News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, and other cool stuff
Literary Losses
Anne Perry, bestselling author of the Charlotte & Thomas Pitt and William Monk historical mystery series, died on April 10, 2023, at the age of 84. Perry’s writing career began in 1979 with the publication of The Cater Street Hangman, the first Charlotte & Thomas Pitt mystery set in Victorian London. The series eventually numbered 32 novels and spawned a spinoff series starring Charlotte and Thomas’s son Daniel. The Monk series debuted in 1990; the 24th book, Dark Tide Rising, was published in 2018. Perry also penned several other series and a number of standalone books. A convert to the Mormon church, Perry wrote over 20 Christmas novels in addition to her many mysteries and other books. At her death, she had published 99 books (not counting collections), with two more novels scheduled to release this year.
In 1994, Peter Jackson’s film Heavenly Creatures was released. Based on a true crime in New Zealand, the movie starred Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey as teenaged best friends Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker, whose fear of being separated led the girls to murder Pauline’s mother. It was not long before journalists discovered that Juliet, who had been 15 at the time of the murder and served 5 years in prison for the crime, was in fact Anne Perry; she had changed her name upon her release, and built a new life far from New Zealand.
Perry’s fear that her writing career would suffer proved unfounded. Her books remained popular bestsellers, and in 2009, she received an Agatha Award for lifetime achievement. Though she never married, terminating relationships rather than risk telling her partners about her past, she had friends both within and outside the mystery-writing community.
Perry’s final books will be published posthumously: The Traitor Among Us, an Elena Standish mystery novel, will be released in the US on September 12, 2023, and A Christmas Vanishing comes out on November 7, 2023. Both are available for preorder.
Obituaries and tributes: The Guardian; Kirkus Reviews; The New York Times. Bibliography and Biography: Goodreads; Wikipedia
National Library Week
National Library Week is April 23-29. This year, it includes several days dedicated to specific library-related causes:
- Right to Read Day (April 24), “a National Day of Action in support of the right to read.”
- National Library Workers Day (April 25), “a day for everyone to recognize the valuable contributions made by library workers.”
- National Library Outreach Day (April 26), “celebrates library outreach and the dedicated library professionals who are meeting their patrons where they are.”
- Take Action for Libraries Day (April 27), a day to reach out to your Congressional representatives in support of libraries
Book Bans
- PEN Report Shows State Legislation ‘Supercharging’ Book Bans (Publishers Weekly). You can also read the full report, Banned in the USA: State Laws Supercharge Book Suppression in Schools.
- ALA reports record number of demands to censor library books and materials in 2022.
- Third of UK librarians asked to censor or remove books, research reveals (The Guardian)
Bookish News
- Amazon to close Book Depository online shop (The Guardian) I’m crushed; where will I order UK editions now?
- Hilary Mantel was working on ‘mashup’ of Jane Austen novels before her death (The Guardian)
Worth Reading/Viewing
- Peering Into the Future of Novels, With Trained Machines Ready (New York Times) Stephen Marche wrote a novella with the assistance of 3 A.I. programs.
- Scholastic wanted to license Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s children’s book — if she cut a part about ‘racism’ (NPR)
- Cozy is Key: Why Escapist Reads Are More Popular Than Ever (Book Riot)
- Follow the money: the story of slavery and Shakespeare’s First Folio (The Guardian)
- What Will the Bookstore of the Future Look Like? (Book Riot)
For Writers & Bloggers
- Do Writers Fetishize Their Tools Too Much… Or Not Enough? (Tobias Carroll, Literary Hub)
Books, Movies, and TV
- A Frog and Toad series is coming to Apple TV. (See trailer above.)
- ‘Harry Potter’ books will be adapted into a decade-long TV series (NPR). I have very mixed feelings about this.
Lists
- 5 new YA books that explore the magic of the arts and the art of magic (NPR). That Self-Same Metal jumped right onto my TBR list.
Lark
I hate that we’re losing so many good authors. Her mysteries were a favorite of my dad’s.
Lark recently posted…A Venom Dark and Sweet by Judy I. Lin
Lark_Bookwyrm
My mom loved Anne Perry, too. I really enjoyed the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series, at least the first 10 or 12 books, but I haven’t read any of her other series.
Nicole @ BookWyrmKnits
I didn’t know much about Anne Perry before this, but I guess that makes sense since I don’t usually read the genres she wrote. Crazy, though, how her (early) real life could have been straight out of one of her books.
I am not conflicted at all about the new Harry Potter miniseries. I think it was an enjoyable series to read at the time, and the movies were enjoyable, and it’s now time to move on to other books and series. There definitely are other wizard books/series available which are better written and more diverse and welcoming and whose authors are not problematic. I would much rather see a show featuring one of those.
Nicole @ BookWyrmKnits recently posted…Book Review: Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home (Nora Krug)
Lark_Bookwyrm
The more I have thought about the new HP series, the more unnecessary it seems to me. The movies were well cast, on the whole, and while the writers had to let some subplots go, overall I thought the adaptations were pretty good. So I agree with you; I would much rather see some other fantasy series adapted instead.