Author: Rebecca Joines Schinsky

HarperCollins Introduces Two Book Rec Bots on Facebook

Jumping on the bandwagon of businesses incorporating Facebook Messenger into sales and customer service, HarperCollins has rolled out two artificial intelligence-powered book rec bots. The BookGenie and Epic Reads (YA-specific) bots purport to help readers find new (HarperCollins, natch) books to read based on their taste, mood, and past favorites. This feels like the future, but is it fully baked? One Rioter took it for a test spin.

Penguin Random House Lands Obamas’ Book Deal

After a heated auction reportedly involving several publishing houses, Penguin Random House has landed the deal to publish forthcoming books by both Barack and Michelle Obama. Rumor has it that the joint contract went for $65 million, though speculation about that figure–and the number of books the Obamas will write for it–abounds. From what we at Riot HQ can tell, this deal is historic for its price tag and its unique nature; when else has a publisher acquired separately-written books from two people in one go? (Know of an example? Hit reply tell us!)

Dr. Seuss’s Wacky Taxidermy

This week’s installment of Before They Were (Literary) Stars is one of the more memorable ones I’ve seen. Decades before he became Dr. Seuss, Theodor Geisel spent his childhood near the zoo where his father worked. When Geisel moved away to New York City, his father began sending him beaks, antlers, and horns from deceased zoo animals. Geisel created sculptures from papier-mâche and the assorted parts. The products are wacky and whimsical creatures that may reveal the origins of the imaginary beasts in his stories.

Thanks to Everything Belongs to Us by Yoojin Grace Wuertz for sponsoring This Week in Books.

Seoul, 1978. At South Korea’s top university, the nation’s best and brightest compete to join the professional elite of an authoritarian regime. Success could lead to a life of rarefied privilege and wealth; failure means being left irrevocably behind. In this sweeping yet intimate debut, Yoojin Grace Wuertz details four intertwining lives that are rife with turmoil and desire, private anxieties and public betrayals, dashed hopes and broken dreams—while a nation moves toward prosperity at any cost.

Long-Lost Walt Whitman Novel Discovered

In 1852, three years before the first publication of Leaves of Grass, an anonymously written serial mystery novel entitled “Life and Adventures of Jack Engle” appeared in the New York Times. Last summer, a graduate student at the University of Houston rediscovered the piece, and it was confirmed this week that the anonymous author was Walt Whitman. While the writing contains hints of the material Whitman would refine in the work that made him famous, this novel seems to be one of the “crude and boyish pieces” he wished to see, as he wrote in 1882, “dropp’d into oblivion.” Well, Uncle Walt, hope 165 years of oblivion was enough for you. Cat’s out of the bag.

Hero of the Week: Seattle School Librarians Raise 1000+ Books for the Homeless

Kate Eads is a librarian at Seattle’s Northgate Elementary School, where nearly one in four students in homeless. When one girl told her about how she spends her after-school hours at a family resource center called Mary’s Place–often wandering aimlessly with nothing to do–before returning to a tent city at night, Eads resolved to find a way to get books for the kids who want them. By partnering with a nearby school with a more affluent population, she created a donation that has yielded more than one thousand books for the kids and families who use Mary’s Place. Buoyed by their success, Eads and her partner librarians intend to extend the donation drive to other schools and resource center locations. Readers who wish to support their efforts can do so here.

Mall of America Seeks Writer in Residence

In celebration of its upcoming 25th anniversary, the Mall of America is seeking a writer-in-residence to “spend five days deeply immersed in the Mall atmosphere while writing on-the-fly impressions.” Don’t worry, this isn’t a Tom-Hanks-in-Terminal situation; the winner will spend their nights in the hotel attached to the mall (because that’s a real thing), receive a $400 gift card to buy food and drinks, and get a $2500 honorarium. There are a lot of ways this could go, and we’d love to see a scrappy young writer run off with it. Applications are open!

Thanks to Volumes for sponsoring This Week in Books.

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New Films to Portray Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf

We like to think we stay pretty on-top of book-related film news around the Riot, but this week brought notice of to new-to-us films about landmark female writers. A biopic of Mary Shelley, focusing on her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley, has (apparently!) been in the works for a few years now. Bop on over to Tor.com for a first look at Elle Fanning as the Frankstein scribe. Meanwhile, from the Department of We Couldn’t Be More Excited, Eva Green and Gemma Arterton will play Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf in a film about the historic pair’s longterm romantic relationship.

Anonymous Book Fairy Distributes Free Books to Support the Resistance

A customer of San Francisco’s beloved Booksmith purchased 50 copies of George Orwell’s 1984 last week and left them at the store, where they were displayed with a sign exhorting customers to “Read up! Fight back!” Booksmith owner Christin Evans reports that the copies were quickly snapped up, prompting the unnamed benefactor to a repeat performance with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts. Other customers have since been inspired to follow suit. This is rad in its own right, but could it be the start of a larger movement to use reading to encourage resistance?

New Salman Rushdie Novel to Take on Trump

Speaking of books as resistance, news broke this week that Salman Rushdie’s thirteenth novel, The Golden House, due out this September, will take on the last eight years in American politics and feature “the insurgence of a ruthlessly ambitious, narcissistic, media-savvy villain sporting makeup and coloured hair.” Rushdie is certainly no stranger to the intersection of literature and politics. His history makes him uniquely positioned to resist threats of retribution, and his record of success and critical acclaim will make him a tough target for the predictable backlash tweets asserting he’s a washed up has-been. Sad! This will be a good one to watch.

Thanks to The Cruelty by Scott Bergstrom for sponsoring This Week in Books.

Taken meets The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Bourne Identity in this action-packed debut thriller (optioned for film by Jerry Bruckheimer) about a girl who must train as an assassin to deal with the gangsters who have kidnapped her father.