In case you missed it, only hot 17-year-olds can save their dads. Yup. There’s a whole lot of buzz around this book, its movie rights and the three-week training period that takes a chubby teen and makes her a lean, mean fighting machine. YAY society. UGH.
Gimme the Pooh bear sequel thanks. Or any of the African sci-fi recs instead on todays #5Books publishing news recs. Or if that doesn’t strike your fancy, an author is finally calling out the stale format of literary festivals and last, something about mistaken identities and book titles to make you smile.
This is just funny lol: Did you read Girl on a Train or THE Girl on a Train? Because a THE actually makes a big difference, though the mistake readers have made between these two titles — and other books with similar titles — has given some authors some extra cash this year. Have you ever done this?
There’s a Pooh Bear sequel in the works, with the full support of the Milne estate: It’s official: Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin are back! … can I just ask, did anyone else know Pooh Bear was female? Apparently, all of Canada did, so they don’t count, lol.
Apparently, a chubby 17-year-old can transform into a lean fighting machine after training with Mossad for 3 weeks, because only thin people can rescue their dads, fight and I guess, be tolerable to read in a book that’s about human trafficking and kidnapping? Damn those fat kids thinking they could actually be capable of doing things! This is a thin person’s world, even in fiction according to this author. I see the excuse but she loses weight in training coming a mile away. Watch for the lead actress going through a much-lauded body transformation from thin to fat and thin again when Jerry Bruckheimer makes this movie. UGH. Has anyone read this? Doesn’t seem to be #morallycomplicatedya much.
African sci-fi short story recs: Wole Talabi is a Nigerian-born SF writer who now lives in Malaysia. Here are favourite African sci-fi short stories for 2015. Has anyone read the authors on this list?
And last, author Jon McGregor is finally calling for literary festivals to start to change (in a speech at a festival no less) — and while he is rather intense, he’s not wrong. Things like the Sydney Writers’ Festival are geared towards authors being listened to in a very restrictive arena — you can’t do anything but sit and listen and then rush off to the next person to sit and listen to. Sadly, that’s really all we have here in Sydney — or is there something else I’m missing? Whenever I go to the Sydney Festival I often feel out of place, as if no one there would ever speak to me as a reader. Me, I’d like something BookCon, which recognises that books and popular culture go together, and ultimately, it just seems more fun to go to. What do you think — are literary festivals in need of change? What are the sorts of festivals you’ve been to? What are they like?
