News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, and other cool stuff
Book News
- The ALA announced the Top Ten Challenged Books of 2016. They include several books challenged because they feature LGBT characters (including two books about transgender children), several books challenged for sexual explicitness and/or profanity, and a new reason this year: Bill Cosby’s Little Bill series of children’s books has been challenged because sexual assault allegations against the author.
- Colson Whitehead wins Pulitzer Prize for The Underground Railroad (The Guardian). You can read about this year’s other winners on the Pulitzer website.
- Veteran Bookseller Plans D.C. Bookstore Around Diverse Staff (Publishers Weekly)
- Roanoke, Virginia, is preparing for its first annual Harry Potter festival on May 13. I wish I could go! (via Only In Your State)
- Indonesian X-Men illustrator faces backlash over alleged references to religious and political differences in his artwork for a recent issue. The references could be seen as anti-Christian, given current events in Indonesia. (The Guardian)
Worth Reading
- File This Under Nostalgia: New Book Pays Tribute to the Library Card Catalog (NPR)
- Rin Chupeco talks about “strong” and “flawed” female characters for Women in SF&F Month over on Fantasy Cafe.
- In a similar vein, Samantha Shannon muses “The literary tomboy is dead — or is she?” (The Guardian)
- If It Doesn’t Have an HEA (or HFN), It’s Not Romance. Amen. (Sarah Nichols, for BookRiot)
- Beyond the Pale (Male): Marvel, Diversity, and a Changing Comics Readership (NPR)
- 10 Stories About the Library Restoring My Faith in Humanity (Casey Stepaniuk, for BookRiot) I don’t know if I’d go quite that far, but they are good moments.
- Dragon Books and Subverting the Narrative (Jessica Yang, BookRiot)
Book & Movie Announcements
- Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle Is Coming to Television (Tor.com)
- Jude Law cast as the young(er) Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts 2 (Variety)
- Willow Smith buys film rights to Alwyn Hamilton’s Rebel of the Sands trilogy (Deadline)
- New Film Celebrates Emily Dickinson’s Poetry and ‘Quiet Passion’ (NPR)
Awesome Lists
- Fifteen of Your Favorite First Lines from Books Published in the Last Five Years (Goodreads)
- 12 Old Words That Survived By Getting Fossilized In Idioms (Mental Floss)
Bookish Quote
That’s it for this week!
