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EarlyWord: The Publisher | Librarian ConnectionEarlyWord: The Publisher | Librarian Connection - The Publisher | Librarian Connection
Chris Columbus Swings for the Fences with John Grisham’s Calico Joe
Chris Columbus/Photo © Debby Wong/Shutterstock Chris Columbus has created a cinematic empire that is Hollywood's equivalent to Starbucks, churning out well-intentioned and broadly appealing movies that are safe, reliable, and built from roughly the same ingredients every time. At the same time, there is nothing cheap or crass about Columbus' growing collection of high-end tent-poles, which includes two "Harry Potter" films and an adaptation of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. But like that Seattle-based purveyor of frothy coffee concoctions, what Columbus may lack in edge or originality he more than makes up for with a bighearted desire to surpass his own limitations while always giving the people what they want. There is nothing unconventional or even unlikely about this union of blockbuster novelist and filmmaker. Calico Joe's prospects of scoring a home run with critics and moviegoers will depend on the cast and key crew Columbus assembles for the project.
The SF Site: The Best in Science Fiction and Fantasy
VOYA
A Y.A. Lover's Summer Reading List, by Judy Blume, R.L. Stine, and Others - Entertainment
Y.A. for Grownups is a weekly series in which we talk about Y.A. literature—from the now nostalgia-infused stories we devoured as kids to more contemporary tomes being read by young people today. A seasonal gift (or burden) of our youth is the old summer reading list, those books we were supposed to "get ahead" on while ostensibly on vacation for three joyous months. Sometimes we loved the list, sometimes we hated it, and we read it with varying levels of dedication depending on that. But what if you could have picked those books yourself: What would you have chosen? As a companion to our primer on how to identify the perfect beach read, we asked some of our favorite Y.A. book authors (Judy Blume! R.L. JEFF HIRSCH, author of The Eleventh Plague and the upcoming Magisterium (October 2012), offered the following: Watchmen, by Alan Moore. JESSICA SPOTSWOOD, author of Born Wicked, the first in the Cahill Witch Chronicles, told The Atlantic Wire, Well, that should get you through August.
The 25 Best Websites for Literature Lovers | Flavorwire | Page 6
It’s an interesting relationship that book lovers have with the Internet: most would rather read a physical book than something on an iPad or Kindle, and even though an Amazon purchase is just two or three clicks away, dedicated readers would rather take a trip to their local indie bookstore. Yet the literary world occupies a decent-sized space on the web. Readers, writers, publishers, editors, and everybody in between are tweeting, Tumbling, blogging, and probably even Vine-ing about their favorite books. The Millions Ten years is a mighty long time in terms of Internet life, but that’s how long The Millions has been kicking out a steady stream of reviews, essays, and links.
Book reviews: Find the best new books
{*style:<ul>*} {*style:<li>*} {*style:<br>*}{*style:<b>*}Harry's Trees{*style:</b>*}{*style:<br>*} by Jon Cohen{*style:<br>*}What a dazzlingly yet wonderful cast of characters we meet in Harry’s Trees by Jon Cohen. The one thing united them is grief and loss. A widow loses her husband to a ...{*style:<br>*} {*style:<a href=' more{*style:</a>*} {*style:</li>*} {*style:<li>*} {*style:<br>*}{*style:<b>*}Don't Look Back: An Inspector Sejer Mystery{*style:</b>*}{*style:<br>*} by Karin Fossum{*style:<br>*}A friend recommended this mystery to me and said she had just discovered Norwegian author Karin Fossum.
Victorian murder that Charles Dickens used in Oliver Twist
For the last 150 years most critics and scholars have dismissed the shocking Bill Sikes and Nancy murder scene in Oliver Twist as over the top, while stage and film adaptations shy away from including it in its full, unexpurgated horror. We should cut Charles Dickens some slack: the scene is based on a true murder. The scene, in which a betrayed and boiling Sikes confronts Nancy in her bed, is not one you will see in the chirpy West End musical. Nancy's pleas go ignored. Nancy's corpse is in such a state that the friend who identifies the body has to be led away in a straitjacket. The writer Rebecca Gowers has uncovered what no other Dickens scholar seems to have noticed - he modelled the scene on one of the most shocking and infamous of all 19th-century murders, that of Eliza Grimwood. "I've been living with the joint and contradictory terrors of either someone having said this [before] or someone saying this is obviously wrong," said Gowers. The scene also has a deeper resonance.
Ten Obvious Truths About Fiction
The following essay was previewed in the class that Stephen Graham Jones taught for LitReactor, Your Life Story Is Five Pages Long. 1. The reader should never have to work to figure out the basics of your story. Who’s whose wife or husband, what the time period is if that matters, why these people have broken into this house, and on and on, just the basic, ground-level facts about your story. 2. Meaning you don’t have to lay every last detail of every last thing out. The best writers are the ones who can cover the most distance with the fewest words. 3. It can be as simple as if the story opens with what feels like a dramatic frame—two people sitting by a fireplace, talking over brandy—then we already expect the story to circle back to that fireplace. 4. You open with a hook, of course—the title—then you hook with the first line, then, usually at the end of the first paragraph, you set that hook. 5. They’re not reading so you can render for them their already quotidian lives. 6. 7. 8. 9.
