Buzz Worthy News

This week, in Buzz Worthy News, 87 year old Harper Lee sues her former literary agent for taking advantage of her age to secure the rights to her book, BFYA nominations are out, Ender’s Game trailer has a trailer – it’s exactly as underwhelming as you can expect of such a thing, and we have controversies!  Oh the controversies!  Read on to check them out.

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.  For new releases and cover reveals of all the best Young Adult fiction, check out our Sunday post: How New Titles.

 Books

 You Know You’ve Done Something Bad if Harper Lee Sues You

Harper Lee, author of the famous literary classic To Kill a Mockingbird is taking her literary agent to court.

“Harper Lee, the 87-year-old author of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” has filed suit against her literary agent over the rights to her classic novel. The suit alleges that the agent took advantage of Lee’s age and infirmity when she assigned the copyright to him six years ago.

In 2007, Lee was living in an assisted living facility and had recently suffered a stroke when she signed over the rights of “To Kill a Mockingbird” to her agent, Samuel Pinkus, and his agency Keystone Literary.

“Pinkus knew that Harper Lee was an elderly woman with physical infirmities that made it difficult for her to read and see,” the complaint contends. “Harper Lee had no idea she had assigned her copyright” to Pinkus’ company, the suit states.”

Wow.  Samuel Pinkus is the son in law of her long time literary agent, from McIntosh principled by Eugene Winick.  When Winick became ill, many of his clients were transferred to his son in law’s company.  It appears that Lee has had cataracts, greatly affecting her ability to read.  She discharged Pinkus as her agent but contends in her lawsuit that he has continued to collect her royalties.

SOURCE

 The BFYA Nominees Have Been Announced

The Best Fiction for Young Adults, hosted by the American Library Association, has released this year’s nominations.   The purpose of the nomination list and awards is to help librarians and school librarians discover quality titles, endorsed by young readers, to bolster their collection.

“The committee evolved from a committee established under the School Libraries Section of ALA, which was charged with producing a list of 1930’s “Best Books for Young People.” The committee has undergone several changes of focus and names over the years, including the Book Selection Committee (1954), and later the Committee for the Selection of Significant Adult Books for Young People (1963). It became the Best Books for Young Adults Committee (BBYA) in 1966. As publishing for the young adult market grew exponentially (over 2,000 titles per year in 2008) and seven other YALSA selection and award lists for young adults were created since its inception, Best Books for Young Adults was restructured and named Best Fiction for Young Adults by the YALSA Board of Directors at the Midwinter Meeting in 2010.”

Some of my favourites on the list include:

Marchetta, Melina. Quintana of Charyn: The Lumatere Chronicles.

Moskowitz, Hannah. Teeth.

Taylor, Laini. Days of Blood and Starlight.

You can find the full list here.

Entertainment

 Ender’s Game Pretrailer Trailer came out this week

Cornering the market on unnecessary and redundant marketing this week was a trailer of the trailer for Ender’s Game.  It actually almost makes me glad that I’d decided not to watch the movie.  Based on the pretrailer of the trailer, this movie looks like it might just manage to shit over my childhood memories of the book even more than that author’s homophobic rants do.

And one last complaint, then I promise I’m done for the day.

This is Ben Kingsley:

He is a fairly talented and diverse English actor.  Casting directors seem to take that to mean he can play just about any one.  In Ender’s Game he’s playing Mazer Rackham, a New Zealand character.  That’s cool.  He could totally play a New Zealander.  Anyone can because anyone can be a New Zealander (So long as they’re born or become a citizen, ya know).

Uhhhhhh. You know, I love Ben Kingsley.  But if they wanted someone to play a New Zealander of Maori descent (I assume those are supposed to be Maori facial tattoos, though I’m not very well educated on the matter, so please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), well, there are plenty of awesome, amazingly talented New Zealand actors who could totally have done that part.  But, this isn’t unusual for how Ben Kingsley is cast, so I can’t say I’m surprised.  They have him playing the Mandarin in Iron Man 3, King Herod in Mary Mother of Christ,  Fagin from Oliver Twist.  He’s played Moses, Guru Tugginmypudha, and Nizam.

SOURCE

Controversies

 E.L. James Will Let You Finish in a Minute

There were a couple of RT13 controversies this year, making many of us jealous we didn’t attend.  The first occurred during the New Adult panel.  The internet first heard of it when authors in the audience exploded onto twitter to tweet about it.

Initially, there was a lot of confusion on twitter and most people took it at face value that E.L. James was throwing a hissy fit.  And it would have been completely, wonderfully delicious if she had.  Alas, reality interceded and it soon became obvious that wasn’t quite what happened:

The friend in question appeared to by Abbi Glines.  And the quote wasn’t, “Stop talking about my book!” but rather, “Stop talking about my book and tell us about yours.” (or something to that effect. She was supporting her friend author.)

But the controversy still had hilarious results including the #fakeeljamesrumors hashtag that became hysterically amusing, for a short time, as a result.

With Friends Like These, Who Needs Terrible Publicity?

Kami Garcia was on a panel at RT13, speaking about a number of marketing tools and her experience in the industry when something a little unfortunate happened.  Another author tweeted about it, taking her words slightly out of context and creating a bit of drama.

I suppose any publicity is good publicity – even if it makes you look like an asshole.  Kami Garcia was quick to go into damage control, though the incident caused some problems for her in Goodreads threads and twitter.

 Little Blogger, Big Ambitions Reviews

Dead Silence by Kimberly Derting – Reviewed by Taherah of Books As You Know it Blog

Quote:

Dead Silence is an epic, thrilling, and riveting conclusion to the Body Finder series!! Kimberly Derting does a fantastic job of balancing out the new murders and her personal life. She also manages to effectively intertwine those two together and shows the effects each has on Violet’s life. It’s also kinda fascinating the way that Derting was able to write the way psychotic people view their life and how they persuade themselves how this is right or that whatever they’re doing is right! Dead Silence NEVER leaves you bored from the first page to the very last.

That Time I Joined the Circus by J.J. Howard – Reviewed by Jude of Geeky Reading Blog

Quote:

Overall, I really liked this story. It was witty, fun, and generally just enjoyable. I think the characters were rather great, particularly the main one, but that the relationships and some of the side characters should have gotten more development and attention.

I’m looking forward to getting a peak at a finished copy of this book (since I got an ARC), mostly to see if certain details and order of some of the flashbacks were changed, and to see if the cover is particularly shiny or something, since the artwork is just so gorgeous. And I’m being sure to put Howard on my watch list, because I will surely be checking out her next book whenever it comes out.

Prophecy by Ellen Oh – Reviewed by Fly to the Sky of Read Books and Live Green Blog

Quote:

I know from all of the things I listed as negative, it would make sense to rate it lower than 2.5 stars. But for all that there wasn’t a lot I liked there was nothing that made me want to rip the book to shreds. I think that the author needs to work on her writing style and also how she is going to tell the story. Although the first book was no good, I think I might stick with the series and see what happens next. With any luck there will be improvement.

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