I’ve got some fun stuff on this week’s News & Notes. You’ll also notice that I’m still tweaking the format for this feature, going for shorter descriptions and more lists of links. Leave me a comment and tell me what you think!
Worth Reading:
Author Susan Froetschel (Fear of Beauty) wrote a powerful guest post on illiteracy and why it matters for the Jungle Red Writers blog. Please read it. (Froetschel’s own mystery/suspense novel centers around an illiterate Afghan mother whose son has been killed, and an American special forces officer.)
Literary Intelligence: Writers as Spies, by Ros Barber. Christopher Marlowe, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, John Le Carre, and other literary spies.
Cool Stuff:
- One of my favorite public libraries, the Central Rappahannock Regional Library in Fredericksburg, Virginia, is one of ten finalists for the Susan Kearsley Firebird tour! Please help them win by voting here.
- Love libraries? Check out the best fictional libraries (in pop culture) and 10 Fictional Libraries I’d Love to Visit
- Dream Homes Built For Books and the Nerds Who Love Them (Flavorwire)
- Leonard Nimoy reading James Thurber? That’s just one of the gems in PRI’s “Selected Shorts” podcasts featuring stars reading short fiction.
Book Lists:
- Here Be Dragons
- English Literature’s Key Moments, from Marlowe to Rowling
- 100 Chapter Books You Must Read to Your Children
- 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader
Books & Ebooks in the News:
- As Harry Potter turns 15, the books get new covers (Shannon Maughan, Publishers Weekly)
- Why Traditional Publishing Is Really In A ‘Golden Age’ (NPR)
- NPR’s Audie Cornish interviews Smashwords founder Mark Coker
- Barnes & Noble’s Nook revenues don’t look good (Nate Hoffelder, The Digital Reader)
- “Startup Plympton acquires DailyLit to deliver serial fiction in a digital age” (Laura Hazard Owen, paidContent)
- Time Warner may sell of most of its magazines (Laura Hazard Owen, paidContent)
- Readers Grasp E-Books Just As Well As Print (Nick Halverson, Discovery.com)
- Amazon will use virtual coins for its Kindle Fire app store
