News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, giveaways on this and other blogs, and other cool stuff.
Books & Ebooks in the News:
- After the popularity of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign, BookCon is adding a panel on diversity which will include authors Jacqueline Woodson, Matt de la Peña, and Grace Lin, along with members of the campaign, four of them YA authors. (Publishers Weekly). See, social media campaigns can make a difference!
- Italian prisoners can shorten their jail time by reading books. 3 days off for reading books over 400 pages in length, up to 48 days per year. (Daily Mail)
- New York Public Library abandons plan to gut and redesign the Central Library after much public opposition. (The Nation)
- Amazon & Hachette are squabbling over terms, and it’s spilling over into the marketplace, so don’t be surprised if you see some Hachette titles out of stock at Amazon for a week or more. (Publishers Weekly; New York Times)
- Ebook subscription service Oyster has quintupled its available titles in less than a year. It will be interesting to see whether subscription services like Oyster and Scribd make a dent in the retail market. (GalleyCat)
- Amazon expands Sunday delivery to 15 more cities. Is your city on the list? (USA Today)
- The Navy’s library program is loaning pre-loaded e-readers to personnel. It certainly reduces the storage required aboard ship. (GalleyCat)
- The Orion Book Awards go to Margaret Atwood (fiction, for MaddAdam) and Kathleen Jamie (nonfiction, for Sightlines: A Conversation with the Natural World.) (GalleyCat)
Worth Reading & Watching:
- I Need Diverse Books: BookCon, Don Sterling, and AMERICANAH (Josh Corman, BookRiot)
- Minorities and Mainstream Reading (Swapna Krishna, BookRiot)
- John Green on why YA appeals to adults (Cosmopolitan)
- How to Cull Your E-Bookshelf (Jessica Pryde, BookRiot) Oh, how I can relate…
- Levar Burton talks about Reading Rainbow (from Mediabistro, on YouTube)
Literary Losses:
- Farley Mowat, the Canadian environmentalist and author of the bestselling Never Cry Wolf and Woman in the Mists as well as 40-odd other books, died Tuesday at the age of 92. Woman in the Mists is a biography of gorilla biologist Dian Fosse; Never Cry Wolf details the author’s study of wolves in the Canadian wilderness. Never Cry Wolf generated some controversy after its publication. The author himself admitted he fictionalized parts of it, and was in fact part of a team of researchers, not alone as depicted in the book. Some wolf biologists also challenge the observations he reports, in particular the claim that the wolf pack he observed subsisted mainly on mice rather than larger prey. Nonetheless, the book had a major impact on public attitudes toward wolves, including my own. (Obituary: The Guardian; also Wikipedia)
Awesome lists:
- Parody Songs by Librarians. These are fantastic! Shameless plug: the last one on the list is by the good folks at my local library system. But I love them all, especially the one embedded above, by the New York State Reading Association. (BookRiot)
- How Many of These Classic Science Fiction Novels Have You Read? (Buzzfeed) My answer: 18. Or 19, as I can’t remember whether I ever finished A Canticle for Liebowitz. There are a few newish titles on here, but most of these are, indeed, classic SF. Anyway, there are some on here that I’ve had on my TBRS (to be read someday) list for far too long. I need to get busy!
- [A whole lot more than] 12 Ways to Sneak In Extra Reading Time (BookRiot)
- The 18 Most Hipster Books of All Time (or at least of our time.) (Huffington Post) I’m so unhip, I haven’t read any of them…
Really cool:
- Books You’ve Been Meaning to Read: An Interview with Overdue Podcast. Overdue is a podcast by two guys who read and discuss the classics they (and we) should have read but haven’t yet. After reading this interview, I definitely plan to check them out! (BookRiot)
Bookish Quotes:
That’s it for this week!
I’m always on the lookout for interesting articles, lists, and links for News & Notes, so please let me know if you see (or write!) anything that might be good for this feature. You can leave me a comment or send me an email — my address is on the About/Review Policy/Contact page.
Stephanie Shepherd
I was very sad to hear of Farley Mowat’s passing this week. The Overdue Podcast also sounds great! I have also not read any of the books on the Hipster list and really only a couple even appeal to me so I don’t think you’re alone:) Thanks as always for putting an interesting list of links!
Lark @ The Bookwyrm's Hoard
Me, too! I have really fond memories of my 9th-grade teacher (who was also my uncle) reading Never Cry Wolf to our class.
Glad I’m not alone on that Hipster list of books!
Bea
Oh, that Navy library ereader loan is a fantastic idea. I hope the other military branches take it up.
I also need to cell my ebook bookshelf so I’ll be checking out that article and I should see how many of the classic sci fi novels I’ve read. Good links!
Lark @ The Bookwyrm's Hoard
I agree. It’s a great idea for any of the branches, but particularly the Navy, since space for books is in short supply aboard ship (let alone in submarines!)
There are some SF books on that classics list I probably should read, and some I’ve been meaning to read for a while. I hope there are libraries in heaven, because I don’t see how I can ever get through all the books I want to read in one lifetime!
Jan @ Notes from a Readerholic
I great list as usual, Lark! I like the list of classic sf. I’ve read 20 of them, I think, and like you have quite a few I’ve meant to read.
Lark @ The Bookwyrm's Hoard
I find I’m more of a fantasy person than an SF person, probably because some SF does ideas well but is sparse on character development, and it’s people (or rather, sentient beings of whatever stripe) that interest me the most. But there certainly is good SF with plenty of character development — Spider Robinson jumps to mind. (Speaking of whom, Stardance should have been on that list of classics.)