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
- Erotic Romance Author Accused of Plagiarizing Fanfiction (The Mary Sue) Specifically, Romilly King is accused of plagiarizing a Castiel fanfic found on AO3. The screenshots are pretty damning. (CW: the article itself is not explicit. Some of the screenshots may be; I did not read them all.)
- #DisneyMustPay Task Force Expands Focus to All Comic Book Creators (File 770)
- Hachette To Purchase Workman Publishing (Publishers Weekly)
- Advance copies of Sally Rooney’s unpublished book sold for hundreds of dollars, despite the ban on selling ARCs. (The Guardian)
Worth Reading/Viewing
- How Extortion Scams and Review Bombing Trolls Turned Goodreads Into Many Authors’ Worst Nightmare (Time)
- What We Are Not Teaching Boys About Being Human — specifically, through the books marketed and made available to them. (Ruth Whippman, New York Times) (NOTE: I apologize for including an essay that is behind a paywall for some of you. I felt it merited including for those of you who either subscribe or have not yet used up your monthly allotment of free articles.)
- Pointing out racism in books is not an ‘attack’ – it’s a call for industry reform (Monisha Rajesh, The Guardian)
- Caring for Your Books and Papers (Victoria and Albert Museum)
For Writers and Bloggers
- Writer’s Block And Why You Shouldn’t (KJ Charles)
Books, Movies, and TV
- ‘Valdemar Universe’ Fantasy Book Series In The Works For TV (Deadline). The Mary Sue explains why this is so exiting to fans.
Lists
- Your 50 Favorite Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books Of The Past Decade (NPR, August 2021) This is a fantastic list. I have read a few of them, but many were already on my TBR list… and I added a few more based on this list. In case you’re curious, the all-time favprotes list from 2011 is below.
- Your Picks: The Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books (NPR, 2011) is a good list, too, but a bit lacking in diversity. It reflected the state of publishing to that point, but left out some excellent books by or about people of color and LGBT characters. So this year’s judges fixed it (sort of), adding these books to the 2011 list.
- 40 YA Books Showcasing Diverse Disability Representation (Epic Reads)
Cool, Fun, and Awesome
- Check out this dragon game Kickstarter with charming, whimsical art by Sandara Tang, one of my favorite dragon illustrators. It looks absolutely adorable, and I think I’m going to back it.
Jan @ Notes from a Readerholic
I hope you’ve caught up with your work, Lark, since I see this post. It’s always nice to read your News & Notes. I’m going to check out some of the links. The Dragon game illustrations are great. I hope it does well.
I hope you have a good week!
Jan @ Notes from a Readerholic recently posted…Sunday Post: Almost the end of summer
Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits
That dragon game does look adorable! I wish I played more board games, because that one’s really tempting. (I might back it anyway.) But regardless I’m going to look up the artist now and see how else I can support such cute dragon content!
I agree that the Valdemar TV news is exciting, but I’m annoyed at the marketing team. “First queer hero?” Um… I’ve seen references to LOTS of other earlier books with queer heroes. (It seems Misty and Larry are also a bit perplexed by that decision.) I’m also… well. Concerned. There’s a lot of rape in the Valdemar books. (Which is one reason why I stopped re-reading some of my favorites in the series.) I’m concerned about how far the TV series will go with that. Still… can we get a Kerowyn spin-off? Pretty please?
Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits recently posted…Series Shakedown: What have I Finished?
Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits
(I decided to back the Kickstarter at the lowest tier, so that I can get the add-on items. That seemed like a good compromise!)
Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits recently posted…Series Shakedown: What have I Finished?