Author: Jamie Canaves

Senior Living Facility Needed Books & People Really Delivered!

Mountain Terrace Senior Living in Wisconsin asked for donations of large print books to give to residents, and people really delivered. In a day, they’d already had 200 books from local residents, and then the boxes of books started arriving–since the post had spread and people all over the country had wanted to help. They even got a request from a sixth-grader who wanted a pen-pal, which got more than a handful of residents super excited.

Australian Book Industry Award Has A First

The Australian Book Industry awards named its book of the year and, for the first time, a children’s picture book won: Bluey: The Beach, a board book based on the hit animated TV show. Check out the other award winners, including Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend But the Mountains.

Get Ready For The Umbrella Academy’s Second Season

If you were a fan of Netflix’s comic book adaptation of The Umbrella Academy, your wait for a second season is almost over. The cast of the “superhero” family announced–via quarantine of course–that the show’s second season would premiere July 31st. And we have new cast members: Ritu Arya, Yusuf Gatewood, and Marin Ireland.

Love Him!

Taika Waititi will lead an all-star reading of JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH on YouTube to fund COVID-19 relief.

Library Calls Older Patrons To Say Hi

Libraries being closed during the pandemic hasn’t stopped them from finding ways to continue to help and reach out to their communities: Fort Worth Public Library’s staff is calling older patrons to check in on them. “Giving them someone to talk to, providing services beyond our four walls, providing them with online resources they can use while they’re sheltering in place,” Henderson said. “Just because we’re closed to the public right now doesn’t mean we have to stop the communication we have with them.”

Struggling Indie Asks For Help

People’s Co-op Bookstore, one of Canada’s oldest independent bookstores, is struggling to stay in business during the pandemic after having its doors closed for six weeks. “A GoFundMe page has been launched to help raise money for the bookstore, which had already been facing financial challenges prior to the pandemic, according to the fundraiser. ”

More Courtney Summers

Sadie was one of the best crime books of 2018 and now the author, Courtney Summers, is back with an upcoming thriller. You can check out the cover reveal for The Project, deets, and a chat with Summers: “My longtime readers should know that they’re in for a certain amount of devastation. And anyone who hasn’t read me, that’s something they can look forward to. [Laughs]”

Obamas Read To Us

I, for one, am not even close to being tired of people I admire, enjoy, and/or am entertained by taking time out to read to us. The latest to make my shoulders inch down some from my ears is Barack and Michelle Obama joining Chicago Public Library’s “Live from the Library” storytime to read Peter Reynolds’ The Word Collector. Just delightful.

Pen Pals Make A Comeback

Staying away from friends and family is part of the difficulty faced right now by everyone staying home to help slow the spread of COVID-19. And while many people are using video chats, texts, and calls, there’s something to be said for getting a nice handwritten letter–and not everyone has access to the Internet, especially with so many libraries closed. And that’s why many libraries have created pen pal programs in their communities!

Time For Sweet Tooth

The graphic novel Sweet Tooth is getting adapted by Netflix into an eight-episode series. The story, starring a part-deer part-boy character, will be produced by Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey and star Will Forte, James Brolin, Nonso Anozie, and Adeel Akhtar.

Another Awesome Disney+ Announcement

After many months of speculation, Rick Riordan has announced that Disney+ is developing his Percy Jackson series.

Interview with the Vampire Returns

Stock up on garlic and wooden stakes because Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles series’ comprehensive rights have been bought by AMC Networks along with The Lives of the Mayfair Witches series. That means AMC now has 18 books worth of material to adapt to television. Always here for more witches and vampires.

Sandhya Menon Tackles Adult Romance

Favorite YA romance author Sandhya Menon has written a new romance with the target audience being adults! Make Up Break Up is set for an early 2021 release and follows rival app developers–one who deals in breakups and one in saving relationships. You can check out the cover and learn more about the leap from YA to Adult for this novel.

Calling Into Question The Pulitzer Prize For Biography

Benjamin Moser’s Sontag: Her Life and Work won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, but questions and concern are being raised for two different reasons. One has been raised by many critics claiming that the main point he makes in Sontage “is at best a misapprehension of the notion of authorship, and at worst a calculated distortion of the facts meant to garner publicity.” Then there’s a long history of accusations that Moser steals ideas from women authors and translators and bullies them.

Crime Author Lied About Murdered Wife

French author Stéphane Bourgoin, who has sold millions of crime books about serial killers, has been exposed as a fraud, having lied about FBI training at Quantico and interviewing Charles Manson. In an interview admitting his deceits, he also stated he made up having a wife who was murdered by a serial killer, and that he borrowed the story from a real victim whom he had met briefly.

To The Post Office! (Online Store Of Course)

The USPS is celebrating the 1920s Harlem Renaissance with gorgeous stamps honoring some of the cultural and literary voices of the movement. The 20 forever stamps release on May 21st (you can pre-order!) with graphically designed portraits of “novelist Nella Larsen; bibliophile and historian Arturo Alfonso Schomburg; poet Anne Spencer; and writer, philosopher, educator and arts advocate Alain Locke, who is known as the dean of the Harlem Renaissance.”

Ferrante To Netflix!

HBO may have adapted Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend into a series, but Netflix and Fandango snagged her next novel The Lying Life of Adults for adaptation. The novel, already published in Italy, was originally set for US publishing in June, but has moved to September because of the pandemic. You can check out the Netflix trailer announcement.

Neuroscientist On Why Reading May Be Hard Right Now

For some, the pandemic has finally given them time to tackle their TBR, and, for others, they’ve found themselves suddenly unable to read. Maybe you’re floundering between the two? Either way, the current state of the world has changed a lot of things, including regular habits which we were using for comfort. Constance Grady at Vox called neuroscientist and psychologist Oliver J. Robinson to discuss why some readers have found themselves unable to read during this time.

Miniature Books In Lockdown

Inspired by the time the Brontë children made stamp-size books for their toy soldiers, Jacqueline Wilson and Axel Scheffler, with the British Library, are asking kids to make their own miniature books. You can check out the miniature books the library has and let kids share their own creations using the hashtag #DiscoveringChildrensBooks or email the learning@bl.uk –there’s going to be a virtual bookshelf created!

Best Translated Books Awards

We have finalists for the 2020 Best Translated Books Awards for fiction and poetry! This certainly is a great time to feel less stuck at home by picking up a book from different countries around the world–and there’s something for different genre readers, including crime (Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) and SFF (The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder). P.S.: If you’re doing the Read Harder Challenge, Drive Your Plow is perfect for #3.

Hamilton On Disney+ Sooooooooon!

The film version of Hamilton will debut on Disney+ on July 3, over a full year ahead of the originally planned theatrical release.

Inside A Secret Library

A young group of Syrians are fighting for their future by collecting books from abandoned and bombed buildings and homes for the secret library they built: “We could see that it was vital to create a library in order to continue our education.” BBC World Affairs correspondent Mike Thomson wrote about these brave Syrians in Syria’s Secret Library: Reading and Redemption in a Town Under Siege and talked to NPR about the group of book lovers.

Bathtub Poetry

What do you do when you are writing your upcoming book in a book-themed coffee shop and now that shop is closed because of a pandemic? You light candles, put on music, get into the bathtub and write poetry that you share with the world–at least that’s what Alicia Jo Rabins has done, creating “Bathtub Pandemic Poems.”

Libraries Help With Legal Matters

Lots of people can’t afford legal aid and many people need help with civil cases–no matter how much Law & Order you’ve seen. That’s where libraries have been stepping in and offering a connection between patrons and legal aid. “We’ll get quotes on comment cards about how relieved patrons feel to have finally spoken to an attorney about a matter that may have been worrying them for a long time.”

Bloodsuckers Return

Before you roll your eyes at the return of vampires, hear me out: publishing has a habit of taking a book that is super popular (Twilight) and then flooding the market with more of that before pulling the curtain and saying no more. The problem is that the curtain gets pulled before authors of color/marginalized voices are allowed a seat at the table. So hurray for the resurrection of vampire books again from authors we love like Caleb Roehrig and Zoraida Córdova!

Saved From The Bin

By now you’ve probably heard that there are rare editions of Harry Potter books that fetch quite a few dollars in auctions. Turns out that in 2008 a Buckinghamshire teacher spotted some Harry Potter books being thrown away by a library and scooped five of them up, feeling bad for them, and thinking she’d have them for her children–possibly future grandchildren. And what a brilliant momentary choice because it turns out they were rare editions that are now going to auction.

Archie Has His Own Bookclub

In Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s video the other day, where Meghan read Duck! Rabbit? to their son Archie for charity and his first birthday, fans noticed an interesting sticker on the book: “Archie’s Book Club.” Turns out the book was a gift from Oprah, and Archie got his very own book club sticker modeled after the Oprah’s Book Club sticker. Adorable!