Author: Jamie Canaves

HBO Lets You Watch 39 Things Free

Don’t have HBO but wish you did? You can kind of have it: Starting today, April 3rd, HBO Now and HBO Go will have a bunch of content you can watch without a paid subscription. And of course I’m telling you because I spotted adaptations and docs that have excellent books to read after, like Bad Blood by John Carreyrou (banana pants!) and Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (his narration on the audiobook is perfection!). There’s also some Nancy Drew, and the classic The Bridges of Madison County.

James Patterson Helps Indies

Mystery and thriller author James Patterson has launched the campaign #SaveIndieBookstores which has partnered with Book Industry Charitable Foundation, American Booksellers Association, and Reese Witherspoon’s book club. The campaign will collect donations and create grants with the money to go to selected ABA members who apply for the grants. Patterson has pledged $500,000.

Macmillan Publishers Makes Cuts

“Macmillan Publishers has laid off an undisclosed number of employees across all divisions, temporarily reduced pay for select employees, and implemented a hiring freeze…” Holtzbrinck, Macmillan’s parent company, has made these decisions as a preemptive cost-saving measure in anticipation of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact. Employees who earn $60,000 a year or less will not be part of the salary reductions, which will be in place for everyone above that salary until June.

St. Jude Coloring Book Helps Kids Understand Our Current World

While parents have had to figure out how to explain COVID-19 to their children St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which treats childhood cancers and pediatric diseases, also had to figure out a way to explain the current danger to its patients. St. Jude psychologists and “child life” specialists created an in-house coloring book: Learn About the Coronavirus. While 750 copies were printed in three languages for St. Jude campus, Target House, and Ronald McDonald House, the coloring book is also available for download via St. Jude’s Together website.

Harry Potter at Home

J.K. Rowling, whose last Twitter news was due to her transphobic tweets, has been tweeting during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, she tweeted that she relaxed the licensing for people reading Harry Potter books in videos/social media. And now she announced that craft videos, quizzes, puzzles, articles, and more are now available at her new site, Harry Potter At Home.

The Comic Book Industry Is On Hold

Every Wednesday is basically comic book day because for the past twenty years it’s the day of the week that new comics drop and readers get their new issues. And while there were 23 new items available this week, that is a stark contrast to the usual hundreds. “Comics have been published on a regular basis in the U.S. through all number of existential threats in the past, whether it’s World War II — even with paper shortages — Watergate, oil crises or 9/11. Comics, and the escapism they offer, have been ever present… and, as of now, they’re not.”

LeVar Burton Reads To Children, Teens, & Adults

And another national treasure, LeVar Burton, is out here ready to read to us! This is especially exciting for anyone who grew up with Reading Rainbow: LeVar Burton will be on Twitter Livestream–starting Fri April 4th, 9pm ET– reading to adults. Mondays he’ll be reading to children, and Wednesdays he’ll read YA.

Words Always Matter

If you follow the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Twitter account you know that they are absolutely delightful, funny, and very good at shade. Now they’re here for us once again with a great thread: “As a gift to our friends (you) in a time of crisis, we’ll be keeping a thread here of beautiful, obscure, and often quite useless words.”

Make This Dream Come True Publishing

The public media organization WHYY has a feature In A Dream, where people from Camden, New Jersey detail their hopes and aspirations. Recently, Terrick Hubbard, a catering company owner, talked about his dreams to author a cookbook: “a how-to guide for making avant-garde meals from a prison commissary. The target audience, of course, would be incarcerated people.”

Dolly Parton Will Read To Us

The national treasure Dolly Parton will read children’s books once a week on her video series GoodNight With Dolly. The first episode will be Thursday, April 2nd at 7pm. The series will stream for the next 10 weeks on the Imagination Library’s site and social media accounts. Gonna be watching this on a forever loop.

National Emergency Library Not So Great

After many articles and social media love went to the Internet Archive’s announcement that it was expanding access to a million+ digitized works in its “National Emergency Library,” it turns out they don’t actually have the rights or permission to many of the works. “‘The problem with bypassing copyright and disrupting the chain of royalties that lead from books to authors is that it endangers our ability to continue to produce art — and though we are all in the midst of a crisis, most artists are on the razor’s edge in terms of being able to support themselves,’ he [Chuck Wendig] added. ‘Artists get no safety net.'”

In Sad News

Tomie dePaola, author and illustrator of almost 300 books, has passed away at the age of 85. He was best known for his 1975 children’s book Strega Nona, about a gentle Italian witch.

His Dark Materials Joins Fight Against COVID-19

In truly trying times it is nice to see people stepping up: the costume designers who worked on His Dark Materials, the BBC/HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman’s novel, are putting their talents to sewing scrubs for medics in the UK working to fight COVID-19. “The Helping Dress Medics initiative was launched by costume maker Dulcie Scott over the weekend and has raised more than £8,000 ($10,000) on GoFundMe to help supply protective clothing to local hospitals.”

Jennifer Weiner Fans Rejoice

If your life really needs a summer book escape, Jennifer Weiner wrote one of those, Big Summer, and is releasing it two weeks early so readers can escape quicker. You can escape with friendship and Cape Cod starting May 5th!

Don’t Miss Live Chat

Author Ibi Zoboi will be doing a live Instagram chat April 1st at 7pm with  Dr. Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated Central Park 5, to discuss their upcoming co-written YA novel: Punching The Air. “We’re focusing our discussion & Q&A on young people who are having a really hard time with all this—when you’re scared, the future is uncertain, and all you want to do is be outside with your friends. This will be especially useful for Black & Brown boys living in urban spaces.” See you there!

And an update on yesterday’s news about Powell’s rehiring employees with a response from the union.

Liqueur Company Starts Virtual Book Club

The liqueur company Pomp & Whimsy has started a 10-week virtual book club, beginning April 2, at 8 p.m. EST. The first book chosen is When Life Gives You Lululemons and of course the book club hosts will be making an accompanying cocktail. It’s totally free to participate, and you can donate $10, which will go to New York City food pantry. Cheers!

Amazing Librarians

A lot of focus during the COVID-19 pandemic has been on the shortage of supplies, including protective face masks. Enter Columbia University librarians: Columbia University Cardiology Fellow Dr. Pierre Elias contacted Librarian Madiha Choksi about using the library’s staff and 3D printers. “Dr. Elias provided a design for a face shield visor posted by Budmen Industries. Choksi took the Budmen design and optimized it, cutting the printing time by one third.” And now there’s a guide for quickly making face shields using 3D printers and household items.

Books Move Over For Food

People are stocking Little Free Libraries with nonperishable food and goods for those who may be in need. Little Free Library’s executive director Greig Metzger, who used to be a food shelf executive director, supported the idea and even reminded members that this could be the first step in also helping food banks in their area. Keep being amazing helpers, you beautiful bibliophiles.

Hello bibliophiles! We made it through the week: let’s take a deep breath, release our shoulders from our ears, and when needed take it just one minute at a time. We collected this week’s COVID-19 pieces for you, with some staying informed and a lot of needed escape reading. Remember to check in on each other, help where you can, and be kind.

A Pennsylvania library created a Hogwarts digital escape room; boredom be gone, we’re headed to Hogwarts!

Wondering how your favorite PRIDE AND PREJUDICE character would react to COVID-19 related social distancing? Cue dream sequence.

If you want one less thing to think about, including which book to read next, take this quiz and find your next book series to read while social distancing.

School has closed and the kids are quarantined at home? We have the best educational comics to start your sudden homeschool journey (and save your sanity).

One reader takes solace in and shares some advice on social distancing from WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING.

Looking for a quarantine reading list? Book Riot contributors list the books they’re planning to read while they stay home and practice social distancing.

Dear Sugar is back! Cheryl Strayed is giving advice as Sugar this Friday on the first episode of Live Wire House Parties.

Creative ways to keep your book life alive during quarantine.

Readers Are Turning To Challenging Classics

Apparently people’s bucket list reads are classics and long novels–or maybe they just figure they finally have the time so why not. Either way, according to Waterstones, UK’s largest book chain, sales were not only up 400% but there was also a significant rise in sales of classics. “Titles including Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.” And Nielsen BookScan backs this with also seeing rises in War and Peace, The Lord of the Rings, and In Search of Lost Time sales.

Dear Sugar Live!

Cheryl Strayed, the author of the memoir Wild (adapted into the Reese Witherspoon starring film) and writer of the Dear Sugar column, will grace us with some advice on Live Wire Radio’s Live Wire House Party on Friday the 27th. You can also catch it on the Live Wire podcast.

Fun!

A bunch of DC middle grade authors and artists have joined together to curate an at-home activity program called DC Kids Camp! There’s previews of DC middle grade comics and superhero-themed activities like learning to draw your favorite heroes! And that’s just some of the fun–excuse me while I go pretend to be a kid.