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 Nebula Awards will be announced today (May 30), and you can watch the ceremony live on Facebook starting at 5:00 pm PDT (8:00 pm EDT). Click here for a list of the finalists. If you haven’t read most (or any) of the contenders, Joel Cunningham’s prediction for best novel is worth reading regardless of whether, because he talks about each finalist’s strengths and weaknesses.
- Print Units Jumped 11% in Mid-May, driven largely by sales of the Hunger Games prequel. (Publishers Weekly)
- George R. R. Martin and 2 partners are buying a historic New Mexico railway in hopes of revitalizing it. (Santa Fe New Mexican)
Worth Reading/Viewing (not all book-related)
- Authors Take Publishing’s Diversity Issues Into Their Own Hands (Publishers Weekly)
- ‘Economic duress is nothing new’: Can America’s oldest black bookstore survive the pandemic? San Francisco’s Marcus Books and other black bookstores are struggling financially. (The Guardian)
- Coronavirus has left small publishers desperately fighting for survival (The Guardian)
- Help unemployed booksellers, shop here: The Bookstore at the End of the World (Literary Hub)
- The Different Types of Book Formats Explained (Nicole Hill, Book Riot)
- Why are the same fairy tales told again and again? (Margaret Kingsbury, Book Riot)
- ‘A joyful thing’: the man who wrote his wife a poem every day for 25 years has allowed over 300 of them to be shared online. You can read them on the website his family created, A Love in Verse, and hear one of the poems read below (The Guardian)
Free Fiction Online
A number of authors and companies are offering free fiction to lift your spirits while you’re on lockdown.
- J. K. Rowling Introduces The Ickabog, a children’s story/novel she wrote “in fits and starts” between Harry Potter books and read to her children. She is releasing it for free online, a chapter or two a day between May 26 and June 10, and you can read it here. There’s an illustration competition for children, and some of the best illustrations will be included when the book is published in print (in November 2020 in English.)
Forthcoming Books, Movies, & Shows
- Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education Is Getting a Film Adaptation (Tor.com)
- Labyrinth Sequel Is a Go With Doctor Strange Director Scott Derrickson (Tor.com)
- James Patterson joins Guns N’ Roses to write … a sweet child’s book? (The Guardian)
- Sorry nerds, the big Dungeons & Dragons movie is delayed because of coronavirus. (Literary Hub)
Lists
- 100 absorbing young adult audiobooks (that adults will enjoy, too) (Modern Mrs. Darcy)
- 17 Optimistic Fantasies to Brighten Your Reading Life (Stubby the Rocket, Tor.com)
Bea's Book Nook
James Patterson and Guns N Roses? Huh.
Nicole @ BookWyrmKnits
Great links, thank you for sharing!
Nicole @ BookWyrmKnits recently posted…Tag Tuesday ~ I Dare You! book tag