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A trailer has been unleashed for The Magicians TV show; the story is based on the epic fantasy trilogy by writer Lev Grossman. According to BuzzFeed, Syfy is set to start airing this adaptation project in 2016.

The video embedded above features actor Jason Ralph playing a genius graduate school student named Quentin Coldwater (the primary protagonist). The first season will consist of 12 episodes. (via CosmicBookNews.com)

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Syfy plans to create a dramatic TV series based on Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy. No air date has been announced yet.

Here’s more from Deadline.com: “Based upon Grossman’s books— the first of which was published in 2009 — The Magicians stars Jason Ralph (A Most Violent Year) as Quentin Coldwater, a brilliant grad student who enrolls in Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy, a secret upstate New York university specializing in magic. He and his twentysomething friends soon discover that the magical fantasy world they read about as children is all too real — and poses a grave danger to humanity.”

Other members of the cast include Stella Maeve, Hale Appleman, Arjun Gupta, and Summer Bishil. The first season will consist of 12 episodes. (via The Hollywood Reporter)

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Opening the doors to a child's imagination...

An 8 year old girl, after reading the first chapter in a manuscript, helped convince her father, the CEO of Bloomsbury, to publish Harry Potter. It had previously been rejected by eight publishers.

The Harry Potter book series that followed has found an enormous and passionate following around the world. The seven books in the series have been published in sixtyseven languages. The books have taken readers to Hogwarts and beyond, to a world of wizards, flying broomsticks, and magic wands ...a world of the imagination. There are over 450 million books in print. There are eight movies that have translated the the books into fantasy adventure films with a worldwide gross of over seven and a half billion dollars... there are websites, games, theme parks, as well as a wide variety of merchandise.

The Harry Potter books were the catalyst for the major cross-over phenomenon of adults reading YA books, a change in the book buying  marketplace that continues to this day. 

And it all started with the imagination of J.K. Rowling -- and an 8 year old girl who liked to read, who helped open the doors to a world wonder, a world of fantasy, magic and imagination for millions of children, teenagers, moms and dads around the world.

The centaurs in the Forbidden Forest and the Hogwarts school are from the Harry Potter movies.

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 "Many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are". J.K. Rowling,  Harvard Commencement Speech, 2008

 
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The Courage to Love...

Lev Grossman, journalist, critic, and best selling author -- Warp, Codex, and the Magicians series -- wrote a very personal, insightful and in-depth appreciation of the legacy of J. K. Rowling, the Harry Potter series, and the Deathly Hallows. It was published in Time  Here are excerpts...

"Deathly Hallows is of course not merely the tying up of plot-threads, it's the final iteration of Rowling's abiding thematic concern: the overwhelming importance of continuing to love in the face of death....

So we have known for a while that Voldemort cannot love, that he has been spiritually ruined by his parents' deaths, and he will kill anyone to stave off his own death. Harry, though also an orphan, has found the courage to love. "Do not pity the dead, Harry," a wise man tells Harry in Deathly Hallows. "Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love." Characterologically speaking, the greatest question that remains in Hallows might be whether Harry can do this — that is, whether Harry can find it in himself to pity the man who killed his parents..."

Grossman then writes of mixed feelings, including sadness, following the completion of Deathly Hallows, the final book in the series...

The sadness is more an instant nostalgia for the unironic, whole-hearted unanimity with which readers embraced the story of Harry. We did something very rare for Harry Potter: we lost our cool. There is nothing particularly hip about loving Harry. He's not sexy or dangerous the way, say, Tony Soprano was. He's not an anti-hero, he's just a hero, but we fell for him anyway. It's a small sacrifice to the one that Harry makes, of course, but it's what we, as self-conscious, status-conscious modern readers, have to give, and we gave it. We did and do love Harry. We couldn't help ourselves."

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 Reading... 
"Losing one’s self is, after all, one of the rewards of reading. The opportunity to inhabit another self, to experience another consciousness, is perhaps the most profound trespass a work of literature can allow." - Eula Biss

 

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Opening the Door for Hermione 

"You really are the cleverest witch of your age" 

These are the words of Sirius Black, at the close of the movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. 

In the book, at this same moment, Sirius spoke to Harry, and says,"We'll see each other again. You are -- truly your father's son, Harry."

Seth Lerer, writing about Theaters of Girlhood in his history of Children's Literature, cites this telling movie moment as a "benediction of female accomplishment"... "this movie takes as its telos the authority of girlhood. It makes Hermione the real performer of the story: the stage manager of magic; the director of its time shifts, costume, and control.The film becomes a girl's film, one in which the female audience can find their affirmation. Yet the book remains, despite Hermione's obvious centrality, a story about men and boys: about Harry's search forfor his relationship to his dead father; about his need to find surrogates in Black, or Dumbledore."

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Harry's Destiny...

"J.K. Rowling never shies away from the great existential mysteries: death and loss, cruelty
and compassion, desire and depression. Harry  is anything but sheltered and protected from the evils of Voldermort. Think of those fiendish Dementors who are experts in making you lose hope...The presence of loss and the threat of death perpetually hover over the boy magician and he becomes heroic precisely because. like his literary predecessors, he is destined for greatness even though he also possesses the weaknesses, failings, and vulnerabilities of all humans." -- Maria Tatar, writing about Theaters For The Imagination, in her book, Enchanted Hunters, The Power of Stories in Childhood. 

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The Mind of the Dog

Dog lovers find dogs to be quite special. Dogs are forgiving, affectionate, helpful, and unconditionally loyal.

Therapy dogs help people to heal from emotional problems and support people with physical problems. And they enable kids, helping them to learn to read.

Dog owners often feel that their dogs know what they are thinking.

How much of this is instinct, intuition, or conditioning? What is going on in the dog's mind? What are they thinking?

Yale University has established a Canine Cognition Center to better understand the dog's mind.Here is an excerpt from their website: 

"The Canine Cognition Center at Yale is a new research facility in the Psychology Department at Yale University. Our team of Yale scientists studies how dogs think about the world. Our center is devoted to learning more about canine psychology—how dogs perceive their environment, solve problems, and make decisions. Our findings teach us how the dog mind works, which can help us to better develop programs to improve how we train and work with our canine friends."

 Here is a link to an informative CBS documentary news broadcast on the research and goals of the Yale  Canine Center : Studying the Brain of Man's Best Fried. This video includes scenes where the research tests with the dogs is taking place.

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 Castle in the Mist is the second book in the Planet Of The Dogs Series...Here is an excerpt... "The trail became rougher and then, through the trees, they saw the ancient castle of the Black Hawk warriors.  It was an awesome sight.  It had been built as a fortress castle long ago – before the memory of people could recall.  It was later abandoned and lay empty for hundreds of years until the forest people began to use it once again.  It was a large, solid structure with two towers rising above the walls.  The ancient stones rested on granite bedrock, and the back wall rose straight up from the vast waters of the lake.  As they approached, the sun was setting and mist was rising over the waters.  Soon, the mist would move over the land."

To read more, and for sample chapters from all the books in the series,visit our Planet Of The Dogs website.

We have free reader copies of the Planet of The Dogs book series for therapy dog organizations, individual therapy dog owners, librarians and teachers...simply send us an email at [email protected]. and we will send you the books,. 

Our books are available through your favorite independent bookstore, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell's and many more...Librarians, teachers, bookstores...You can also order Planet Of The Dogs, Castle In The Mist, and Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, through Ingram with a full professional discount.

 
The illustration from Castle In The Mist is by Stella Mustanoja McCarty. The photo is by C.A.Wulff.

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An Alternate Universe... The Harry Potter Legacy

Michiko Kakutani is a highly regarded book critic for the New York Times. Following the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and final book in the series, she wrote a review of the book and an affirmation of the Harry Potter Legacy.

Here are excerpts:

"It is Ms. Rowling’s achievement in this series that she manages to make Harry both a familiar
adolescent — coping with the banal frustrations of school and dating — and an epic hero, kin to everyone from the young King Arthur to Spider-Man and Luke Skywalker. This same magpie talent has enabled her to create a narrative that effortlessly mixes up allusions to Homer, Milton, Shakespeare and Kafka, with silly kid jokes about vomit-flavored candies, a narrative that fuses a plethora of genres (from the boarding-school novel to the detective story to the epic quest) into a story that could be Exhibit A in a Joseph Campbell survey of mythic archetypes.

In doing so, J. K. Rowling has created a world as fully detailed as L. Frank Baum’s Oz or J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, a world so minutely imagined in terms of its history and rituals and rules that it qualifies as an alternate universe, which may be one reason the “Potter” books have spawned such a passionate following and such fervent exegesis. 

The world of Harry Potter is a place where the mundane and the marvelous, the ordinary and the surreal coexist. It’s a place where cars can fly and owls can deliver the mail, a place where paintings talk and a mirror reflects people’s innermost desires. It’s also a place utterly recognizable to readers, a place where death and the catastrophes of daily life are inevitable, and people’s lives are defined by love and loss and hope — the same way they are in our own mortal world." 

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Celebrating Reading

 

 

Liz Burns, activist librarian, blogger ("its all about story"), book reviewer (YA and chhildren's books), and author (PoP Goes the Library) wrote a post about libraries and reading. Here is an excerpt:

"As libraries, especially public libraries, take a look at programs and resources and books within the context of the Common Core --

Remember. We are more than the Common Core. We are also about escaping into literature. We are about the joys of getting lost in a book. We are about celebrating the act of reading for the sole reason that some of us like to read. Or, rather, love to read.

And that simple pleasure, well, sometimes, it does get attacked. Is the person reading the
right books? What are they learning from those books? Is it making them a better person? Is it uplifting? Does it have a moral? Is deep reading going on? Is the reading being done the "right" way? Will this make someone a better employee? Is reading too passive? Isn't it better to be making something than reading? Isn't it better to be talking to people? Don't people have better things to do than read? Than read that book?
I think one of the wonders of libraries is that it is still a place for the person who loves reading. Libraries are more -- we are the sum of our parts, more than any one part of our mission. And part of that more is, and should continue to be, celebrating reading and being there for readers."

 

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Planet Dog Foundation  Has Awarded More than A Million Dollars in Grants to Therapy Dog Organizations...

Chicago's Canine Therapy Corps was one of the recipient organizations.  

The Canine Therapy Corps (CTC), with over 100 volunteers, helps to heal and bring hope to children and adults with a wide range of difficult and painful problems including autism, cancer, PTSD, addiction recovery problems, emotional behavioral problems, rehabilitation and senior issues and more.

The kids and therapy dogs in this excellent CTC  video will touch your heart...the video includes interactions and healing moments with kids, dogs, therapists, parents and volunteers.

Here is their Mission Statement:

The Canine Therapy Corps...

Empowers and motivates individuals to improve their physical and psychological health and well-being by harnessing the human-animal bond;
Provides goal-directed, interactive animal-assisted therapy services, free of charge, using volunteers and certified therapy dogs;
Advances animal-assisted interventions through research and collaboration.

The group photo of CTC dogs is courtesy of Steve Grubman

 

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Imagine That

An Interview with Jack Zipes, By the Editors of Interstitial Journal, on how media and marketing have reduced the cultural value of Fairy Tales...

Here are excerpts:

..."The nineteenth century, especially in Europe and North America, became the golden age of fairy tale collecting that led to the foundation of folklore societies. By the twentieth century, the fairy tale and other simple folk genres began to thrive not only by word of mouth and through
print, as they had for centuries, but were also transformed, adapted, and disseminated through radio, postcards, greeting cards, comics, cinema, fine arts, performing arts, wedding ceremonies, television, dolls, toys, games, theme parks, clothes, the Internet, university courses, and numerous other media and objects. Among the modes of hyped advertising were posters, billboards, interviews, window dressings, department store shows, radio, tv, and Internet interviews, ads in newspapers, magazines, and journals, and all the other kinds of paratexts that accompany a cultural product. As I argued in my book Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre... Hyping is the exact opposite of preservation and involves, as I have argued, conning consumers and selling products that have a meager cultural value and will not last. Some recent fairy tale films produced by the mainstream culture industry reveal how filmmakers and producers hype to sell shallow products geared primarily to make money. They use the mass media to exploit the widespread and constant interest in fairy tales that has actually deepened since the nineteenth century..."

The interview continues with examples of marketing compromises made to achieve financial success that blur or change the integrity of the original tales.  

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 A fairytale doesn’t exist in a fixed form... 

"Like a mother tongue, the stories are acquired, early, to become part of our mental furniture
(think of the first books you absorbed as a child). The shared language is pictorial as well as verbal, and international, too. Such language – Jung called it archetypal – has been growing into a common vernacular since the romances of classical antiquity and the middle ages – Circe from the Odyssey and Vivienne from Morte d’Arthur are recognisable forerunners of fairy queens and witches, and the sleeping beauty herself first appears in a long medieval chivalric tale, Perceforest. A fairytale doesn’t exist in a fixed form; it’s something like a tune that can migrate from a symphony to a penny whistle."

 This is an excerpt from Marina Warner’s Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale 

 

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The New Edition of Born Without A Tail

In her original book, Born Without a Tail, C.A. Wulff chronicles the true-life adventures of two animal rescuers living with an ever-changing house full of pets. She takes us on a journey from childhood through adulthood, sharing tales, (mis)adventures and insights garnered from a lifetime of encounters with a menagerie of twenty remarkable animals.

The new edition also has a prologue about Wulff's journey into advocacy; and, it also has several additional photos. Here’s what some readers have said about it:

 “I can’t say too much about this book, it’s more than a ‘dog book’ it’s
a people, animals, life book. I was hooked from the first page and read it straight through, and have re read it since, enjoying it just as much the second time around.  Anyone who’s ever had a heart dog, a misfit cat, ever been touched by the love of an animal should enjoy this book. It’s a keeper. “ 

“A collection of funny and heartwarming tales that shaped the life of a young animal advocate. Inspiring and written from the heart.“ I was touched by this account of love, friendship, responsibility and true selflessness. If you love animals you will not be able to put this book down.“ .

The book covers and the photo of Rocket are by C.A. Wulff.

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Lumos is part of J.K. Rowling's effort to make the world a better place. Her focus is on children and poverty. She is the founder of Lumos, one of several charities she supports. Here are excerpts from the Lumos website:

Across the globe 8 million children are living in institutions that deny them individual love and care. More than 80% are not orphans. They are separated from their families because they are poor, disabled or from an ethnic minority. As a result, many suffer lifelong physical and emotional harm. 

Meanwhile, the numbers of children in so-called orphanages continues to rise in areas outside Europe. Lumos has now begun work in the Latin American and Caribbean region. We have started in Haiti, where approximately 30,000 children are currently living in almost entirely privately funded orphanages. Once again, we find the familiar ratio of 80% non-orphans, and recognize the driving force of poverty. 

Lumos has a single, simple goal: to end the institutionalization of children worldwide by 2050. This is ambitious, but achievable. It is also essential. Eight million voiceless children are currently suffering globally under a system that, according to all credible research, is indefensible. We owe them far, far better. We owe them families.

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Nancy Hauser's Way Cool Dogs has two new articles with excellent guidelines for people thinking of getting a dog. One article is an overview, dealing primarily with breed and size...Here is an excerpt from the second article:

 

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 The Power of Illustration at the Eric Carle Museum

If you have an interest in the power of illustration to ignite children's imagination, and you'll be in New England in the coming months, consider visiting the  Eric Carle Museum in Amherst, MA. where multiple exhibits are taking place.

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It is now a well-established fact that dogs are social, pack-oriented animals who thrive on human companionship and are happiest while living indoors as part of the family. When you bring a new dog into your family, the dog learns to view your family members and your other pets as his or her pack.

Everything proceeds well as long as your dog is content with his or her place in the pack. Many behavior problems can be avoided with a little extra effort or training to make the dog comfortable with this position.

The most devastating thing the leader of a pack can do is to isolate an individual from the pack to solve a problem; different problem behaviors will likely arise. The dog might become profoundly depressed or anxious. Nuisance barking is common among dogs kept outdoors. Also, a lonely, isolated dog might disassociate from the family pack and cease to be watchful or protective of the family. You must schedule daily play time or take daily walks. Engage in a new activity with your dog such as nose work."

Anna Nirva, editor and prime mover on Sunbear Squad, continues this post with detailed, comprehensive considerations and guidelines for creating a Humane Dog House.

The illustration, from Castle In The Mist, of the children and the dog, is by Stella  Mustanoja Mccarty.

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"Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. They serve us in return for scraps. It is without doubt the best deal man has ever made." -- Roger Caras
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I’d been meaning to get to this series all of 2014. After being totally amazed by both The Girl With All The Gifts and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August I asked the person the Australian publisher who had recommended them both what I could checkout next. And this was the series they said. […]

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With all the excitement that buzzed around the internet over the publication of the final installment in Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy I decided that it might be worth giving the books a go. I borrowed the first book, The Magicians from the library and eagerly began to read.

The book had an interesting start, high school senior Quentin Coldwater and his two friends, all three extremely smart and planning on being admitted to top universities, are dressed up to attend interviews for said universities. Quentin and James each have an appointment with the same interviewer but when they arrive at the house in Brooklyn they find the man dead. But something doesn’t add up. They call the police and one of the paramedics hands the pair large envelopes as she leaves. James refuses his, too freaked out by the day’s events. Quentin takes his and so begins the first step of his new life.

Besides being smart, Quentin is also gifted in slight of hand magic tricks and obsessed with Fillory, a series of books he has read over and over again since childhood. Fillory is very much a Chronicles of Narnia sort of series of books. But the children are named Chatwin and instead of Aslan there are two rams, Ember and Umber who oversee Fillory. It all felt very silly to me and I kept wishing every time Fillory was brought up that Aslan would come bounding in and liven things up with a few swipes of his big lion paw.

But I get ahead of myself. In the envelope Quentin receives is in invitation to sit for exams at a wizard school, Brakebills. Quentin passes and instead of attending Harvard or Yale, he is now going to college to learn how to be a real magician. There were some interesting bits but as with Fillory, I couldn’t stop thinking Harry Potter does this better. While Hogwarts is a grade school thing, Brakebills is college. Instead of Quidditch there is Welters. Instead of houses there are specialized areas of study which are their own kind of “house.” Quentin is a “Physical kid.” Physical magic being one of the more difficult areas, the group is very small. With the addition of Quentin and the smart and talented and pretty but introverted Alice, the group numbers seven.

And so we follow Quentin and Alice through their four years at Brakebills which would normally be five but they are so smart and talented they get jumped ahead a year. There are minor adventures and some interesting things that happen but it kind of all drags on a bit.

At this point I was debating whether I should even bother finishing the book. I decided to keep going. I thought there must be some kind of payoff since the series is so popular. And the last third of the book did pick up and get pretty good. I can’t say that it redeemed the first two-thirds of the book, but I ended up feeling okay about it instead of wondering why I had bothered. Besides the story in the first part of the book feeling unoriginal, the writing itself is frequently clunky. It manages to get better by the end, or maybe the plot just got better so I wasn’t paying as much attention to the writing itself?

I am far from loving the book and being excited enough about it to tell everyone I know to read it. However, I liked it enough to be willing to give the next book, The Magician King, a go. I won’t be doing this any time soon, I need to get a little distance from The Magicians in order to make a fresh approach at book two. Perhaps over the summer.

Filed under: Books, Reviews, SciFi/Fantasy Tagged: Lev Grossman

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Here are some literary events to pencil in your calendar this week.

To get your event posted on our calendar, visit our Facebook Your Literary Event page. Please post your event at least one week prior to its date.

Emily St. John Mandel will read from her new book, Station Eleven, and sit for an interview with Lev Grossman. Hear her on Thursday, October 23rd at Macaulay Honors College starting 7 p.m. (New York, NY)

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The third and final volume in an absolutely brilliant series is a truly fitting finale. It is everything you want from the final book in a series. Loose ends are tied up, the gang gets back together for one last, possibly world ending, epic quest. Grossman throws you straight back into the world of Quentin […]

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We’ve collected the books debuting on Indiebound’s Indie Bestseller List for the week ending August 10, 2014–a sneak peek at the books everybody will be talking about next month.

(Debuted at #3 in Hardcover Fiction) The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman: “Quentin Coldwater has lost everything. He has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams that he once ruled. Everything he had fought so hard for, not to mention his closest friends, is sealed away in a land Quentin may never again visit. With nothing left to lose he returns to where his story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic.” (August 2014)

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The Magician's Land brings Grossman's trilogy to a triumphant conclusion. Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the land he once ruled. He sets out on new adventures with Plum, a young magician. Meanwhile, Janet and Eliot fight to save Fillory from destruction. Books mentioned in this post The Magician's Land Lev Grossman Sale [...]

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I think I loved this even more than The Magicians (which if you haven’t read beware spoilers ahead). The first half of The Magicians was like an adult Harry Potter and full of the wonder of discovering magic was real. The second half was an exploration of what happens to people who discover a new power. It was much darker, which I really liked, and you really got to know the negative sides of the books characters which is not something many books of this genre do.

The Magician King picks up where The Magicians ended. Quentin, Elliot, Janet and Julia are now the Kings and Queens of Fillory but Quentin is growing restless. He wants a purpose, a quest, an adventure and he will do anything to find or create one. Interspersed with Quentin’s story are flashbacks to Julia who went down a very different (and much darker) path to gain her magical knowledge. And as before there a dues to be paid for gaining this power.

Grossman again finely balances a story that doesn’t take itself too seriously, referencing other familiar stories, while slowly turning what seems to be an innocuous and manufactured quest into something far more important. We explore more of Fillory and the expanded universe and (much to some characters’ shock and horror) revisit Earth and the ‘real’ world. I also felt I reconnected to the characters after becoming detached from them after some of the questionable decisions they made in the first book.  Loose ends from the first book are also nicely tied up and the ending is both highly satisfying as a reader and nicely sets up the third and final book in the series.

This truly is a brilliant series and while I’m late to the party in discovering it I get the advantage of reading all three books in the trilogy close together with the final book, The Magician’s Land due out next month. And I will be reading that one straight away!

Buy the book here…

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Writer Lev Grossman turned to crowdsourcing to create the book trailer for the third and final installment of the Magicians trilogy.

The video embedded above features American Gods writer Neil Gaiman, Wicked author Gregory Maguire, Fangirl novelist Rainbow Rowell, and many others reading the first chapter of the The Magician’s Land.

Which one of these authors would you choose as the narrator for the audiobook? (via BuzzFeed)

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The exciting news this week was that I got to host a couple panels regarding Banned Books (it being the week of ‘em and all).  The first was at the Brooklyn Book Festival with David Levithan, Francesca Lia Block, and Lauren Myracle.  I then cannibalized my own questions and used them in this, a Google+ Hangout alongside Lauren Oliver, Lev Grossman, and Lexa Hillyer.  My sole objection: You cannot see my awesome shoes.

And yes.  The Google offices do have free food, copious couches, and massage rooms hither and thither.

Speaking of the Brooklyn Book Festival, I was pleased as punch to see Catherine Jinks speaking there, live and in person.  She mentioned this video which, through utter and total coincidence, I’d seen on my own a couple days before.  Alfred. Is. Perfect.  Look at his fingernails!

And speaking of awesome book trailers . . .

And yeah.  Your book trailer might be awesome.  But did yours ever have a snappy theme song?  I’m just so pleased that our own Gregory K. (he of Gotta Book and The Happy Accident) is debuting his middle grade this year.  Spoiler Alert: It’s good.

And…. okay.  So, maybe I’m a pushover.  Obviously this isn’t my usual video.  But I just sorta liked the feel of this little paper studio and the kiddos who help out.  The narrator I can live without (would that Mimi had narrated the whole thing herself) but I like the kids and I like the product.  So sue.

And for the off-topic video of the day . . . was there any question what I’d go with?  This video works better when you know beforehand that the father is trying to distract his daughter from the “scary” fireworks outside.

I also like the fact that he clearly did her hair that night.

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Scholar Leslie S. Klinger has filed a civil suit in federal court against the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate, hoping to prove that “Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson are no longer protected by federal copyright laws.”

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Along with Laurie R. King, Klinger edited A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon. He was working on a new collection called In the Company of Sherlock Holmes with stories by Sara Paretsky, Michael Connelly, Lev Grossman and more. He made his case, in the release:

The Conan Doyle Estate contacted our publisher … and implied that if the Estate wasn’t paid a license fee, they’d convince the major distributors not to sell the book. Our publisher was, understandably, concerned, and told us that the book couldn’t come out unless this was resolved … It is true that some of Conan Doyle’s stories about Holmes are still protected by the U.S. copyright laws. However, the vast majority of the stories that Conan Doyle wrote are not. The characters of Holmes, Watson, and others are fully established in those fifty ‘public-domain’ stories. Under U.S. law, this should mean that anyone is free to create new stories about Holmes and Watson.

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At this point, I love this series. The sequel to The Magicians really gets dark and fantastic, and the adventures are rich and mind-bending, to say the least. I'll admit that I'm not a big Narnia fan, but adults who are will probably also really dig The Magician King and its predecessor. You'll find yourself [...]

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The Center for Fiction has named Ben Fountain as the winner of the 2012 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. He won the $10,000 prize for Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.

The judging panel included American writers Francisco Goldman, Lev Grossman, Heidi Julavits, Paul La Farge and Bonnie Nadzam. Prior to establishing his career as a writer, Fountain worked as an attorney.

Here’s more from the release: “Fountain has received the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, a Whiting Writers Award, an O.Henry Prize, and two Pushcart Prizes, among other honors and awards. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk was shortlisted for the National Book Award this year”

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Kyle Simons, a Korean education student, has raised more than $14,000 for his fantasy RPG game called Magicians.  Inspired by Lev Grossman‘s The Magicians, this smartphone game was designed to help users learn the Korean language.

Grossman himself has endorsed the project via Twitter. In addition to the game itself, there will be a 120-page softcover Magicians book. We’ve embedded a video about the project above–what do you think?

Here’s more about the project: “Magicians is about having unlimited creativity without complexity. The only thing that restrains you and your character is your own knowledge of the language because the magic system in the game is a language. Doing away with the necessity of a teacher or even dice, all you need is your smartphone and a few hours a week to game with friends to have fun telling a great story and to learn a language along the way.”

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On November 7, a special reading at WORD in Brooklyn will celebrate the blurbs that novelist Gary Shteyngart has bestowed upon other books.

Jacob Silverman created a Tumblr site dedicated to archiving The Collected Blurbs of Gary Shteyngart, collecting the author’s praise for books by authors ranging from Molly Ringwald to Adam Wilson to Lev Grossman. You can also follow Shteyngart on Twitter.

Check it out:  ”The Shteyngart blurb has become almost a seal of approval that, while comical in the sheer amount of books he’s actually blurbed, are actually really good ways to tell if you’re going to like a book or not … The Collected Blurbs of Gary Shteyngart, Live brings together John Wray, Rachel Shukert, Adam Wilson, Gideon Lewis-Kraus and Karolina Waclawiak (as well as a few words from Silverman), all authors blurbed by Mr. Shteyngart, for a night of readings and tribute to the Russian-born oligarch of back cover quotes..” (Photo via Mark Coggins; link via Sarah Weinman)

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Here are some literary events to jump-start your week. To get your event posted on our calendar, visit our Facebook Your Literary Event page. Please post your event at least one week prior to its date.

Writers G. Willow Wilson and Lev Grossman will be appearing at the powerHouse arena. See them on Tuesday, July 17th from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. (Brooklyn, NY)

The powerHouse Arena will be hosting “A Night with Brooklyn Indie Lit Mags.” Join in on Wednesday, July 19th from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. (Brooklyn, NY)

The “How I Learned…” reading series is sponsoring a storytelling event called “STORYTIMES.” Check it out on Thursday, July 19th at the Happy Ending Lounge starting 7 p.m. (New York, NY)

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I have never done a Best Books list, mainly because although I absolutely love to read these types of lists, I generally have a hard time choosing ten favorites from a given year.  I read so much, but for me to put a book on a BEST list, it had better be damn good. And some years, as much as I read, I don't read ten great books. Let's see if I make it to ten for 2011. My favorites, in no particular order:

Marie Lu's smart, fast-paced addition to the dystopia coterie begs for a sequel. Violent and bloody, Legend is an in-your-face commentary on how the chasm between the haves and the have-nots in our society continues to expand.

 

 

 

 

Not a YA novel, but I'm pretty sure The Magician King, the sequel to Grossman's The Magicians will show up on a lot of high school reading lists. It's Harry Potter for grown-ups, wizardry with humor and intellect. Completely unpredictable and totally original. I loved it.

 

 

 

Of the spate of dystopian novels from this post- Hunger Games YA literary landscape, Delirium stands out. Sure, it's set up for a sequel, but that won't interfere with your enjoyment of this story. Is a life without love a life at all? Delirium is a perfect read for those who grew up reading The Giver and now want a YA experience.

 

 

 

 

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a creepy, weird, atmospheric book. I love the harsh and hearty Welsh island setting.  The odd, quirky characters remind me of a kids' version of Twin Peaks. I think the use of the old photographs is a little gimicky, and sometimes, author Ransom Rigg seems more enamored of the photos than how they actually f

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Author Neil Gaiman hopes to write a sequel to his novel, American Gods. According to an interview with MTV News, the novelist has a “boxful of stuff” he would include in the sequel.

Gaiman told explained: “The first book was very much about the grifters and the lowlifes, and you don’t really get to see much of the new gods and you don’t really get a sense of those gods who are doing incredibly well in America. In the second book, I definitely want to go into both of those things.”

Gaiman (pictured, via) released the 10th anniversary edition of American Gods on June 21st. This edition (the author’s preferred text version) contains 12,000 additional words–expanded chapters, essays and interviews.

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Several years ago, when I was just beginning to understand the transcendent possibilities of young adult literature, I wrote an essay for the Chicago Tribune, which the Tribune then titled "Welcoming posture of youngsters lures more writers." (February 5, 2006)  Why, I asked, were Adam Gopnik, Isabel Allende, Michael Chabon, Louise Erdrich, Sue Halpern, Marilyn Nelson, and so many others writing for younger readers?  I posited this possible explanation:

While some might claim that the wild success of the Harry Potter series has raised the stakes of--and interest in--writing for the younger reader, I'd like to suggest that something else might also be at work, something about the very hospitability of the young reader's mind. For aren't young readers typically blessed with capacious hearts and souls? Don't they tend to welcome the slightly askew into their midst? Don't they walk straight into topsy-turvy worlds, hail the wraith, admire the ghost, listen with care to the talking tree? Young readers, by and large, care more for stories than for labels. They censor less. They want the writer to get it right, or so it seems to me.

Today, in a wonderful essay for the New York Times Book Review, Pamela Paul explores why so many books labeled "young adult" are bought and savored by those well past their teen years (while also discussing the book club phenomenon Kidlit).  Among the reasons put forth:

...good Y.A. is like good television.  There's a freshness there; it's engaging. Y.A. authors aren't writing about middle-aged anomie or disappointed people.  (Amanda Foreman)

A lot of contemporary adult literature is characterized by a real distrust of plot.  I think young adult fiction is one of the few areas of literature right now where storytelling really thrives.  (Lev Grossman)

There's an immediacy in the prose.  I like the way adolescent emotions are rawer, less canned. (Darcey Steinke)

I know that many of you who read this blog read across genres and labels (and I am grateful).  I wonder how you, then, might answer the question, Why are so many adults reading books that are (at the very least) marketed to teens? 

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It's time again for my monthly Mini-Reviews feature. If you haven't checked out one of these posts before, my main reason for doing them is simply because I read too many books during the month to write out full, long reviews about each one of them. Mini-reviews consist of books that have already gotten a lot of press and don't necessarily need my thoughts to boost sales, books that I didn't really enjoy, or books that I just didn't have a whole lot to say about, whether good or bad.

Ok, that being said, on to the short-but-sweet thoughts on these titles:

The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo was wonderfully sweet, as I could only expect a work from her to have been. The main characters a lovely, the story magical and fantastical, and great for another read aloud. The illustrations are simple and wonderfully done by Yoko Tanaka.

DiCamillo's stories always flow so well, appealing to both child and adult, and always leaving the reader (at least this reader) with a calm sense of satisfaction when the last page is turned.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to all ages. Go buy for all sorts of gifts...Christmas, birthday, etc. It's lovely, really.

The Magician's Elephant
Kate DiCamillo
208 pages
Middle Grade
Candlewick
9780763644109
September 2009


Another "magical" book, The Magicians by Lev Grossman, is an adult fantasy title that I picked up after reading so many positive reviews about it. Honestly, it's Harry Potter for adults. A magic school, magician-filled, with an infiltrator attempting to bring evil over good.

Long and at times quite wordy, I skimmed through some pages, though thought it was an overall enjoyable read.

The Magicians: A Novel
Lev Grossman
416 pages
Adult Fiction
Viking Adult
9780670020553
August 2009


A book I really did not enjoy this month, Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo, was a huge waste of my time. And especially so, because I listened to it on audio (and only stuck with it because I needed something to get me through the three miles every day).

Absolutely predictable from the very beginning, filled with the same charcters and plot you would find in just about any beach read mystery, except with less thrills. Do I dare compare to the latest James Patterson novels? Don't waste your time on this one. Well, I shouldn't say that, maybe you like this type of thing...goodness knows lots of people do, this book is selling like hotcakes, hence the reason I thought it would be a good read! Oh and did I mention it got a starred review from Publisher's Weekly? Maybe it really was just me.

Sworn to Silence
Linda Castillo
336 pages
Adult Fiction
Minotaur Books
9780312374976
June 2009


City of Bones by Cassandra Clare was a great start to the Mortal Instruments series I've been wanting to pick up this whole year. It was a fast paced read and I can certainly see the appeal to teens.

I did feel it was too long and could have used a good 75 pages cut. I'm not entirely sure why all these middle grade/ya authors feel the need to have 500 page books, it's not a contest to see who can write the thickest volume!

This one I read for the Fill in the Gaps Challenge.

City of Bones
Cassandra Clare
512 pages
Young Adult
McElderry
9781416955078
February 2008

Alright, that's it for mini-reviews this month! If you want more info on any title or to buy any of them and help make this unemployed lady some money, click on any of the book covers above to link to Amazon.

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