News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, and other cool stuff,
Bookish News
- The 2020 Edgar Award nominees were announced. The winners will be named in April.
- The ALA announced its 2021 Youth Media Awards, including the Caldecott, Newbery, Coretta Scott King, and Alex Awards.
- Indie Bookstores Embrace E-Commerce… and It Pays Off (Publishers Weekly) “Few observers could have predicted that 2021 would begin with indie bookstores at the forefront of an unprecedented online shop local movement. But the temporary store closures of spring 2020 forced them to take a bold leap into the world of e-commerce.”
- Nora Roberts speaks out after attacks on casting of Alyssa Milano in [television] adaptation (The Guardian)
- Newly discovered jumping spider named for children’s author Eric Carle (Univ. of Manchester, Australia)
- There’s yet another plagiarism scandal in Romancelandia. This time, S.M Soto (The Seasons of Callan Reed) is accused of plagiarizing Kim Jones (That Guy), and the screen shots Jones posted pretty much prove it. You can see them on Facebook or (screenshotted from Facebook and shared by someone else) on Twitter.
Worth Reading/Viewing
- Who Is Book Publishing For? Not Women Of Color (Bustle) 10 women of color talk about their experiences in the publishing world.
- Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village (Crime Reads) Hilarious!
- ‘I think I’ve written more Sherlock Holmes than even Conan Doyle’: the ongoing fight to reimagine Holmes (Allison Flood, The Guardian)
- Vampires, Muppets and prequels: The Great Gatsby’s new life out of copyright (Allison Flood, The Guardian)
Books, Movies, and TV
- Ken Burns and Lynn Novick Turn Their Lens, and Jeff Daniels’s Voice, to Hemingway (Publishers Weekly)
Lists
- 11 Historical Romances To Read If You Loved “Bridgerton,” Recommended By The Author Who Wrote It (Julia Quinn, for Buzzfeed) And if that’s not enough, try…
- 32 Historical Romance Series to Binge-Read after ‘Bridgerton’ (Goodreads). Looking for historical romance recs with BIPOC and/or LGBTQ diversity? You’ll find some here. (I don’t mean to imply that Julia Quinn’s list above was not diverse; there were several books with BIPOC there as well.)
- The 52 Most Popular Romances of the Past Three Years (Goodreads) I would modify that title to read “The 52 Most Popular Contemporary Romances…” because I can’t believe that in a list of 52 titles, only one historical romance was on enough “want to read” lists to be included. Especially after the success of Netflix’s Bridgerton.
- Black Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors You Need to Read (The Portalist) Conspicuously missing from the list is P. Djèlí Clark, but it’s a pretty good list nonetheless.
- 10 Most Dynamic Detective Duos in Crime Fiction (Publishers Weekly)
- The 52 Most Popular Romances of the Past Three Years
- 52 Book Journaling Prompts (Kelly Jensen, Book Riot)
Cool, Fun, and Awesome
- Goodreads came up with a Romance Pen Name Generator. It’s kind of fun, even if I’m not crazy about the names it generates for me personally.
Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits
Wow, that’s a lot of great links today! I’ll have to visit more of them in detail, but for starters… It’s cool that they named a spider after Eric Carle, but I’m not that happy about more jumping spiders being found… O.o
Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits recently posted…Top Ten Tuesday ~ Mardi Gras book covers