based on New York City,&nbsp;<i>Desperately Ever After</i>&nbsp;sprinkles women’s fiction with elements of fantasy, and encourages&nbsp;readers to rethink everything they know about happy endings.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Years after turning her husband from beast back to man and becoming his queen, Belle finds out she’s finally going to have a child. But before she can announce the wondrous news, she catches him cheating and watches her “happily ever after” go up in flames. Turning to her friends for the strength to land with grace, she realizes she’s not the only one at a crossroads:&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Cinderella, a mother of four drowning in royal duties, is facing her 30th birthday and questioning everything she’s done (or hasn’t) with her life.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Rapunzel, a sex-crazed socialite and one-woman powerhouse, is on a self-destructive quest to make up for 20 years locked away in a tower.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Penelopea, an outsider with a mother-in-law from hell, is harboring a secret that could ruin everything at any moment.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">One part <i>Sex and the City</i>, two parts <i>Desperate Housewives</i>, and three parts Brothers Grimm,&nbsp;<i>Desperately Ever After</i>&nbsp;picks up where the original tales left off—and reimagines them a la Gregory&nbsp;Maguire’s <i>Wicked</i>. With the wit of authors like Jennifer Weiner and the vision of ABC’s <i>Once Upon a Time</i>, the women of&nbsp;<i>Desperately Ever After</i>&nbsp;rescue each other from life’s trials with&nbsp;laughter, wine, and a scandalous new take on happily ever after.</blockquote>For more about Laura Kenyon, visit here online:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Website: <a href="http://www.laurakenyon.com/">www.laurakenyon.com</a>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Twitter: <a href="http://www.twitter.com/laura_kenyon">www.twitter.com/laura_kenyon</a>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Facebook: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/laurakenyonwrites">www.facebook.com/laurakenyonwrites</a>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Amazon (US): <a href="http://bit.ly/1sP8JVV">http://bit.ly/1sP8JVV</a></blockquote></div><h3 style="text-align: center;">Thanks so much for joining us today, Laura, and happy release day!</h3><br />Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-50414846969751646882014-08-18T11:30:00.001-04:002014-08-18T11:31:06.399-04:00Books to Film: An Emotional Process for Some Readers<div class="tr_bq">Film adaptations can be difficult for some people. I have a friend who really struggles with watching a movie of a book she likes because she gets so frustrated with the changes made by the filmmakers. I used to be that way, too, actually. I remember very clearly going to see <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0304141/?ref_=nv_sr_6" target="_blank">Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban</a> </i>and being so distraught over how the new director reimagined the world and changed things about the dementors and left out this and that and on and on I went. My poor boyfriend at the time. I was nearly in tears.&nbsp;</div><br />Excessive, yes, I know. But it was that experience that forced me to change my mindset. I've always been intrigued by adaptations (despite the occasional what-did-you-do-to-this-book-I-love?! meltdown), and in time, I learned to separate the book from the movie, to focus on the heart of the story and how two different people can take that same essence and bring it to life in two totally different ways. It's those changes that now interest me the most, even when a book I loved was maybe not done in the way I would've done it.<br /><br />I always wonder what it must be like for the author of a book, if the changes in a film adaptation are s so hard for some readers to accept. I'm sure it varies like anything else, but it was great to get some insight from two-time Newbery Medal winner&nbsp;<a href="http://www.loislowry.com/" target="_blank">Lois Lowry</a> this morning on <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/" target="_blank">HuffPo </a>as she writes about her experience with <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435651/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank"><i>The Giver</i>&nbsp;adaptation</a>, which just opened in theaters across the country:<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/sites/default/files/contributors/lowry_lois_lg.jpg?1312994897" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/sites/default/files/contributors/lowry_lois_lg.jpg?1312994897" /></a>I've been watching <i>The Giver</i> movie project for many years and read a lot of scripts. After I'd gone to the set and sat in the editing room, it began to feel like a jigsaw puzzle. You have the blue pieces here, and the yellow pieces over there, and then it begins to all fit together. When I finally saw the final movie with the music in there, it was kind of overwhelming. It was a very gratifying experience to see that it was done with such regard for the book. It retains the essential ingredients of the book, while adding all of the visual stuff that a movie needs but that a book sadly cannot have.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>I think the film does what a film should. It takes a book -- the heart of the book and the integrity of the book -- and it adds to it what only a film can add: the visual stuff, the suspense, and the back and forth that the book doesn't do. &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><a href="http://imageserver.moviepilot.com/-e275c57b-49c1-49cb-bc0a-d87bfa624a12.jpeg?width=623&amp;height=1024" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imageserver.moviepilot.com/-e275c57b-49c1-49cb-bc0a-d87bfa624a12.jpeg?width=623&amp;height=1024" height="200" width="121" /></a>I chose the images in the book carefully, but I think I didn't choose enough of them. The movie makers have taken my work and retained the questions I wanted to raise, but they expanded it and brought it to a new level -- a wonderfully visual level, at that. When I wrote the section of the book about the boy out on his journey with the baby, I felt restrained. As a writer, I had only one character really out there. I had a baby who didn't talk, so there could be no dialogue. There was description of landscape, but how many pages can you do that? And yet in the movie, you still have the boy, and the baby who doesn't talk, and therefore there's no dialogue, but you have that incredible landscape -- partly in South Africa -- and it almost becomes a character in the film. I was very moved by that.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><a href="http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTY1MTIxMjg2Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMjUyNzgwMjE@._V1_SY1200_CR90,0,630,1200_AL_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTY1MTIxMjg2Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMjUyNzgwMjE@._V1_SY1200_CR90,0,630,1200_AL_.jpg" height="320" width="168" /></a>One of the things that particularly struck me were the wonderful memories that the boy is given. It seemed to me that they had incorporated every bit of the past world into such fleeting images, and each one was carefully chosen. Now having seen the movie, I'd love to go back, rewrite the book and incorporate some of those things that are in the movie. One of the things I wish I could beef up now are those memories -- the different religions, for example -- little flickers of a baptism, of an immersion, of a mosque. There is a section where the boy is going to flee and he goes to <i>The Giver</i>, who gives him some final memories so he'll have strength. It's that selection of memories that I found most gripping. In particular, the image of the boy in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square; that's not in the book, but wow is it powerful in the film. &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>From the beginning, I felt as though the book was in good hands. The reason for my feeling that way was because both Nikki Silver, the producer, and Jeff Bridges, the producer and star, were so passionate about the book and dedicated to retaining its integrity. Although the chances of the film getting made fluctuated over the years, I never worried about how it would be made because I knew about their passion, and respected and trusted that.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>And the other night, there I sat in the theater. I knew the story. I had read the screenplay. I knew how it was going to end. So nothing was a surprise, except that everything was a surprise because of how overwhelming it was, how many shivers went up my spine and how terrific it felt to watch it. The movie is finally out there and is a vast, beautiful, finished piece.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote style="text-align: center;">See the original post <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lois-lowry/the-giver-movie-lois-lowry_b_5680482.html?utm_hp_ref=books&amp;ir=Books" target="_blank">HERE</a></blockquote>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-40921321571465099422014-08-12T10:41:00.004-04:002014-08-12T10:41:53.024-04:00"The 5th Wave" Adaptation Casts More Young Stars<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1359853842l/16101128.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1359853842l/16101128.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><div class="tr_bq">I'm not sure exactly how I missed that <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16101128-the-5th-wave?from_search=true" target="_blank">Rick Yancey's <i>The Fifth Wave</i>&nbsp;</a>is being <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2304933/" target="_blank">adapted for the big screen</a>. There are even numerous actors lined up for the project already!</div><br />I read the ARC for this one last year and really enjoyed it. Its structure and writing style are very cinematic in the first place, so I'm already feeling the buzz of excitement shaking my body at what they'll be able to do in an actual film. I. Cannot. Wait.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Sony Pictures announced that they officially inked the deal with Chloe Grace Moretz to play Cassie in the film adaptation of Rick Yancey’s <i>The 5th Wave</i>. Relative newcomer J Blakeson will direct, but veteran Susannah Grant will write the adapted screenplay &nbsp;(<i>Erin Brockovich</i>; <i>The Soloist</i>). After the world has been destroyed by four waves of brutal alien invasions, a young girl named Cassie is desperately trying to save her little brother before the inevitable “5th wave” of attacks. On her journey she meets a boy who may be her only hope of survival. &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://www.wordandfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/chloe-grace-moretz-cassie-sullivan-the-5th-wave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.wordandfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/chloe-grace-moretz-cassie-sullivan-the-5th-wave.jpg" height="166" width="200" /></a>So yes, the plot is not super original, but the book has sold very well. It spent 20 weeks on <i>The New York Times</i> Best Sellers list, sold 240,000 hardcover copies and 55,000 e-books. The novel also won the 2014 Red House Children’s Book Award in the UK. &nbsp;The second book in Yancey’s planned trilogy, <i>The Infinite Sea</i>, will be published on September 16, 2014.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><br />And as we’ve come to realize with these other YA film franchises, the key is a compelling female star and Chloe Grace Moretz certainly fits that bill. Her biggest role to date is playing the telekinetic teen Carrie in the remake of Stephen King’s novel. And she’s set for a handful of big upcoming roles:&nbsp;<i>The Equalizer </i>where she’ll play alongside Denzel Washington and <i>Dark Places</i>, an adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel which will also star Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult. Most importantly though, Moretz has been kicking a** since 13.<br /><br /></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236.25" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/r4UjLN9s--o" width="420"></iframe></div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><br /><div style="text-align: center;">See original post <a href="http://insidemovies.ew.com/2014/04/16/chloe-grace-moretz-5th-wave/" target="_blank">HERE</a> from <i>Entertainment Weekly</i></div></blockquote>Actors <a href="http://variety.com/2014/film/news/nick-robinson-alex-roe-the-5th-wave-1201253234/" target="_blank">Nick Robinson and Alex Rox joined the project</a> in June, and it was just announced today that <a href="http://www.thewrap.com/maika-monroe-joins-chloe-moretz-nick-robinson-in-the-5th-wave/" target="_blank">Maika Monroe is on board</a>, as well. There is also going to be a familiar face behind the camera, with Tobey Maguire co-producing:<br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.joblo.com/images_arrownews/Maika+Monroe+Any+Price+PV_fl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.joblo.com/images_arrownews/Maika+Monroe+Any+Price+PV_fl.jpg" height="91" width="200" /></a>Sony's young adult alien invasion thriller “The 5th Wave” has added Maika Monroe to play the role of Ringer opposite Chloe Grace Moretz, it was announced on the film's Twitter page Monday.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><a href="http://cf.foreveryoungadult.com/_uploads/images/5thwavemovie_ben.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://cf.foreveryoungadult.com/_uploads/images/5thwavemovie_ben.jpg" height="166" width="200" /></a>J. Blakeson is directing the adaptation of Rick Yancey's bestselling YA novel, which has a screenplay by Susannah Grant. Nick Robinson and Alex Roe also have lead roles, while Liev Schreiber is in final talks for a villain role.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>Moretz plays Cassie Sullivan, one of the last surviving humans left on a planet savaged by waves of alien attacks. When her little brother goes missing, she journeys to find him, meeting a mysterious young man named Evan Walker (Roe) along the way.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jJ519DtCq9M/U6336TwbpiI/AAAAAAAAZOM/MjfH7zv4Xpc/s1600/evan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jJ519DtCq9M/U6336TwbpiI/AAAAAAAAZOM/MjfH7zv4Xpc/s1600/evan.jpg" height="166" width="200" /></a>Robinson's Ben Parish takes Cassie's little brother under his wing, while Monroe's Ringer is another member of his team, tough and capable with a gun.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>Tobey Maguire, Graham King, and Lynn Harris are producing, with Matthew Plouffe and Denis O'Sullivan executive producing.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>“The 5th Wave” will be released on January 19, 2016. The book is the first in a planned trilogy. The second book in the series, “The Infinite Sea,” is out in September.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote style="text-align: center;">See original post <a href="http://www.thewrap.com/maika-monroe-joins-chloe-moretz-nick-robinson-in-the-5th-wave/" target="_blank">HERE</a> from The Wrap</blockquote><br />Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-74177529011013438292014-08-07T08:17:00.001-04:002014-08-07T08:17:42.255-04:00A Mash-Up for Your MorningI spent last night trying to mediate an argument between my eight- and ten-year-old sisters about which Harry Potter movie to watch for "sister's night. It figures that this morning I look on <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/" target="_blank">GalleyCat </a>and find an awesome mash-up of scenes from all eight films, which probably would've stopped that argument in a flash:<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236.25" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/-cGCcgnrXRs" width="420"></iframe></div><br /><blockquote style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;">What happens when you cross Harry Potter with Scott Pilgrim vs. The World?&nbsp;</div></div></blockquote><blockquote style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;">The comedian behind “The Unusual Suspect” YouTube channel tried to answer this question with his “Harry Potter vs. The World” mash-up trailer. The video embedded above features scenes from all eight Harry Potter films.&nbsp;</div></div></blockquote><blockquote style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;">Thus far, the video has drawn more than 607,000 views. Two days ago, The Unusual Suspect <a href="https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=939377682755724&amp;id=507682889258541" target="_blank">announced on his Facebook page</a> that filmmaker Edgar Wright (the <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/scott-pilgrim-vs-the-world-adaptation-trailer-goes-viral_b11868" target="_blank">Scott Pilgrim</a> movie director) complimented this project. What do you think? (via <a href="http://io9.com/harry-potter-done-in-the-style-of-scott-pilgrim-is-real-1615070840" target="_blank">io9</a>)&nbsp;</div></div></blockquote><blockquote style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;">See the original post <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/youtuber-creates-harry-potter-scott-pilgrim-mash-up-trailer_b88859" target="_blank">HERE</a></div></blockquote><br />For reference, <a href="http://io9.com/harry-potter-done-in-the-style-of-scott-pilgrim-is-real-1615070840" target="_blank">io9</a> also conveniently shared the original <i>Scott Pilgrim vs. the World</i>&nbsp;trailer that inspired this fun mash-up:<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="236.25" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/7wd5KEaOtm4" width="420"></iframe></div><br /><br />The perfect way to start my day.Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-40436126383768506382014-08-05T10:56:00.003-04:002014-08-05T10:56:30.649-04:00Dr. Seuss and Turning Thirty<div class="tr_bq">The past week or so has been a little bit crazy, hence the radio silence on my end. While most of the time I have been trapped in the editing cave, I did have a big event last week that also took up a bit of my time (though in the best ways possible). And that is...I turned thirty. The big 3-0, dirty thirty, whatever you want to call it, and now it feels like a bigger milestone than I ever really expected.</div><br />Initially, I had struggled with the idea of this new era of my life, focusing too much on all the things I had wanted to accomplish by the time I hit thirty but haven't yet. But then I shifted my thinking, realizing that now I'm moving into a more stable, more confident, and more successful period of my life. While there are certainly highlights to my twenties, looking back, they really kind of sucked, and I think that's a relatively common feeling. Your twenties are this crazy roller coaster, where you start out just finishing up college, figuring out who you are, where your supposed to be, making lots of mistakes along the way as you grow into a real "adult."<br /><br />That's not to say that I have all those things figured out 100 percent just because I'm in a new decade of my life, but I'm done with the wishy-washiness of my twenties, with the huge changes that go along with growing up, the tripping and falling on my face for the same reasons again and again. I still want to grow on a daily basis, but now it's time to do so with a different mindset. This is the time to make shit happen, if you will excuse my language, to be settled in my own skin and build the life I've always wanted, for the present and the future. I still expect to get some dirt on my face here and there, but I'm ready to be a bit less clumsy and a lot more balanced.<br /><br />All that said, when I was skimming my book biz emails this morning, I came across something quite fitting for this renewed mindset of mine, so I knew it was the perfect thing to share with you: <i>10 Life Lessons From Dr. Seuss That’ll Make You A Better Person</i>, courtesy of <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/" target="_blank">Buzz Feed</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>1. He taught us that we can change our world if we take the initiative. &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr02/enhanced-27864-1406898308-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr02/enhanced-27864-1406898308-1.jpg" height="320" width="246" /></a></div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">2. He wanted us all to realize that everyone deserves equal rights, and sometimes we need to give our voice to the voiceless. &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr02/enhanced-27863-1406899019-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr02/enhanced-27863-1406899019-4.jpg" height="320" width="255" /></a></div></blockquote><blockquote>3. He validated that reading is awesome, and knowledge will take you to new and amazing places.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr05/enhanced-2665-1406898492-7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr05/enhanced-2665-1406898492-7.jpg" height="303" width="320" /></a></div></blockquote><blockquote>4. He wanted us to stay true to our word and true to ourselves, no matter what. &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr08/enhanced-20893-1406900113-13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr08/enhanced-20893-1406900113-13.jpg" height="320" width="313" /></a></div></blockquote><br /><blockquote>5. He taught us that if we remain open-minded, we can discover some pretty great things. &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr10/enhanced-4599-1406899416-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr10/enhanced-4599-1406899416-3.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a>&nbsp;</div></blockquote><blockquote>6. He let us know that it’s okay to grow up and go off in to the world. You know what you’re doing, and you have to believe that you will find your way in the end. &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr11/enhanced-15887-1406900591-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr11/enhanced-15887-1406900591-1.jpg" height="320" width="267" /></a></div></blockquote><blockquote>7. He wanted us to open our eyes and realize that the world truly is a funny place. &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr05/enhanced-2755-1406899921-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr05/enhanced-2755-1406899921-4.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div></blockquote><blockquote>8. He told us to believe in love. &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr05/enhanced-2657-1406899975-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr05/enhanced-2657-1406899975-2.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div></blockquote><blockquote>9. He opened our eyes and made us grateful for what we have. &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr09/enhanced-28958-1406900274-13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr09/enhanced-28958-1406900274-13.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div></blockquote><blockquote>10. And above all, he told us that no one is “youer than you.”&nbsp;</blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr04/enhanced-23557-1406900421-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-08/1/9/enhanced/webdr04/enhanced-23557-1406900421-1.jpg" height="320" width="247" /></a></div><br /><blockquote style="text-align: center;">See the original post <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/kateing/10-ways-dr-seuss-made-us-all-better-people-vfcw?utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Books+83&amp;utm_content=Books+83+CID_68a31c4cbd8a01a2bc501608ffb0f3e4&amp;utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&amp;utm_term=10%20Life%20Lessons%20From%20Dr%20Seuss%20Thatll%20Make%20You%20A%20Better%20Person" target="_blank">HERE</a></blockquote><br /><br />Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-9513310989089127282014-07-25T09:16:00.002-04:002014-07-25T09:16:08.819-04:00Friday Fun: "The Simpsons" Go Literary<div class="tr_bq">I would never describe myself as a "<i>Simpsons</i>&nbsp;fan," but once and a while, it gives me a good chuckle. And I will say that I can relate more than I'd like to admit to Lisa... So this morning, when&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bookriot.com/" target="_blank">Book Riot</a> pointed me in the direction of something I wouldn't have noticed about the show(ya know, not being a "<i>Simpsons</i> fan" and all :-p) I knew I'd found something I wanted to share with you all (and some new episodes I wanted to watch).</div><br />So, for today's Friday Fun, I give you....*drumroll please* eight of the best <i>Simpsons</i>&nbsp;literary references (courtesy of CBC books)!<br /><blockquote><b>Leon Uris</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>The influential American novelist was known for his extensively researched, compelling but dense historical novels like Exodus and Mila 18. During one episode of <i>The Simpsons</i>, local hillbilly stereotype Cletus Delroy Spuckler can be seen in the library holding a copy of Uris’s acclaimed novel about Irish nationalism <i>Trinity</i>. But Cletus isn’t a literature fan – he's about to use the nearly 900-page book to crush a turtle for his lunch because “nothing cracks a turtle like Leon Uris.”<br /><br /><b>Bart the Raven</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" height="210.75" mozallowfullscreen="" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/29733360" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="375"></iframe></div></blockquote><blockquote>Who could forget [this] amazing, epic adaptation of <i>The Raven </i>by Edgar Allan Poe in the very first “Treehouse of Horror” Halloween special? The bit receives a boost of gravitas thanks to the baritone narration of actor James Earl Jones. The show would also reference Poe’s short story <i>The Tell-Tale Heart</i> in a later episode in which Lisa competes against a schoolmate rival in a diorama competition.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><b>The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><a href="http://i.embed.ly/1/display/resize?key=1e6a1a1efdb011df84894040444cdc60&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Ftrift.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F03%2F20140401_diary086_chabonfist.jpg&amp;width=490" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.embed.ly/1/display/resize?key=1e6a1a1efdb011df84894040444cdc60&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Ftrift.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F03%2F20140401_diary086_chabonfist.jpg&amp;width=490" height="150" width="200" /></a>In a famous season 18 episode, Lisa and aspiring poet Moe attends the “Word Loaf” conference, a parody of the Bread Loaf festival, which is considered the oldest and most prestigious annual writers’ summit in the U.S. This episode featured four literary heavyweight guests, including Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen, Tom Wolfe and Gore Vidal. However, in a room full of literary egos, tensions will rise. One of the hilarious highlights of the episode is when Michael Chabon shouts “That’s it, Franzen! I think your nose needs some Corrections!” before the two get into a fist fight.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><b><i>A Tale of Two Cities</i></b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>Fans of the show will remember the time when the writers turned the indelible opening lines of Charles Dickens’s classic novel about the French revolution (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …”) into a joke involving the infinite monkey theorem. The infinite monkey theorem basically suggests that an infinite number of monkeys hitting random keys on typewriters will eventually type out a given text, such as a Dickens’s novel. During an episode in the fourth season, Homer finds himself leading a union battle with his power plant Mr. Burns. The irascible Burns, in a show of the absurd power and resources he commands, takes a Homer on a tour and shows him “1000 monkeys working at a 1000 typewriters. Soon they’ll have written the greatest novel known to man!” Except Burns randomly pulls out a page from one of his monkey writers, which reads: “It was the best of times… it was the blurst of times?!!” Suffice to say, that monkey was probably fired.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.embed.ly/1/display/resize?key=1e6a1a1efdb011df84894040444cdc60&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fbleedingedge.pynchonwiki.com%2Fwiki%2Fimages%2F6%2F61%2FPynchon-simpsons.jpg&amp;width=490" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.embed.ly/1/display/resize?key=1e6a1a1efdb011df84894040444cdc60&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fbleedingedge.pynchonwiki.com%2Fwiki%2Fimages%2F6%2F61%2FPynchon-simpsons.jpg&amp;width=490" height="112" width="200" /></a></div><b>Thomas Pynchon</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>Only an iconic show like <i>The Simpsons</i> could entice reclusive writer Thomas Pynchon to satirize himself, not once, but twice! The<i> Gravity’s Rainbow</i> author, known for avoiding interviews and public appearances, contributed two speaking parts throughout the years. Our favourite: when Marge becomes a novelist and asks Pynchon for a blurb, he responds: "Here's your quote: Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!" The paper bag Pynchon also appeared briefly, in an unspoken cameo, in the World Loaf episode.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><b>Amy Tan at the Springfield Festival of Books</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>This episode featured an appearance from <i>The Joy Luck Club </i>author Amy Tan and took a humourous jab at literary criticism. When Lisa gets the chance to address one of her literary heroes, Tan immediately crushes the girl’s interpretation of her writing. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. I can’t believe how wrong you got it. Just sit down, I’m embarrassed for both of us.” &nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><a href="http://i.embed.ly/1/display/resize?key=1e6a1a1efdb011df84894040444cdc60&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fimgur.com%2FfGxFBAz.png&amp;width=490" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.embed.ly/1/display/resize?key=1e6a1a1efdb011df84894040444cdc60&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fimgur.com%2FfGxFBAz.png&amp;width=490" height="149" width="200" /></a><b><i>Goodnight Moon</i>, Walken-style</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>Who doesn’t remember reading this classic children’s book? Well, <i>The Simpsons </i>writers<br /> took that nostalgia and gave it a Christopher Walken edge. Walken himself doesn’t appear in the episode (he’s impersonated by actor Jay Mohr), but one of the funniest literary references is when Marge points out Walken reading <i>Goodnight Moon</i> with his intense, signature delivery to a bunch of terrified kids.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.embed.ly/1/display/resize?key=1e6a1a1efdb011df84894040444cdc60&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fi2.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fy11%2FMattybwoy%2FPippiSimpsons.jpg&amp;width=490" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.embed.ly/1/display/resize?key=1e6a1a1efdb011df84894040444cdc60&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fi2.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fy11%2FMattybwoy%2FPippiSimpsons.jpg&amp;width=490" height="162" width="200" /></a></div><b>The Ghost of Pippi Longstocking</b>&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>While on summer holiday, Lisa meets a group of cool kids and takes the chance to re-<br />invent herself as a laid-back beach bum. But she one day passes a library and her love of reading and learning becomes hard to repress. In one memorable scene, a spectre of Pippi Longstocking appears amidst the bookstacks and begs Lisa: "Read about my adventures in the South Seas! Make me live again!"&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote style="text-align: center;">See the original post <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/books/2014/07/our-favourite-literary-references-on-the-simpsons.html" target="_blank">HERE</a></blockquote><br />Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973122095376519204.post-8791326055329818192014-07-24T08:26:00.001-04:002014-07-24T08:26:47.218-04:00eBook Subscription Services On the Rise? With more and more companies jumping on the eBook-subscription-service bandwagon, it's hard to believe that the service hasn't actually taken off yet. It's a fact that doesn't necessarily surprise me, but it does make me kind of happy, I'm not gonna lie.<div><br /></div><div>While these services can benefit some authors greatly, which I am all for, the majority are more likely to be hurt by these "unlimited read" programs, and it's hard for me to get behind something like that doing what I do. At least until it's not a detriment to so many writers. While many could say that this Netflix-and-Hulu-watching girl is being a total hypocrite, the advances in subscription services for the book market just aren't up to snuff yet.&nbsp;<div><br /></div><div>But the big question is,&nbsp;<i>When will it be? When is this all going to change?</i> <i>At what point will eBook subscription services become the norm? </i>A recent study by the <a href="https://www.bisg.org/" target="_blank">BISG</a>&nbsp;tackles just those wonderings, according to <a href="http://www.digitalbookworld.com/" target="_blank">Digital Book World</a>:</div><div><blockquote class="tr_bq">A report released today by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) finds that 80% of publishers believe subscription ebooks becoming a major part of the publishing business is “inevitable.” <a href="http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2014/amazon-officially-launches-ebook-subscription-service-kindle-unlimited/" target="_blank">The launch last week of Amazon’s subscription service, Kindle Unlimited</a>, would appear to corroborate that finding — but are they?&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/140716122922-kindle-unlimited-reading-620xa.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/140716122922-kindle-unlimited-reading-620xa.png" height="124" width="200" /></a>Professionals within the trade, scholarly, professional and higher education sectors interviewed for the BISG report had differing views on the various subscription-based models most likely to take hold in their respective categories. Among all those interviewed, however, there is a widespread belief that subscriptions are already playing expanding roles in each of those sectors, and that that trend will continue dramatically upward. Among trade publishers, only 7% of respondents said subscription services contribute significantly to their overall revenue today, but 59% expected that to change within the next five years. This is a case where the majority could be mistaken.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Why? Because the most crucial questions for how — and how dramatically — ebook subscription services will reshape the industry are ones that no report can answer: Just how many authors and publishers will jump on? How deep will their participation be? And, ultimately, will readers buy?&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">“One major concern surrounding the increase of ebook subscriptions,” the BISG report concedes, “is the potential degradation of high-value markets.” Yet the report indicates a prevailing belief among the various stakeholders in the publishing ecosystem that the benefits more often outweigh the costs: “New revenue from the emerging markets reached by subscription ebook options promises to offer some relief to publishers as they struggle with diminishing print sales.”&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">But while price degradation, on the one hand, and upticking revenues from new subscription models, on the other, are possibilities, neither should be considered “inevitable.”&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://www.postertext.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/tvvs.books_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.postertext.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/tvvs.books_.jpg" height="200" width="154" /></a>It’s instructive to look for patterns in other forms of media where subscription services have taken hold, as the BISG report does, but publishing folks are often quick — and right — to point out that books are unique because, among other reasons, they’re consumed in a fundamentally different way than music, TV and movies. According the Bureau of Labor Statistics, <a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t11.htm" target="_blank">the amount of time Americans spend watching television and movies far dwarfs the amount of time they spend reading</a>. It makes sense to have a service that lets you choose what you want to watch and watch as much of it as you want. The same doesn’t necessarily go for reading.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Besides, book publishers and authors have largely succeeded at continuing to get readers to pay for each time they consume content, even as the business models for newspapers, magazines and music have been upended and TV and movies continue to suffer from widespread piracy. As some of the latest figures from the U.S. and UK markets suggest, revenues from both print and ebooks are more than just holding steady; they’re increasing.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">This growth is being seen in a market dramatically shaped by Amazon’s deep discounting and the transition to cheaper ebooks from more expensive print books. If readers were fleeing in droves from existing retail channels or being converted en masse to the notion that paying anything more than a couple of dollars for a book (or anything at all, for that matter) is highway robbery, then authors and publishers would have far greater incentive to pursue subscription ebooks aggressively.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">But to all appearances, they don’t really have that incentive — at least not yet. Readers are still showing a willingness to spend on individual books.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Furthermore, in order for publishers, authors and the service providers themselves to each cash out favorably, subscription models must perform a difficult balancing act that relies heavily on user behavior. On the one hand, they need to encourage many people to sign up; on the other, they need to make sure they stay signed up and reading, but not reading so much as to cost the services more than they make from having them as subscribers. <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/17/5911065/why-amazons-netflix-for-books-might-be-dead-before-it-starts" target="_blank">One analyst writes</a> that even Kindle Unlimited may be doomed right out of the gates as a consequence of that challenge.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRocohwo9T-7ZyFWGkC3LeixYArE2qRyAie5D_X4W-yaUboG5PUBg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="121" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRocohwo9T-7ZyFWGkC3LeixYArE2qRyAie5D_X4W-yaUboG5PUBg" width="200" /></a>Publishers and authors, having watched ebook subscription services like Oyster and Scribd gain footholds in the reading market, are now familiar with that difficulty. On balance, publishers have shown considerable caution adding their titles to those catalogs. And <a href="http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2014/kindle-unlimiteds-two-tier-system-makes-some-authors-second-class-citizens/" target="_blank">authors have already stepped forward</a> to criticize the way Kindle Unlimited proposes to compensate some of them.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">In light of all this, the scope and nature of ebook subscription services’ impending impact on the industry looks if not more limited, then at least less “inevitable” than respondents to the BISG study anticipate. In a live debate Digital Book World hosted in June, in which executives from Scribd and Smashwords faced off with a business journalist and the head of a global ebook distributor on this very question, <a href="http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2014/skepticism-remains-despite-strides-for-ebook-subscription-services/" target="_blank">the skeptics carried the day</a>, convincing a greater share of the audience that the potential costs to publishers, authors and readers outweighed the potential benefits. Even though the majority of attendees continued to feel optimistically about the place of ebook subscription services in the world of publishing — as do the publishers BISG surveyed — the fact that such caution remains in ample supply suggests that an industry-wide embrace of subscription ebooks is still far from certain.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">While it may not have impacted the results, it’s important to mention that the BISG survey was sponsored by ebook subscription providers Safari and Scribd, among others. Learn more about the report and purchase it here.&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">See the original post <a href="http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2014/for-subscription-ebooks-great-expectations-but-few-guarantees/?et_mid=683292&amp;rid=246327907" target="_blank">HERE</a></blockquote></div><div><br /></div><div><div><div>Interesting stuff. <i>Terrifying</i>&nbsp;stuff. But interesting...</div><div><br /></div></div></div></div>Daniellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04800222769769244038noreply@blogger.com0
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