Author: Jamie Canaves

George Orwell’s “Approved” Mistress

Today in none-of-my-business-but-I’m-gonna-make-popcorn-anyways: George Orwell’s son, Richard Blair, purchased letters his father wrote to Brenda Salkeld claiming that he had gotten approval from his wife to sleep with her twice a year. “Orwell told Salkeld that his first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, understood his desires and ‘she wished I could sleep with you about twice a year, just to keep me happy.’”

Have Fun With Your Mentions, My Dude

Alex Christofi thought it would be a good idea to go on Twitter with a photo of doorstopper books ripped in half saying, “Yesterday my colleague called me a ‘book murderer’ because I cut long books in half to make them more portable. Does anyone else do this? Is it just me?” And ahahahah you better believe people have opinions on Twitter about ripping books in half. For those who can read digitally, may I suggest this thing called an ereader that holds thousands of books and weighs very little…

Amazing Human

Thirteen-year-old Sidney Keys III created Books N Bros with the goal of using African American literacy to empower boys and it now has 250+ “bros.” And he was selected to be featured in the Disney+ series Marvel’s Hero Project. Here’s where I teared up: “‘We noticed with a lot of the families that need Books N Bros, they can’t afford to be a part of the book club, so we started the adopt a bro program so you can adopt a bro,‘ Caldwell explained.”

Nancy Drew Prequel

The CW’s recent hit show Nancy Drew is getting a prequel novel: Nancy Drew The Curse. And, as the title states, it is in fact Ms. Drew investigating a curse that is no longer dormant in her town. You can check out the cover reveal and read an excerpt ahead of its March release.

Fredrick Douglass Edited Newspapers Now Digitized

In 1838 Fredrick Douglass escaped slavery and went on to be a speaker, author, and one of the leaders of the abolition movement. He was also a newspaper editor of The North Star and now, thanks to the Library of Congress, you can look at three of the issues he edited between 1847 and 1874.

Beyond The 2019 List Of Bestsellers

We’ve seen the 2019 bestseller lists, but PW took a deeper dive and took a look at things like publishers’ expectations for books, and which met, disappointed, and surpassed. There’s interesting factoids in here, like The Silent Patient was on the hardcover fiction bestseller list the same amount of weeks as Where The Crawdads Sing was, but still didn’t make the top 20 for the year. Anyhoo, here’s a lot of breakdowns and numbers for data fans.

Train Bogie Converted Into Kid’s Library

Today in “I want one”:  Yellow Train converted a train bogie, Bogie 92410, into a children’s library in Tamil Nadu. Books were even donated from all over the world including Germany, U.S, New Zealand, Singapore, and across Africa. Check out the pictures!

Watchmen Will Remain One Season

Damon Lindelof seems more interested in having put everything into telling his story and leaving Watchmen as one season. HBO was on board for any direction he’d want to take another season, but he didn’t want to, and while HBO can pursue other talent to create more seasons it looks like they were interested in one voice. I don’t hate creatives telling a great story and knowing its end.

Not One Of The Evil TikTok Nurses

A MercyOne cardiovascular profusionist, Dane Pratt, ended up going viral after Cassie Baker posted a picture of him reading to her 13-month-old daughter in the pediatric unit. And now the hospital is flooded with book donations, including hundreds from Disney, so Pratt can keep up the good work of reading to kids in the hospital–whenever he’s not doing whatever profusionist do. I know Google exists!

Netflix’s Mindhunter In Limbo

If you’re eagerly awaiting season 3 of Netflix’s Mindhunter, adapted from FBI agent John E. Douglas’ true crime book, your popcorn may go stale: Netflix’s options on the cast have expired. And no one is working on a third season, but rather on other different projects. Maybe in 10 years we’ll get a reboot–I hear those are popular.

Happy Ears

The ACLU, Michael Chabon, and Ayelet Waldman have a new anthology, Fight of the Century, and the audiobook edition has some fantastic narrators that include Lucy Liu, Patrick Stewart, and Samuel L. Jackson. The book will have essays from dozens of popular writers on 100 years of landmark legal cases included Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education.

Read Like Jay-Z

Here’s a roundup of 5 books Jay-Z has read and been influenced by, including two he uses as life guides. Get your nonfiction read on and bookishly live like Jay-Z–you’re on your own for the talent and money.

Anthony Bourdain’s Final Book Releasing This Year

TV host, travel writer, and chef Anthony Bourdain, who died by suicide in 2018, will have the book he was working on publish this October. World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, an illustrated collection that focuses on Bourdain’s favorite places to eat and travel to around the world was completed by Laurie Woolever, his longtime assistant. Why yes I am crying while hitting the prebuy button.

More Awards!

2019 is the 69th year for the National Jewish Book Awards and they’ve just announced their 2019 winners–including a Lifetime Achievement Award to Robert Alter for The Hebrew Bible: A Trans­la­tion with Com­men­tary. You know the drill: prepare your TBR and get to reading!

Proposed Missouri Bill Tries To Legalize Book Banning

The proposed Missouri bill Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act wants public library funding to have several provisions, including creating a review board to determine if library material has “age-inappropriate sexual material.” And if it’s determined, by these self appointed people, then the library must bar minors from accessing these books or face loss of funding and possible imprisonment of librarians.

Obama Library’s Athletic Facility Gets Nike Funding

You can put a check mark on funding for the Obama Presidential Center’s athletic facility since the charity department of Nike is giving $5 million. While we still don’t know all about the project it sure is looking like this Presidential Center will be a place for the community of Chicago’s South Side to gather, rather than a museum, which will also house a branch of the Chicago Public Library.

“Men, they are everywhere, and women’s works are rarely published.”

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015, Svetlana Alexievich gave the above reason for starting a new publishing house just for women. Set to open in a few months we look forward to what’s to come.

New LGBTQ+ Romance Imprint

Harlequin’s digital-first romance imprint, Carina Press, will be launching Carina Adores with the goal of publishing contemporary and classic LGBTQ+ romances taking into account the spectrum of voices in the community. The first two titles will publish in June, female/female and  male/male romances, followed by one release a month. All the heart-eyes emojis!

2 Plead Guilty In $8 Million Library Theft

Former Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh archivist, Gregory Priore, and Caliban Book shop owner, John Schulman, have pleaded guilty in a case alleging $8 million worth of rare books, plates, and maps were stolen from the Pittsburgh library and sold. Sentencing is set for April 17th.

In Guapo News

HBO Max’s 10-episode limited series adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven has cast its Arthur: Gael García Bernal! The post-apocalyptic drama series is being produced, written, and showrun by Patrick Somerville (Maniac) with Hiro Murai directing.

Perry Mason The Detective

Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey are bringing us a new Perry Mason series (adapted from Erle Stanley Gardner’s character), and now more thanks to a one-year, first-look deal with HBO. The Perry Mason series will follow the character as a low-rent private investigator before he became a defense lawyer, starring Matthew Rhys, Tatiana Maslany, and John Lithgow.

NYPL List Has Addendum Because Librarian Hated Book So Much

Celebrating its 125th anniversary the New York Public Library shared their 10 most checked out books of all time list but there’s a catch about why Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon is added as an honorable mention: “influential New York Public Library children’s librarian Anne Carroll Moore disliked the story so much when it was published in 1947 that the Library didn’t carry it … until 1972.” That’s a lot of book hate. Or moon hate?

Congrats!

Taking up the U.S.’s National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature position, after the current Jacqueline Woodson, will be Jason Reynolds! “’My mission is to take a different approach: Instead of explicitly encouraging young people to read, my goal is to get them to see the value in their own narratives — that they, too, have a story, and that there’s power not just in telling it, but in the opportunity to do so,’ said Reynolds…”

Oh, And Another Congrats!

The National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for its 2019 awards in Autobiography, Biography, Criticism, Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry. While a few books have gotten a lot of attention, and other award noms, many may be new-to-you titles and perfect if you’re looking for what to read next.