Mir at 11 months--It's not quite Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but it's pretty close...
Good morning, book people! It snowed for about ten minutes yesterday–fat flakes drifting on a rather bitter breeze. I think this is a hint I should spend more time in bed catching up on my reading…
Yesterday, Kindle success Amanda Hocking struck a deal with St. Martin’s for her next series, Watersong. And Here’s Hocking’s blog post on the deal–she makes a lot of great points about why self-publishing isn’t for everybody.
Remember Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Ian Fleming’s iconic novel (illustrated by Roald Dahl) about a sentient car? Frank Cottrell Boyce is writing a sequel–over at The Guardian he talks about his love for the novel, and the challenge of writing a follow up.
Over at The Blue Rose Girls, Alvina Ling has a beyond the book post on Jenny Han’s Clara Lee and the Apple Pie Dream, complete with an inside look at finding an illustrator. I love this kind of behind the scenes post!
But his roguish charm and his proprietorship of what is, in a former Israeli foreign minister’s words, “the only decent English-language bookshop in the country”, have helped him become a small but essential link in Israeli-Palestinian intellectual life. His shop is one of the very few in Israel or the occupied territories where all the serious literature and reporting about the world’s most closely watched conflict can be bought in English. The book readings he organises in the American Colony’s elegant old reception rooms are among the occasions when foreign diplomats, journalists, aid workers and writers and a few of the more broad-minded members of the Israeli and Palestinian political establishments gather to chew over solutions to the struggle that, in one way or another, keeps them all in business.
This piece may be a bit off the beaten path as books news, but it’s definitely worth reading.
Agent Mary Kole at Kidlit has a quick overview of last week’s Teen Author Festival, with some thoughts on LGBT YA and truth in art.
And finally, Charlie Jane Anders at io9 interviews debut YA author Jennifer Rush. Rush’s new novel, Altered, has been blurbed as”Dollhouse meets Prison Break for teens.” Here’s the gist:
A 17-year-old girl goes on the run from her father’s “enigmatic Agency” with the four teenage boys the Agency had been experimenting on. And there are erased memories, fake identities, and genetic alteration.
Certainly sounds familiar–though hopefully more awesome than Whedon’s take. I suspect part of Dollhouse‘s problem was the television format–it’s difficult to create a character connection on screen when there’s very little time for backstory.
And that’s all for now. I’ll be back later with a few thoughts on Carolyn Hennessy’s Pandora series, my new MG crush.
