Welcome to Buzz Worthy News where the stories are awesome (or at least fun to read). Need your book industry news? Never fear, Kate Copeseeley is here to give it to you straight.
In this week’s Buzz Worthy News: #The100 Promo, #Beauty&TheBeast Trailer, #WonderWoman Comic Cancelled, and a 4 YO W/a Long TBR. All this and more!
Buzz Worthy News is Cuddlebuggery’s weekly news post bringing you all the best information about the book and blogging world, particularly for the venn diagram of people who overlap between the two.
Hello all! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season. I know I certainly enjoyed my extended hiatus and now I’m back and ready to keep you up to date on all the bookish happenings I can get my hands on.
The 100 Promo
Ahem. I’m just going to leave this here, with the reminder that if you haven’t watched The 100 yet, all three seasons are up on Netflix and you have 17 days to binge the heck out of it in time for Season Four.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWQLfIagnow
Beauty & The Beast
March cannot come soon enough, IMO. Squeeeee!
The Handmaid’s Tale
This looks absolutely chilling. It almost makes me brave enough to read the book. *hides eyes*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dre0wQmLGe8
The Girl With All The Gifts
My biggest question was: how will they possibly give us a trailer without giving everything away?? Answer, they can’t. So I hope you’ve read the book already. (It’s FANTASTIC, BTW)
The Harry Potter Books From Severus Snape’s Perspective
In honor of Severus Snape’s birthday (no need to tell me what you think of Snape, since the internet has been more than willing to share their opinion. lol) JK Rowling and Pottermore put together an alternate telling of the famous series from Snape’s perspective.
Example:
During Harry’s first year, Dumbledore and Snape suspected a fellow teacher, Defence Against the Dark Arts’ Professor Quirrell, of trying to steal a precious magical object hidden within Hogwarts grounds: The Philosopher’s Stone. Because he’s clever, Snape saw through Quirrell’s plans pretty quickly, which involved setting trolls loose in the dungeon, and trying to jinx Harry Potter’s broom during a Quidditch match. Snape, of course, gallantly confronted Quirrell, but in the end, Harry and his two friends got all the credit, with Snape getting set on fire in the process. Charming.
As my friend Christy would say, your mileage may vary, but I found it amusing.
George RR Martin Is Evil And Continues To Toy With Me
Make what you will of this, a fan wrote a long comment on GRRM’s blog saying ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, GEORGE!! Well, actually, what he said was this…
As i stated in my last attempt, i respect you immensely and do not want you to rush or release anything untill you are completely satisfied with it.
That being said, it has been a whole year since we have received an updated. You have placated our hunger with another superb sample ch. (the Forsaken), and for that, we are grateful. But unless you want to be bombarded with im’s like this, i would suggest another updated.
Even if its as simple as, ‘not done yet, but ive made progress( or not) ’, or ’ it’ll be out this year (or not)’. Anything(or not). Either way, have a great new year, and thank you for, imo, the best fantasy series out there.
SMH. Look, J. Snow (or whatever your real name is) I will give you credit, you have some nerve. And since it paid off, I am happy to praise you to all the fantasy gods, wherever they are!
This was George’s reply:
You really think statements like that would make a difference? Ah, you sweet summer child. I have years of experience with this that tells me otherwise.
But okay, I will try it your way.
Not done yet, but I’ve made progress. But not as much as I hoped a year ago, when I thought to be done by now.
I think it will be out this year. (But hey, I thought the same thing last year).
Whatever. I’ll believe it when I see it. *sob*
The Most Popular Books in US Public Libraries
Quartz Media LLC took it upon themselves to scour the libraries of 14 metropolitan libraries across the US for info and here is what they learned:
The Girl on The Train is THE most popular book in 12 out of 14. Diary of a Wimpy Kid was the most popular in children’s fiction. And non fiction was a toss-up.
Some books’ popularity were driven by library initiatives. For instance, the San Francisco Public Library’s “One City One Book” program encouraged its patrons to read Season of the Witch by David Talbot, shooting it to the top of its most popular book list.
Other books’ popularity are driven by adjacent corners of culture. Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton was the most borrowed nonfiction work in Baltimore. The book was the basis and inspiration for the Tony-award-winning play Hamilton.
For a more comprehensive list, visit the source below.
Another Nazi Love Story???
When will authors understand that making Nazis into book love interests will cause a lot of strong feelings? Like really?
Independent publisher Troika Books has bought a YA novel about Hitler’s attempted extermination of the Roma and Sinti people.
A Berlin Love Song by Sarah Matthias is about a Romani girl who falls in love with a soldier in the SS and was inspired by the author’s visit the Deutsches Historische Museum in Berlin.
During his time in power Adolf Hitler murdered 220,000-500,000 people in the “parajmos”, or what German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called the “forgotten Holocaust”.
Troika m.d. Martin West said: “I published Sarah’s début novel, The Riddle of the Poisoned Monk, at Catnip and have always loved the way she brings the past to life in vivid, passionate, page-turning stories. A Berlin Love Song takes Sarah’s writing to a new level and we are extremely excited to be publishing it.”
https://twitter.com/Irish_Atheist/status/819277123793940480
https://twitter.com/Irish_Atheist/status/819277700590370816
West acquired world rights from the author and will publish on 8th April next year to coincide with International Romani Day.
Well, isn’t that just the icing on the cake?
Legend of Wonder Woman Cancelled
I could devote an entire entry to this topic, but thankfully Book Riot has already done it and I can give you the highlights. In short, writer Renae De Liz announced via Twitter that the sequel series to The Legend of Wonder Woman had been cancelled.
I am sad to announce Legend of Wonder Woman pt 2 has been cancelled. I am surprised & devastated I won't be able to finish the project.
— Renae De Liz (@RenaeDeLiz) December 16, 2016
But why??? That seemed to be the big mystery. Sales were good. The fans were happy.
Perhaps it was the series of tweets by De Liz regarding the announcement that Kevin Grevioux and Ryan Benjamin would be writing the Wonder Woman prequel series?
In them she stated flat out that even though she was happy Wonder Woman’s Amazons would get a series, she had been pitching it for years and felt sad (based on the sad-faced emoji she included) that she hadn’t been asked to work on it.
Her husband (and co-creator) Ray Dillion also made complaints via Twitter that they would have shut her out of the project.
In an article for Comics Beat, anonymous sources indicated that there was a “war” between De Liz, her husband, and DC Comics. Says Heidi MacDonald:
I was also told by “senior DC sources” that these public matters were only the tip of the iceberg in what was a fraught working relationship between Dillon and DC. A Mary Sue article about the kerfuffle reprinted the tweets and some criticism that was supposedly planted by Dillon…before all reference to the tweets was removed. from the article. But it appears to have been the last straw for DC. (I’m told the Grevioux pith and the DeLiz pitch were handled by different departments and neither editor knew of the other project.)
There’s been a lot of industry talk about this matter at the holiday parties of comics and on FB. And I suspect a lot of us are sympathetic to freelancers who get jerked around by giant corporations that have near endless pocketbooks. But it’s a two way street. In a private post by a very well known editor on FB, it was pointed out that if editors went public with all the nutty and unprofessional things that freelancers did, it would look terrible but also, the stories would never, ever end.
Despite whatever might be going on in the background of this situation, it IS troubling that DC has a history of cutting projects with female freelancers or simply not hiring them.
From Book Riot:
It’s not just Wonder Woman. Not a single woman’s name appears in the credits for DC’s current Supergirl series, reportedly because of an unofficial (and highly illegal) policy not to hire women on books edited by the Superman office in order to keep Group Editor Eddie Berganza away from temptation. And over at Marvel, three books starring Spider-Women are all written by men, including a book about Jessica Drew’s struggles as a working mom, while Gail Simone’s repeated statements about how much she would love to write a Spider-Man story have fallen on deaf ears. (There’s also the all-female X-Men book from a couple of years ago that was written by yet another man accused of sexual harassment, Brian Wood.)
Read the article for yourself. It’s excellent, well-researched, and troubling indeed. I can tell you what Wonder Woman herself would think of it.
Uplifting Story of the Week:
And finally, I’d like to add a new feature, because it seems like we can get some pretty negative book news sometimes. So here is a little something to brighten your week.
This FOUR YEAR OLD Has Read Over 1,000 Books!!
A resident of Gainesville, Georgia, Daliyah Marie Arana has made local headlines by allegedly reading 1,000 books before beginning preschool. “I read 1,000 books by the time I was 3 years old and I hope to read 100,000,” she told an Atlanta local news station. Arana’s parents signed her up for a Georgia Public Library literacy program called 1,000 Books B4 Kindergarten when she was 2½, and she completed the challenge in October. The program operates on the honor system—parents are invited to keep a log of all the books that are read by or to their children—but are you really going to question the exact number of titles read by a young girl who is both precocious and adorable?
Daliyah has read more than 1,000 books and has managed to read certain college-level texts. And the preschooler’s skilled reading and passion for literature impressed even the leader of the nation’s library, Carla Hayden, the 14th Librarian of Congress. On Wednesday, Hayden hosted Daliyah at the Library of Congress, giving the 4-year-old a chance to shadow her as “librarian for the day.” Wearing her glasses, pink dress and matching pink bow, Daliyah walked the sprawling hallways of the world’s largest library and sat in on executive roundtable meetings — as any high-profile librarian would do.
Hayden, who made history this year as she became the first woman and the first African American to run the nation’s library, tweetedphotos of Daliyah’s visit from the library’s official account. One showed Hayden and Daliyah walking precisely in step, both holding their hands behind their backs, with Daliyah looking up at Hayden with eyes of wonder.
“She just kept saying how the Library of Congress is her most favorite, favorite, favorite library in the whole wide world,” Haleema Arana said.
It was fun to have 4-year-old Daliyah Marie Arana of Gainesville, GA as "Librarian For The Day." She's already read more than a 1,000 books. pic.twitter.com/MQfwlUrakO
— Carla Hayden (@LibnOfCongress) January 11, 2017
Now how can you read that story without feeling good about the world. 🙂 Hopefully, it will linger a little over the coming week. And if that isn’t enough to keep you going, here is the cutie reading The Pleasure of Books.
Interesting Links:
Thoughts on Book Deserts (This is a great article, but I was surprised that they didn’t mention Little Free Libraries, which are a great place for people (kids included, we’ve used them) to find new books without fear of late fees or worries about how much they cost.)
The Bookstore Cafe in Seattle (Next time I visit my sister I am totally going there!)
Beth W
Yay for super-literate kids! I imagine she has difficulty engaging in meaningful discussions with her peers, given how elevated her vocabulary and world outlook must be, but I hope she’s an inspiration to them. 🙂
Also, thanks for the trailers- massive “want this” overload.
The Romani story…as someone who has never heard of parajmos, and is not familiar with the Romani holocaust (even though I toured concentration camps while in Germany), I want books like this, to raise awareness. And I don’t see an issue with an oppressed population individual falling in love with an oppressor- it does happen (because not every oppressor is evil and not every oppressed is good, and that’s reality) and I don’t think it romanticizes evil to show complex characters. So I wonder if this is actually a good book with a focus on the protagonist and developing her story (and the love story secondary, which is what I always want). I don’t know the Twitter person whose entire perspective makes up that part of this post- but I’d rather see a variety of opinions of folks who have read it than judge a book solely based on someone else’s context.
Kate Copeseeley
I think the issue from the particular person on Twitter who objected is that it was a non-Romani person telling the story and profiting from it? Now that we are becoming a more diverse bookish community (hopefully) and different cultural groups have more opportunities to tell their own stories, this type of thing might feel to them like someone stealing a story from them and making money off of it. As I am not Romani, I can only put my own suppositions to this.
I did search quite a bit for more information on this book and author, but the book isn’t even currently listed on goodreads, so I’m not sure what the general response will be.
I also think some of the wrath is that there happen to be two Romani books out right now (one of them by the author AG Howard) and neither are written by people of Romani descent?
I agree, it’s important to expose these events, but it’s also important to make sure that they are properly researched and conveyed. And of course we want complex characters. Isn’t that part of what makes George RR Martin’s books so good?
The twitter person had a lot of commentary to make on the subject (too much to include all of it), and I think at one point she said that this type of book would be much better and more respectful without the Nazi romance. And honestly, I have to agree. :/
Briana @ Pages Unbound
I have to admit that A Berlin Love Song sounds interesting, at least as an element of WWII that I don’t know much about. No idea about the romance. I guess, for me, it would depend how it was presented and whether “Nazi” meant “someone who felt compelled to officially join the part because there seemed to be no real other option” or “someone who’s really into the Nazi party,” although I’m not sure you get into the SS without at least coming across as fairly passionate about the cause?
When there was some outrage about the Jewish/Nazi romance a while back, I asked some Jewish friends what their thoughts were and actually got some responses of “That sounds really interesting!” or even “I think it’s a great idea, and I’ve written my own Jewish/Nazi romance [unpublished].” So I guess there is a market and it’s not universally found offensive. I imagine the publisher knows that, or they wouldn’t have acquired the book. I know our bookish Twitter community is very active, but I try to remember that we are not the entire market and what seem like majority opinions on Twitter may not reflect the reality of who is going to purchase the book, which is what I think publishers are focused on.
Carina Olsen
Eeee 😀 I have missed you Kate. <3 As always, aaaamazing news post 😀 I cannot wait for the newest The 100 season. <3 So so so excited for it. Sigh. And ahh, Beauty and the Beast looks gooorgeous 😀 I read The Girl With All the Gifts last year.. I liked it. But.. well. I don't really like how they casted in the wrong way in this movie :\ Like. Girl was to be white. Teacher black. Yet in the movie, girl black, teacher white. I know, such a small thing, but it bothers me, lol 🙂 But hoping the movie will still be good 😀
I hope you are doing the very best sweet girl. <3