Welcome to Buzz Worthy News where the stories are awesome and not at all well-written. Need your YA industry news? Never fear, Kate is here to give it all to you. Just, ya know, not in any kinda sophisticated sense or nothing.

In this week’s Buzz Worthy News: movie news for Paper Towns, The Girl With All the Gifts and Ready Player One; Go Set a Watchman‘s cover is revealed, Game of Thrones spoilers to come, controversies to round us out 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. For new releases and cover reveals of all the best Young Adult fiction, check out our Tuesday post: Hot New Titles.

Entertainment News

New Trailer for Paper Towns

I should be using my JGNN(John Green News Network) icon for this, but I’m too lazy to hunt for it.  In case you haven’t heard, the new trailer for the film adaption of Green’s Paper Towns is out.  Color me intrigued.

The Girl With All The Gifts Gets All The Actors

In big news this week, Gemma Arterton and Glenn Close have been picked to star in the film adaption of The Girl With All the Gifts.

Colm McCarthy, helmer of British TV shows including “Peaky Blinders,” “Sherlock,” “Doctor Who” and “The Tudors,” will direct the film, which is his first major feature.

Arterton, whose credits include “Tamara Drewe” and “The Disappearance of Alice Creed,” is starring in Marjane Satrapi’s “The Voices,” following her West End musical stage debut in “Made in Dagenham.” Considine was recently seen in BAFTA-winning British pic “Pride,” and is soon to be seen in “Macbeth” with Michael Fassbender. Close is soon to be seen in Tim Blake Nelson’s “Anesthesia” and Bjorn Runge’s “The Wife.”

“The Girl With All the Gifts” is the story of Melanie, a girl who is full of questions about the world. Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite. But they don’t laugh. Melanie is a very special girl.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m a huge fan of Sherlock.  Hopefully, this film will live up to the reputation of those involved in making it.

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Steven Spielberg Signs Onto Ready Player One

Gamers of the world who invaded the Twitter to cheer about Ready Player One being made into a movie are probably in a collective tizzy at the news that Steven Spielberg has signed on to direct the movie for Warner Bros.

Dubbed Geek Crack, Ready Player One is a 80’s child’s dream, with tons of pop culture references like Ghostbusters, The Goonies, and even (one of my synth-filled faves) Ladyhawke.  For goodness sakes, Wil Freaking Wheaton narrates the audio book version!

The adaption is not without its potential issues, however:

“I think what we have to do is drill down to the best version of the movie and then see who wants to be a part of what will surely be a great film,” said Greg Silverman, the studio’s President of Creative Development and Worldwide Production. “What we found with The Lego Movie is that when we went and talked to those having the rights, people got excited about being involved.”

As for the technology required to pull off the movie, Silverman said, “At Warner’s, we always have our eye on all the groundbreaking visual effects and technology available worldwide, and we feel very confidant with any new ground that Steven would want to tackle. He’s a master filmmaker so we feel very comfortable with him. The story is the main thing and whatever works best for audience enjoyment is what we’ll do.”

Well, I’m excited.  Are you excited?  Let’s hope this project is less depressing than Spielberg’s last for Warner Bros.—A.I.

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Book News

Cover For New Harper Lee Book

Despite all the rumors and scandal behind the release of Harper Lee’s sequel to her long ago written To Kill A Mockingbird, the publisher is moving full steam ahead with the project, as is evidenced by this beautiful cover for the new book:

HarperCollins president Michael Morrison says the book jacket was meant to evoke Mockingbird’s now-iconic look: “It draws on the style of the decade the book was written.”

But, he adds, with “so many wonderful parts” to Watchman’s new narrative on the beloved characters of Scout, Jem and Atticus Finch, “it was hard to pick just one iconic image to represent the book.”

Go Set A Watchman releases July 14, 2015.

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Game of Thrones Books Spoiled

In probably what is the worst news for fans of the book series, like EVER, the creators of the HBO show admit that they will most likely spoil the ending before the last book is released:

We’ve known for awhile that Weiss and Benioff knew how Martin planned to end his series. But up until this year, readers were convinced that Martin would at least deliver the long-awaited next book in the series before the show had a chance to outpace him. It’s pretty clear that the upcoming fifth season of Game of Thrones will wrap up the plots of Books 4 and 5 (A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons), leaving everybody, show watchers and book readers alike, in the same place come this year’s season finale a.k.a. in the dark about what will happen next in both Book 6 (The Winds of Winter) and Season 6.

Martin has since cancelled several upcoming public appearances at conventions in order to finish Book 6, even teasing that he might finish as early as this summer a.k.a. “before these cons roll round.” Meaning we might get Book 6 before Season 6. Maybe.

But Martin could lock himself away around the clock and he still wouldn’t finish his planned seventh book (A Dream of Spring) before Season 7 of the show rolls around in 2017.

WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?????

OH MY GOD.  I AM AT A LOSS AS TO WHAT TO DO.  I don’t watch the show and don’t want to.  But how in the world will I be able to keep myself from being spoiled however many years it takes for George to finish up the series?  IT’S NOT POSSIBLE.  Benioff thinks readers will still be motivated to buy the books if they know how the series ends:

I think the thing that’s kind of fun for George is the idea that he can still have surprises for people even once they’ve watched the show through to the conclusion. There are certain things that are going to happen in the books that are different in the show, and I think people who love the show and want more—want to know more about the characters, want to know more about the different characters who might not have made the cut for the show—will be able to turn to the books.

If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be sobbing in the corner.

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JK Rowling Being A Boss On Twitter Part 2

We’ve mentioned on Buzz before how much JK Rowling rules the Twitter feed, but here is just one more example.  A fan on Twitter asked her the following question, and here is her fab response:

The tweeter in question has since deleted all her tweets and gone dark.

Source

Controversies

Batgirl Cover Canceled

In celebration of the 75th Anniversary of their most popular villain, The Joker, DC Comics is releasing special edition covers across all their titles.  One cover, for Batgirl #41, has caused some controversy for its extremely dark take.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

It’s disturbing. And while it’s certainly drawn well, and it references a classic story from The Joker’s history (Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke) the fact is, it’s not what many of Batgirl readers of any gender want to see for one of DC’s few female heroes currently with her own title. Especially this hero, who of late has been geared more toward younger readers and a wider audience. DC Women Kicking Ass started the conversation about the variant cover with a post called Batgirl Joker Variant – WTF?, and now comics fans are so appalled by the cover that they’ve taken to Twitter to express their outrage, using the hashtag #CHANGETHECOVER.

As a result of this twitter discussion, there have been several differing opinions on the cover.  Some are concerned because the original story that the cover represents was problematic (in the way it portrays female superheroes), therefore is a bad representation of the series.  Others are fine with the cover, because to them it shows how Batgirl became some a strong character afterward.  Some postulate that the whole controversy was fake to begin with.

My loving homage to Twitter debates. #comicgate #savethecover #twitterarycriticism #changethecover #GamerGate pic.twitter.com/CQ9d8EwlQl

— Doris V. Sutherland (@DorVSutherland) March 24, 2015

For now, the cover has been pulled with apologies from the original artist.

Sources HERE and HERE

Oh Goodreads, Not Again.

For those of you who didn’t get the memo, Goodreads decided to implement another new “feature.”  It’s so funny to me, and maybe you’ve noticed this too, but as a member you can beg and beg Goodreads to implement something or fix something (for the love of GOD can we finally fix that horrid search function?), but in the end, they decide to do something so odd that you just have to scratch your head.

For instance, Goodreads decided (citing unnamed site members) that the current author situation wasn’t working.  Previously, an author could be both a reader-member and an author-member on the site.  You could be one or the other or both and it was totally cool.  But then came the hammer:

Surveys with our members tell us that one of the things people like the most about Goodreads is being able to keep up to date with authors whose books they love. To help support this better, we’ve made a change today to clarify how those relationships work and to make them clearer for all of our members. Instead of “Become a Fan,” you’ll now see “Follow Author” on author pages and elsewhere throughout the site. Following an author will opt you into receiving updates from them, including reviews, shelvings, Ask the Author answers, and blog posts.

Why are we making this change?
We want to make it easier for our members to get updates from and about the authors they read. Readers have overwhelmingly told us they want to stay in touch with authors to get news and updates about them and their books. “Follow” is the action we think most clearly accomplishes this.

Sounds rather innocuous, doesn’t it?  But the problem with the new “fix” came right away.  You can’t just “be friends” with an author anymore.  As one user so helpfully stated:

I can see that some authors will have a blog post or question to answer or something about their latest book, their next book, the book after that, plus their current giveaway, planned giveaway, blog tour, book signing and whatever every single day.  My update feed will be clogged with spam author promotions pr releases well what can I call it if it reaches that level?
So I want to know is this going to end up in my update feed if I have selected reviews from friends only?

And another user:

Why can we no longer see that we’re actually FRIENDS with an author? Why is it default “Following”?
My list of “authors I’m following” consists of all people I’m friends with but two, yet there’s no differentiation shown for that, and on the author’s page, it no longer says that I’m friends with them except if I click on that nearly-invisible arrow and see that one of my options is to remove them from my friend list.

In short, being a friend with an author now meant that you were a “fan” of some sort (even if that wasn’t the word used) and the author involved got “credit” somehow for having you as a friend, even if you had NEVER read one of their books!

Readers and authors were so upset about this change that they quickly filled the feedback thread with complaints, and suddenly, the management was like, “HAHA, J/K, GUISE”:

After reading through everyone’s feedback, we’ve decided to make some changes so being a friend does not also make you a follower. Here’s the full update from today, complete with a timeline for when fixes will be made:
* List of people you’re following changed back to one list (with options to see just authors or just non-authors): Next week.
* Note on the author profile when the author is following you or when you are friends with the author: Next week.
* Removal of “Following” when you are friends with an author: about 3 weeks.

Source 

Interesting Links

Christian Grey or Serial Killer: You Decide

Youtube Channel Becomes YA Book

Sansa Writes Her Own Slash Fic

If Internet Books Had Comments

Amazon Has New Review Options