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
- ALA 2015: On a Historic Day, Roberta Kaplan Delivers a Powerful Keynote (Publishers Weekly)
- Charleston library renamed in honour of church shootings victim Cynthia Graham Hurd. (The Guardian)
- J. K. Rowling Announced a Harry Potter Play to debut in London next year, called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. On Twitter yesterday, she said that it’s not a prequel, but a Facebook post from 2013 suggested that it would be just that. (BuzzFeed)
- Penguin Merges Berkley, NAL due to a decline in mass-market sales. Berkley’s MM imprints include Jove, Ace, and Signet. The new unit, Berkley Publishing Group, will focus on hardcover and trade titles, though they will continue to produce mass market paperbacks as well. (Publishers Weekly)
- Sloan & Knight foundations announce $3.4 million in grants for Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) (Publishers Weekly)
- “Books on Buses” to Enhance Reading Opportunities for Children in Roanoke, Virginia. (The Roanoke Star) What a great idea!
Worth Reading
- Fan Fiction Becomes a Boon for Licensors and Publishers (Publishers Weekly)
- Doctoral dissertation in graphic novel form (Cory Doctorow for Boingboing) “Columbia University awarded a doctorate in education to Nick Sousanis for Unflattening, a graphic novel about the relationship between words and pictures in literature.” It’s not actually a graphic novel, since it is decidedly nonfiction, but it looks fascinating nonetheless. And if you’re really intrigued, you can buy it; Harvard University Press has published it.
- On Annotating Books (Emma Nichols, for BookRiot)
- Let’s Avoid Defining Beach Reads (Jessi Lewis, for BookRiot)
- Geeks Can Do Better: 5 Ways Phoenix Comicon Is Doing Diversity Right (BookRiot)
Awesome Lists
- Amazon’s Best Books 0f 2015 (so far)
- Twelve of the world’s most beautiful bookshops – in pictures (The Guardian)
Really Cool
- Dress up your walls with these book text posters from Gone Reading. They have classics like Alice in Wonderland, Moby Dick, Pride and Prejudice, and A Christmas Carol.
- Want to create a font from your own handwriting? You can do it free at myscroptfont.com.
Really Weird
- Book scorpions keep book parasites at bay. Who knew? (Scientific American blogs)
Bookish Quote
That’s it for this week!
Bea @Bea's Book Nook
Oh, those book text posters are cool. And welcome back!
Bea @Bea’s Book Nook recently posted…Sunday Book Share #147
Lark_Bookwyrm
I’m very tempted, but I have so little wall space for pictures!