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
- Barnes & Noble fires CEO less than a year into his tenure. (Fortune)
- Bookstore Sales Up 6.1% in First Half of 2016 (Publishers Weekly)
- Amazon’s Launching Pickup Locations, But Where Are Its Consumer Bookstores? (Publishers Weekly)
- Sisters In Crime writers group issues report on diversity. (Publishers Weekly) You can also read highlights of the report here.
- Yolo County, CA, library sytem adds bookmobile bicyles (Sacramento Bee)
- Magic and witchcraft shop bans Harry Potter fans “because it sells ‘spiritual tools’ not toys for young Muggles” (The Telegraph)
Worth Reading
For Writers & Bloggers
- 5 Ways to Market Your Book Blog—and a free graphics course! (guest post by Rebecca from Unbound Pages, on Between My Lines)
- Bloggin’ on the Go: My 6 Must-Have Apps for smartphone or tablet. (Molly’s Book Nook)
Book & Movie Announcements
- Lin-Manuel Miranda and Alan Menken to team up for Disney’s live-action movie remake of The Little Mermaid. In the YouTube video above, Miranda and Menken jam to songs from The Little Mermaid for Ham4Ham, the weekly lottery for Hamilton tickets. Miranda, the composer, lyricist, and star of the Broadway sensation Hamilton, is a big Disney fan, and The Little Mermaid was an early and important influence on him musically. (Entertainment Weekly and GalleyCat)
- The Chronicles of Narnia will get a reboot with The Silver Chair, to be produced by TriStar, Mark Gordon, The C. S. Lewis Company, and Entertainment One (eOne.) (Deadline)
- Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan to become Amazon TV series. (GalleyCat)
- Margot Lee Shetterly’s Forthcoming book Hidden Figures is also a forthcoming movie starring Taraji P. Henson. Both book and movie tell the story of “the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race”—NASA’s female computers and engineers. I am so excited for this movie as well as the book!
Awesome Lists
- Rad Women Do Rad Things — a list of collective biographies of women. Women in science, women in history, women inventors… lots of women doing amazing things, in books for children and for adults. (BookRiot)
- Maya Rodale’s Top 5 Romance Novels for a Women’s Studies Course (Gender Genre blog). I’ve read and loved Forbidden (Beverly Jenkins), and will be checking out at least two of the other titles.
- The Ultimate List of Young Adult Fairytale Retellings (These Paper Hearts tumblr) Maybe not the ultimate, but a good list nonetheless.
- 45 Literary Quotes About Change (BookRiot)
Really Cool / Just for Fun
Hogwarts Express on the Glenfinnan Viaduct. Book sculpture by Thomas Wightman. (Image by Thomas Wightman, via My Modern Met)
- Moveable book sculpture featuring the Hogwarts Express on the Glenfinnan Viaduct. By artist Thomas Wightman; commissioned by Visit Scotland. Read more about it at MyModernMet.com.
Bookish Quote
That’s it for this week!
Katherine @ I Wish I Lived in a Library
I definitely have to check out the romance novel list. That sounds fascinating! I’m excited about the new Narnia movie! I’ve read Silver Chair but I need to revisit it. It’s been awhile!
Katherine @ I Wish I Lived in a Library recently posted…Dinner for Two – Cookbook Review + Recipe
Lark_Bookwyrm
The Silver Chair is probably my second-to-least favorite of the Narnia books, behind The Last Battle. But it’s Narnia, so that still puts it ahead of a lot of other books! I’m looking forward to the movie to; I hope they do a good job. They need someone with a nice lugubrious face for Puddleglum. I rather think Christopher Eccleston would do nicely, don’t you?
Jan @ Notes from a Readerholic
I thought it was very funny that the magic and witchcraft shop banned Harry Potter fans. Some good links to follow!
Jan @ Notes from a Readerholic recently posted…Waiting on Wednesday: August 17
Lark_Bookwyrm
It is a bit ironic, isn’t it?
Laura Thomas
Love the moving book sculpture. I’ve seen amazing things they create with books. And I do travel through reading. Looking forward to checking out the Ryan series as I’ve followed the books for years.
Laura Thomas recently posted…What’s New On My Bookshelf #169 and The Sunday Post
Lark_Bookwyrm
Artists of all sorts amaze me, but I really love what some people can do to turn books into art. (Even though I usually freak out at the idea of defacing a book in any way.)
Rita @ View From My Books
Loved this post as I always do on Saturday 🙂
The moving book sculpture is really cool! I want to check further into Hidden Figures, book and show, and I’m glad to see book sales go up, though unfortunately– for now, subject to change– I read mostly on my kindle. And I wish print prices weren’t so expensive, new books and older books, all highly priced. B & N has a bargain table, but it’s not the best selection for me. I do find more deals reading on my kindle, sigh…
Rita @ View From My Books recently posted…My Weekend Update- 8/21/16
Lark_Bookwyrm
I’m glad you enjoy this post! It’s always fun to put together. I gather links during the week, and then on Friday I read through Publishers Weekly and a few other book-news and book-related sites to see if I missed anything important. I almost missed the Hugo Awards announcement; I was so out of touch on vacation that I forgot that WorldCon (where the voting is tallied) was last weekend. Someday, I really want to go to WorldCon!
I can’t wait to watch Hidden Figures, and I’m trying to get my library to buy the book. I know what you mean about finding more book bargains on the Kindle than IRL, though I do pretty well at our library’s biannual sales and year-round sale shelves. And some books, I just bite the bullet and buy new… like signed copies, or some series I’ve been collecting for a while. For others, I wait and buy it used. I’d love to support every author I love, but my book budget only stretches so far!
Melissa (My World...in words and pages)
Oh. I had missed that one on B&N firing the CEO. Interesting.
Lark_Bookwyrm
Yes, it doesn’t sound like he was a good fit at all.