Unlicensed Sequels to Ancient Adaptation News Links

A few weeks back we gave you the the trailer to the film of The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Now we're giving you a link to a mini-documentary about the author of the source material, Roald Dahl.


A month or so ago I dissed Radiohead's Thom Yorke for contributing a song to the New Moon film. Now I'm accusing Death Cab for Cutie of career suicide for Cutie for doing the exact same thing.


This is the only 'new' piece of news in this week's Adaptation News (and it's for the weakest sounding picture of the lot): TMG is putting together a small screen adaptation of Herman Melville's little known, rarely filmed, fish-fic, Moby Dick. William Hurt and Ethan Hawke are set to star.


I can count on one hand the number of things I've looked forward to as much as I'm looking forward to Spike Jonze & Dave Eggers' adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are. (What were they, you ask? One was losing my virginity. Two was the second round of sex where I planned to make up for my lackluster performance during the first. Three was the third go-round, where I planned to temporarily delay the li'l lady's look of disappointment by implementing a little something called 'foreplay.' Four was gay sex. I figured, 'If I suck this bad at straight sex...' Five was Star Wars Episode 1.) Anyway, here are two new WTWTA links: New movie stills and a fawning interview with Jonze.

Huffington Post to Host Book Club

The New York Observer reports, "On Oct. 5, The Huffington Post will launch a new books section with a perhaps unexpected partner: The New York Review of Books."
Actually, it would've been "unexpected" if they'd waited for the release of Sarah Palin's autobiography and then launched the club with that. This is just...underwhelming.
Care for details? Click here.

Inkwell Irregulars, Assemble!

Here's an easy post: A list of links to bookish blog posts made by our Inkwell Irregulars. Not only does it save me the time of sorting through an unwieldy assembly of AP articles featuring the words 'book,' 'publisher,' and 'bookstore,' it links you (our beloved blog reader) to them (our other beloved blog readers). Incestuous? Sort of. But this is a cult -- that sort of thing is par for the course.

First up, a book review by Pol Culture's Robert Martin. The book in question is Nate Powell's comic er...graphic novel, Swallow Me Whole -- one of my favorite books of the year, and, quite coincidentally, currently on sale at its publisher's website for a measly $12.95!


California Meaghan knows the secret to capturing her readers' hearts -- giving out free sh*t! This past Sunday, she announced a contest where the prizes are two books, Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have and Secret Society.


More reviews, this time from the sordid, smutty, sensationalistic genre that is romance. Liyana Othman reads so much of the stuff, she has two seperate sites for her reviews! LiyanaLand is her personal blog, while Royal Reviews is a bigger site where she is but one of many sap-happy scribblers.


LiteraturelySpeaking has been having an ongoing argument with her husband about the definition of 'book lover.' LS proudly proclaims to be one, but her hubby thinks the moniker is made moot because she doesn't "like all books." While I hate to poke my nose into the affairs of others (yeah, right!), I've gotta come down on the missus' side here. I consider myself a 'food lover,' but that doesn't mean I don't find the texture of clam sauce a li'l too close to semen for my liking.

Well, that's it for today. If'n you'd like to join our slowly expanding band of backwoods, book-loving belligerents, click here. All we ask is your life-long devotion, adoration, and a firstborn or two.

Book News, In Brief

This is, without a doubt, the ideal bookstore for in-store author appearances.



Cuz misery loves company: It wasn't just your bookstore that had sh*tty sales in July. According to PW, sales slipped .5% nationwide.


All of the numbers aren't in yet, but it looks like the first day sales of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol actually lost money for most retailers.


Okay, so you've read Barack's beach reads, Bill Clinton's book picks, and Michelle Obama's favorite kids lit. Isn't it about time you checked out Osama bin Laden's reading list for Americans?


Over at B&N.com, a former Senior Vice President and Executive Editor-in-Chief at Random House surveys the current condition of the publishing industry and proclaims, "I'm glad to have left this all behind."


Here's how they should have been marketing the Espresso book machine all along -- not as an automatic printing press for bestsellers, but as a source of instant gratification for would-be authors with unsellable manuscripts.

Go, Look: SF Writers & Their Writing Rooms

From the cluttered and colorful (Michael Swanwick) to the inexplicably pretentious (Joe Haldeman), Where I Write's collection of 'authors in their natural habitats' photos is a fun place for flailing writers to waste five minutes.
Go, Look!

Writers on Writing

"Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to be a writer - and if so, why?"
Bennett Cerf

Tuesday's Tips for Flailing Writers

Sometimes the best advice is the briefest: Examine what happens when you read.



More succinct suggestions: 5 Writing Tips from Ralph Waldo Emerson. (You see how short I'm keeping the intros? I'm amazing! And lazy!)


CopyBlogger has become one of my go-to spots for Tuesday's Tips links. This week I'm taking two. First up, How to Stop Making Yourself Crazy with Self-Editing.


The second: 5 Grammar Mistakes that Make You Sound Like a Chimpanzee (...and not the one in the room full of chimps that eventually pounds out Shakespeare, either).


Using a technique similar to the one Alan Moore described in his intro to the first Planetary collection, Randy Ingermanson describes How to Write a Novel Using The Snowflake Method.


Ben Dawe has put together the sort of sarcastic-yet-practical list I curse myself for not thinking of first: An aspirational author’s guide to effective self sabotage. And then, as if to rub it in, he's got a Part 2.


This last tip applies to pretty much everyone...but especially YOU. Agent Colleen Lindsay offers a list of What Not To Do When You Get A Rejection. (Note: While "Bawl like a baby seal with a backwards Louisville Slugger logo branded across its fuzzy forehead" is not on Lindsay's list, if you do have to cry, puh-leez try not to Tweet about it.)

The Monday Menagerie:Controversial Classics Given A Manga Makeover

I probably should have tried to bookend this post with something about Sept. 26 - Oct. 3 being Banned Books Week, but regular readers of this site will know that I'm not quite convinced of the all-encompassing, all-accepting nature of some of the free-speech folks solemnizing this self-congratulatory celebration. Instead, I'll just say: The fact that these books exist makes me shake my head and laugh.




Don't forget: Sept. 26 - Oct. 3 is Banned Books Week! Make money and publicly proclaim your store's rebellious nature by making a big deal about how "brave" you are for selling The Catcher In the Rye and (gasp!) Huckleberry Finn. After all, the machine we're raging against is not the cash register.

Book News, In Brief

Hot on the heels of Steve Jobs' jabs, Mashable.com finds four reasons Why Apple's Tablet Will Eat Kindle's Lunch.


Having realized that holding up a bookstore is a hundred dollar heist (at best!), enterprising thieves have taken to stealing and re-selling over-priced college textbooks.


Labor Day has passed. Being seen with a 'Summer Read' is now as passe as wearing white and/or flip-flops. While I can't help you with your unfortunate fashion decisions, I can direct you to the LA Times' Fall Reading List. See? There's hope for you yet. Via.


Every day, in an effort to make more sales, booksellers lie about (1.) reading books we've only read reviews of, (2.) enjoying books we had to force ourselves to finish, and (3.) wishing we had more room in our store for local authors' work. So why the hell do we continue to try and uphold an honest approach to sales-inhibiting release embargos? The Book Publicity Blog attempts an explanation.

Today's Padding-Out the Post Link: The New York Times' Bestseller Lists

Go, Look:The 5 Most Ridiculous Sex Self-Help Books

Cracked.com has done it again. Go, look!

Book News, In Brief

It's similar to the ol' chicken and the egg conundrum, only it's creativity and craziness.



You know your e-reader is in trouble when a physically frail vegan publicly mocks you without any fear of reprisal. Or: Yo, Amazon -- Steve Jobs laughs at your Kindle!


Sci-Fi is a genre with unlimited real world resonance. Not only can it keep kids celibate well into middle-age, but according to IO9, it holds the 10 secrets for rescuing our climate.


Aaron's Books has put out a plea to indie bookstores: Come Clean About Romance! In addition to making embarrassing admissions of aesthetic iffiness, they've detailed the dollars to be made with soft core softcovers. Via.


Curious what vampire fangs do to silicon implants? October's issue of Playboy will feature an eight page, heavily airbrushed, True Blood/Twilight-inspired pictorial. A question for our kinkier commenters: Does Hef usually theme entire issues around passing trends, or is this the first full-on bandwagon jump since the bald-is-the-new-black sculpting of Playmates' pubes?

When Adaptations Meet Corn Mazes, The Results Are Decidedly...Well...Corny

Click here for the whole cringe-inducing story.

Adaptation News(cuz sometimes, the book does suck)

John 'The Office' Krasinski's adaptation of David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men has a trailer. Well, technically, Apple has it. Here. (God, just go, will you?)


Fresh off of the Disney-buys-Marvel rumor mill: Pixar may be eying an adaptation of Ant Man. Note to all: Take this news with a grain of salt an industrial sized container of sodium chloride.

Update: Shaun of the Dead & Scott Pilgrim director, Edgar Wright, says this ain't so...here.


Writer Robert Kirkman sat down with CBR recently to relay everything he knows, feels, and suspects about AMC's planned adaptation of his zombie comic book series, The Walking Dead.


The live action version of Katsuhiro Otomo's manga, Akira, seems to be back in the 'getting made someday' category. Latino Review has the details, while CHUD.com provides a bit of perspective on the prospective screenwriters.


2009 is Donald Westlake's year! (Too bad he died in 2008.) First comics wunderkind Darwyn Cooke does a four color version of Westlake's The Hunter, now Korean director extraordinaire Park Chan-Wook has announced plans to make a film of the crime writer's The Ax.


This week's resolution of the litigation between New Line Cinema and the estate of author J.R.R. Tolkien over The Lord of the Rings trilogy is shaping up as one of the biggest profit participation settlements in Hollywood history -- rumor has it it's up around $100 million. This settlement also clears the way for Guillermo del Toro's two film adaptation of The Hobbit.


According to Variety.com, George Clooney and Grant Heslov's film, The Men Who Stare at Goats, "takes Jon Ronson's book about 'the apparent madness at the heart of U.S. military intelligence' and fashions a superbly written loony-tunes satire...recalling many similar pics, from Dr. Strangelove to Three Kings, and the screwy so-insane-it-could-be-true illogic of Catch-22." The trailer for this can be found at Apple. Again. I mean...again. (Oh, fer chrissakes -- let's not go starting that again!)


Every week there's a new marketing tie-in for Twilight. This week is no different. Sci-Fi Wire reports, "Teen-focused interactive company Habbo is collaborating with Summit Entertainment to create a Twilight-themed virtual world. [...] The online space will include Twilight-centered "activities, items and polls." Users will be able to create their own characters and interact with other users in a virtual environment." If you want to know the truth, I blame this sort of nonsense on every bookstore that held a midnight release party for Breaking Dawn. All of you. Except us. We were under sexy-vampire mind control. We couldn't resist.

Big News! (Well, to geeks like me, anyway.)

The Hernandez brothers' Love and Rockets: New Stories Vol. 2 is finally here, and with it, the end of Jaime's super-heroines story!
What's this? You say want a preview before you lay down any money on the thing?
Well, fine -- here!
(Oh, and you're welcome.)

Book News, In Brief

Yet another reason why indies are better than the big box stores -- we don't kill our shoplifters.


The Shallow Readers of Montpelier is looking for shallow readers. The VT based book club is making internet headlines for turning their noses up at upturned noses.


James Patterson has signed a 3 1/2 year deal with Hachette for a whopping 17 books. For those keeping count, that's roughly 4.85714 books a year from now 'til 2012.


Financial Times has done the impossible. They've broken down the whole Google Books fiasco -- concept, controversies and court cases -- into an easy to understand, one page primer.


Tiny mustache, giant eyes: A manga version of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf has sold over 45,000 copies in less than a year. (And with sales like that, you can bet dollars to Deutschmarks that there will be an English language version released in the next few months.)

Writers on Writing

"A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul."
Aldous Huxley