In the most shocking news of the week, illusionist David Copperfield tells the truth about Harry Potter. Say it ain’t so, Harry, say it ain’t so!
Last week, Republic High School in Missouri banned Kurt Vonnegut’s classic Slaughterhouse Five from its libraries. This week, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library has offered free copies of the banned book to the school’s students.
“What story plays in your head when you listen to your favorite Smiths song?” Kickstarter asked this question of some comic book creators and this is the result.
Barbara Kingsolver, bestselling author of The Poisonwood Bible, was awarded the first-ever Richard C. Holbrooke Literary Achievement Award from the organizers of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. The award comes with a sweet little honorarium of $10,000.
Leslie Esdaile, better known as novelist L. A. Banks, passed away this week from late stage adrenal cancer. Esdaile was best known for her Vampire Huntress Legend series.
New photos from the set of the Hunger Games movie were released.
Authors Veronice Roth (Divergent), Erin Morgentsern (The Night Circus), and Marie Lu (legend) all scored movie deals this week.
This has nothing to do with books, but it sure as heck seems as if someone out there ought to be writing a story about the life of this beluga, or maybe the mariachi man who serenades him and the deep, human-beluga bond formed through the thick glass aquarium wall? The mariachi man swears off fish forever, goes vegan, goes crazy and sets up a secret bed beside the beluga tank every night when the aquarium security guards aren’t looking, the mariachi man love struck until late one night (is it only a terrible dream?) he wakes to see his beluga love swimming all snug and cozy alongside another beluga (the mariachi man had always been suspicious) and no longer dancing to his heartfelt song….. It’s a Friday in August. We clearly have some time on our hands. If you have some time on yours, write us a beluga love story and if it’s not too profane, we’ll post it on the blog.
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August is historically a slow month in the book world. Everyone’s on vacation, or hibernating to conserve energy for the madness of the Fall season, which means there’s not a heck of a lot to report. So allow us to supplement the week’s edition of As The Book World Turns with a little something new:
BookPeople News
*We’re packing in the crazy good authors this fall. This week we booked events with the author of the awesome Pete, the Cat books; Jeff Lindsay, author of the Dexter books which inspired the hit TV series; and we confirmed events with Christopher Paolini and John Hodgman (separate, not together) for November. This will all go up on our website soon enough, but for now you can check out the rest of what’s going on here this fall at www.bookpeople.com.
*We’ve expanded our Children’s section. Staff has been working tirelessly all week to move shelves, rearrange sections, paint walls, and figure out where the heck those Scrabble dictionaries are now shelved. The space looks beautiful. Take a look at the second floor the next time you’re in, we’re very happy with the results.
*You’ll notice some new faces wearing BP lanyards next week as we welcome a fresh round of booksellers to the floor.
*As fall approaches, we’re all busy reading advance copies of whatever soon-to-be-released books we can get our hands on. We’ll be reporting our findings here on the blog, so stay tuned for bookseller reviews of some of next season’s big hitters, including the new novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot.
*The awesome folks at Tito’s Vodka will donate the main ingredient in the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters we’ll be serving (21+, bring your IDs) at our big ’80’s Night Release Party for Ready Player One. This party is shaping up to be a pretty big deal, not to mention the book, which we’re seeing mentioned all over the place. If you haven’t found author Ernie Cline’s blog yet, allow us to introduce you to one of our favorite Austin authors.
And on that happy note, have a great weekend!
BookPeople 