Middle Earth Interactive on Google Chrome

Previous Related Post:
Book-Based Holiday Movies: Catching Fire, Saving Mr. Banks, and Desolation of Smaug

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This looks like so much fun for Fans of the Hobbit - a journey through Middle Earth.



From Mashable

Fans have read about Middle Earth in J.R.R. Tolkien's novels and they've seen it in in the subsequent films directed by Peter Jackson, but now they can fly above the elf city of Rivendell or sneak through the dark Trollshaws, all with the tap of the keyboard's direction keys or the swipe of a finger across a smartphone.
Users have a choice of a few areas of exploration, all of which appear in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which came out last year, and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which will hit theaters on Dec. 13. You can use your laptop, tablet, phone and anything else that supports chrome to fly over the whole fictional land, but you can currently only walk around the Trollshaws, Rivendell and the haunted fortress of Dol Guldur. Players must watch their step, as the eerie music that accompanies the video-game like experience foreshadows demons that can attack from nowhere to drag you away.

From The Hobbit Blog

The online experience takes fans through an adventure that unfolds across an interactive map of Middle-earth. Users can zoom in to explore Trollshaw Forest, Rivendell and Dol Guldur, with new locations set to be added in the weeks ahead. Each destination on the map gives the visitor access to its history and the characters who inhabit it, or presents unique survival challenges in which fans can test their wits.
“Journey Through Middle-earth” is the first Chrome Experiment designed to bring a full 3D experience to mobile, with technology support for WebGL in Chrome for Android on devices with high-end graphics cards. Although WebGL isn’t supported on iOS, Chrome users can still experience most of “Journey Through Middle-earth” on their iPhones and iPads.

Book-Based Holiday Movies ~ Catching Fire, Saving Mr. Banks, and The Desolation of Smaug

Wow, for book-lovers this Christmas has a wealth of great movies! Publishers are capitalizing on the publicity with new editions, so read the books first and then go to the movies!



From Publishers Weekly

Fans – and box-office bean-counters – are gearing up for the November 22 release of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The Lionsgate film, based on the second book in Suzanne Collins’s blockbuster young adult series, marks the return of the love triangle comprising Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence), Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), and Gale (Liam Hemsworth). Following their unprecedented triumph in the games, Katniss and Peeta are targeted by the Capitol and forced to compete once more, this time in the 25-year anniversary games known as the Quarter Quell. Additions to the cast include Philip Seymour Hoffman as head gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee, and Sam Claflin, who plays tribute Finnick Odair, an ally to Katniss and Peeta.
. . . Off screen and on the page, the reach of the Hunger Games series remains formidable. Scholastic is greeting the forthcoming cinematic release with a tie-in edition of the novel featuring cover art from the film, an illustrated movie companion, as well as a boxed set containing paperback editions of the entire series. According to Scholastic, there are more than 65 million copies of the original three books in the Hunger Games trilogy in print and digital formats in the U.S.: more than 28 million copies of The Hunger Games, more than 19 million copies of Catching Fire, and more than 18 million copies of Mockingjay. Scholastic’s Hunger Games Facebook page has upwards of 4.8 million fans.

From Variety

There wasn’t anything as sweet as a spoonful of sugar behind the scenes of “Mary Poppins,” and it’s this little-known backstory that provides the spine for “Saving Mr. Banks,” which bows in limited release Dec. 13.
In the movie, (author P.L.) Travers battles Walt Disney after learning he wants to seize the rights to the book, her most prized creation. Even when she reluctantly agrees to leave London to spend two weeks in creative meetings at the Disney lot in Burbank, she lectures the crew and threatens not to sign the contract every time she doesn’t get her way.
Director John Lee Hancock (“The Blind Side”) says (Emma) Thompson told him early on that Travers was the most difficult character she had ever played. “At every turn, she’s different than you think she’s going to be,” Hancock says. “At one point, she seems old and brittle, and at another point, she seems sensual.”
. . . “Saving Mr. Banks” is garnering Thompson Oscar buzz for the first time in almost 20 years. “I’m praying that she gets nominated, for selfish reasons, because I’d love to play with her in the audience,” says her friend (and Oscar host) Ellen DeGeneres, who in 1997 featured Thompson in an episode of her former sitcom. “She deserves to be nominated, because she’s so brilliant. How often does a role come up to play a 54-year-old woman like that?”
Thompson recalls being around 7 when she first saw “Mary Poppins,” but has no memory of the actual theatrical experience. She just remembers how she felt. “I was profoundly moved by the songs,” the actress says. “ ‘Feed the Birds’ made me infinitely sad and melancholy as a child. ‘Let’s Go Fly a Kite’ made me cry

From LA Times Hero Complex

“The Desolation of Smaug” is Part 2 in Jackson’s new Tolkien trilogy, and the film picks up where last year’s box-office hit “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” left off, with hobbit Bilbo (Martin Freeman), wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and Thorin’s company continuing on their quest to help the dwarfs reclaim the treasure buried under the Lonely Mountain.
Like its predecessor, “The Desolation of Smaug” was shot in 3-D at 48 frames per second and will be released in 2-D, High Frame Rate 3-D, other 3-D formats and IMAX.

Harry Potter Stamps Come to America!

The U.S. Postal Service has issued five sheets of Harry Potter stamps, and to me these are long overdue. Many other countries have had HP stamps for years! And our Post Office has been complaining about low income for years, so maybe HP collectors will save the day.

See all the stamps on Snitchseeker

Order the HP stamps HERE

Which is my favorite? Snape of course! And he's on the same page with Dumbledore, McGonagall and Hagrid - teachers, not villains. I'm sure that will make some fans unhappy, LOL.
Description of the Teachers Page from USPS

At Hogwarts, the friends receive support and guidance from many of their professors, among them the four depicted on the third set of stamps-Rubeus Hagrid, Professor Minerva McGonagall, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, and Professor Severus Snape.

The Snape stamp may not say "Always," but does say "Forever." (In the U.S. a "forever" stamp can be used even if rates are raised.)

The only child character missing from the set is Neville, unfortunately. I think they wanted to get in all the most popular Weasleys, so they had to leave out someone. It's too bad. Maybe they will issue a second set in a few years with Sirius, Lupin, the other teachers, etc.

May I just say, though, that I LOVE the hippogriff stamp! And Dobby!!!

It's November ~ NaNoWriMo Time Again

It's National Novel Writing Month or "NaNoWriMo" - that time after Halloween when would-be writers everywhere close themselves off from distractions and type as fast as they can to reach 50,000 words by the end of November.

It's only November 3rd - not too late to get started!

This is my fifth year participating and yet it feels the same as the first time - the blank page is scary, the words either flow or they just stop coming, and I have to make myself stop editing work from the day before. Coffee is a must, as well as chocolate. I've told my family the only meal I guarantee this month is Thanksgiving Dinner. I'm going to write my heart out during the week when most of the family is at work or school because weekends are just too hectic, and there's always Christmas shopping - arghhh!

I wrote poetry in college, but never much long fiction. So the first year I did this I had NO characters in mind and no clue about how to start, but with the encouragement of friends I got a notebook and just started writing down plots that came into my head. And to my surprise, characters started appearing. I knew what they were thinking and what they did every day. I knew them better than I know my neighbors of 20 years. They were part of me, but some of them were as different as night and day.

I actually drew a map of the setting so I could keep it all straight. I started looking on the internet for pictures that reminded me of my characters and where they lived, and saved them in a folder for inspiration. I played around with anagrams, and I researched old county records for historical facts. Yes these are tricks, but it's also a world of fun! And all writers have to just sit and think, often for hours, about plot points and tricky plot twists. No one ever said it was easy!

Yes, I was up to the challenge in years past. I wrote and wrote until I reached 50,000 words - hooray! But actually none of my novels have ever been completely finished - they have ragged edges. Reality intruded during the editing process, and one of my novels had a plot hole. I also realized that there was so much baggage and backstory attached to my characters that it was taking up space, so this year I'm starting over with a prequel that will be short and sweet and this time complete. (Hmm, if this fiction gig doesn't work out, maybe I should go back to poetry!)

Canadian Author Alice Munro Wins Nobel Prize

Author Alice Munro, famous for her sharp, witty short stories, has won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

From the CBC

Alice Munro wins the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Canadian woman to take the award since its launch in 1901.

Munro, 82, only the 13th woman given the award, was lauded by the Swedish Academy during the Nobel announcement in Stockholm as the "master of the contemporary short story."

. . . Munro's stories focus on striking portraits of women living in small-town Ontario. They revolve around small epiphanies encountered by her characters, often when current events illuminate something that happened in the past.

"Her work is very provincial in that it's based in small towns and rural parts of Canada for the most part. At the same time, what she does with the characters in those places is show us their universality, their humanity." New Yorker magazine fiction editor Deborah Treisman, who has edited Munro's short stories for more than a decade, told Jian Ghomeshi on CBC's Q cultural affairs show.

"She takes a specific case and makes it feel so universal."

Alice Munro Archive Available at University of Canada

USA Today: Alice Munro Essential Reading List

Lark Rise to Candleford

Flora Thompson wrote Lark Rise to Candleford in 1945 as a memoir of both rural and city life in Victorian England. It was originally published in three volumes: Lark Rise, Over to Candleford, and Candleford Green, each narrated by Laura Timmins, a local girl who leaves her tiny community to work in the Post Office, the hub of city life at that time.

The trilogy it is available online from Gutenberg. And of course, there is an enjoyable dramatic BBC Series loosely based on the books. The series certainly captures the tone of the narration and the spirit of the people in the books. The books and DVDs are available on Amazon of course, and occasionally Lark Rise is shown on PBS stations around the country. It was on Netflix in the past but unavailable right now - that could certainly change.



From the Introduction:

She (Laura) is the recorder of hamlet, village, and country town who was of them but detached from them, and whose observation of their inmates by intimacy by no means clouded precision of insight and an objective capacity to grasp in a few sentences the essentials of character. One of the very best things Laura ever did was to become assistant post-mistress at Candleford Green. The post-office magnetized the whole village.
. . . In this tripartite book we distinguish three strata of social and economic period, cross-hatched by differences of social degree. In terms of geological time, the lowest stratum is the old order of rural England surviving rare but intact from a pre-industrial and pre-Enclosure past almost timeless in its continuity. The middle stratum, particularly represented in Lark Rise, discloses the old order impoverished, reduced in status, dispropertied but still clinging to the old values, loyalties, and domestic stabilities. The top stratum, symbolized in the row of new villas that began to link up Candleford Green with Candleford Town, is modern suburbia.
. . . Flora Thompson's simple-seeming chronicles of life in hamlet, village, and market town are, when regarded as an index to social change, of great complexity and heavy with revolutionary meaning. But this you do not notice until you look below the surface. The surface is the family lives and characters of Laura and her neighbours at Lark Rise, inhabited by ex-peasants, and the two Candlefords, where society is more mixed and occupation more varied. But the surface is transparent, and there are threatening depths of dislocation and frustration below it.

Excerpts:

From Lark Rise:

I
Poor People's Houses

The hamlet stood on a gentle rise in the flat, wheat-growing north-east corner of Oxfordshire. We will call it Lark Rise because of the great number of skylarks which made the surrounding fields their springboard and nested on the bare earth between the rows of green corn.

All around, from every quarter, the stiff, clayey soil of the arable fields crept up; bare, brown and windswept for eight months out of the twelve. Spring brought a flush of green wheat and there were violets under the hedges and pussy-willows out beside the brook at the bottom of the 'Hundred Acres'; but only for a few weeks in later summer had the landscape real beauty. Then the ripened cornfields rippled up to the doorsteps of the cottages and the hamlet became an island in a sea of dark gold.

To a child it seemed that it must always have been so; but the ploughing and sowing and reaping were recent innovations. Old men could remember when the Rise, covered with juniper bushes, stood in the midst of a furzy heath—common land, which had come under the plough after the passing of the Inclosure Acts. Some of the ancients still occupied cottages on land which had been ceded to their fathers as 'squatters' rights', and probably all the small plots upon which the houses stood had originally been so ceded. In the eighteen-eighties the hamlet consisted of about thirty cottages and an inn, not [Pg 2] built in rows, but dotted down anywhere within a more or less circular group. A deeply rutted cart track surrounded the whole, and separate houses or groups of houses were connected by a network of pathways. Going from one part of the hamlet to another was called 'going round the Rise', and the plural of 'house' was not 'houses', but 'housen'. The only shop was a small general one kept in the back kitchen of the inn. The church and school were in the mother village, a mile and a half away.

From Candleford Green:

Candleford Green was at that time a separate village. In a few years it was to become part of Candleford. Already the rows of villas were stretching out towards it; but as yet the green with its spreading oak with the white-painted seats, its roofed-in well with the chained bucket, its church spire soaring out of trees, and its clusters of old cottages, was untouched by change.

Miss Lane's house was a long, low white one, with the Post Office at one end and a blacksmith's forge at the other. On the turf of the green in front of the door was a circular iron platform with a hole in the middle which was used for putting on tyres to wagon and cart [Pg 408] wheels, for she was wheelwright as well as blacksmith and postmistress. She did not work in the forge herself; she dressed in silks of which the colours were brighter than those usually worn then by women of her age and had tiny white hands which she seldom soiled. Hers was the brain of the business.

To go to see Cousin Dorcas, as they had been told to call her, was an exciting event to Laura and Edmund, for they hoped to be shown her famous telegraph machine. There had been some talk about it at home when their parents heard it had been installed, and their mother, who had seen one, described it as a sort of clock face, but with letters instead of figures, 'and when you turn the handle,' she said, 'the hand goes round and you can spell out words on it, and that sends the hand round on the clock face at the other Post Office where it's for, and they just write it down, pop it into an envelope, and send it where it's addressed.'

'And then they know somebody's going to die,' put in Edmund.

. . . The famous telegraph instrument stood on a little table under her parlour window. There was a small model office for the transaction of ordinary postal business, but 'the telegraph' was too secret and sacred to be exposed there. When not in use, the dial with its brass studs, one for every letter of the alphabet, was kept under a velvet cover of her own devising, resembling a tea-cosy. She removed this to show the children the instrument and even allowed Laura to spell out her own name on the brass studs—without putting the switch over, of course, or, as she said, Head Office would wonder what they were up to.

. . . The grandfather's clock was kept exactly half an hour fast, as it had always been, and, by its time, the household rose at six, breakfasted at seven and dined at noon; while mails were despatched and telegrams timed by the new Post Office clock, which showed correct Greenwich time, received by wire at ten o'clock every morning.

Miss Lane's mind kept time with both clocks. Although she loved the past and tried to preserve its spirit as well as its relics, in other ways she was in advance of her own day. She read a good deal, not poetry, or pure literature—she had not the right kind of mind for that—but she took in The Times and kept herself well-informed of what was going on in the world, especially in the way of invention and scientific discovery. Probably she was the only person on or around the Green who had heard the name of Darwin. Others of her interests were international relationships and what is now called big business. She had shares in railways and the local Canal Company, which was daring for a woman in her position, and there was an affair called the Iceland Moss Litter Company for news of which watch had to be kept when, later, Laura was reading the newspaper aloud to her.

Had she lived later she must have made her mark in the world, for she had the quick, unerring grasp of a situation, the imagination to foresee and the force to carry through, which mean certain success. But there were few openings for women in those days, especially for those born in small country villages, and she had to be content to rule over her own small establishment. She had been thought queer and rather improper when, her father having died and left his business to her, his only child, instead of selling out and retiring to live in ladylike leisure at Leamington Spa or Weston-super-Mare, as her friends had expected, she had [Pg 412] simply substituted her own name for his on the billheads and carried on the business.

'And why not?' she asked. 'I had kept the books and written the letters for years, and Matthew is an excellent foreman. My father himself had not put foot inside the shop for ten months before he died.'

Her neighbours could have given her many reasons why not, the chief one being that a woman blacksmith had never been known in those parts before. A draper's or grocer's shop, or even a public-house, might be inherited and carried on by a woman; but a blacksmith's was a man's business, and they thought Miss Lane unwomanly to call herself one. Miss Lane did not mind being thought unwomanly. She did not mind at all what her neighbours thought of her, and that alone set her apart from most women of her day.

Bookish Pics

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Azkaban Chapters Now Complete on Pottermore

The final chapters of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban have been added to the interactive website Pottermore. Now readers can visit the Shrieking Shack, read backstory about Professor Lupin and the Marauders, and learn more about the magic of time turners and patronuses. And don't miss the new werewolf section!

In addition, Pottermore is sporting a new look with improved navigation through a series of menus at the bottom of each page. Now it's easier to jump from book to book and chapter to chapter. And if you go back through previous books, there are new potion ingredients and coins to find, and new sounds to go with each screen.

If you can't see the new material you might want to update flash player, clear your cache or cookies, try a different browser, or simply log out and log in again.

Poetry Passion ~ Ocean Waves, Rising Tides

From Four Quartets 3: The Dry Salvages

(The Dry Salvages—presumably les trois sauvages
— is a small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E.
coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced
to rhyme with assuages....)



. . . the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land’s edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation:
The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale’s backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.
It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices.
The salt is on the briar rose,
The fog is in the fir trees.
The sea howl
And the sea yelp, are different voices
Often together heard: the whine in the rigging,
The menace and caress of wave that breaks on water,
The distant rote in the granite teeth,
And the wailing warning from the approaching headland
Are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner
Rounded homewards, and the seagull:
And under the oppression of the silent fog
The tolling bell . . .

~ T. S. Eliot



The Ocean Strand

O leave the labouring roadways of the town,

The shifting faces and the changeful hue

Of markets, and broad echoing streets that drown

The heart’s own silent music. Though they too

Sing in their proper rhythm, and still delight

The friendly ear that loves warm human kind,

Yet it is good to leave them all behind,

Now when from lily dawn to purple night

Summer is queen,

Summer is queen in all the happy land.

Far, far away among the valleys green

Let us go forth and wander hand in hand

Beyond those solemn hills that we have seen

So often welcome home the falling sun

Into their cloudy peaks when day was done—

Beyond them till we find the ocean strand

And hear the great waves run,

With the waste song whose melodies I’d follow

And weary not for many a summer day,

Born of the vaulted breakers arching hollow

Before they flash and scatter into spray,

On, if we should be weary of their play

Then I would lead you further into land

Where, with their ragged walls, the stately rocks

Shunt in smooth courts and paved with quiet sand

To silence dedicate. The sea-god’s flocks

Have rested here, and mortal eyes have seen

By great adventure at the dead of noon

A lonely nereid drowsing half a-swoon

Buried beneath her dark and dripping locks.

~ C. S. Lewis

By The Pacific Ocean

Here room and kingly silence keep
Companionship in state austere;
The dignity of death is here,
The large, lone vastness of the deep;
Here toil has pitched his camp to rest:
The west is banked against the west.

Above yon gleaming skies of gold
One lone imperial peak is seen;
While gathered at his feet in green
Ten thousand foresters are told:
And all so still! so still the air
That duty drops the web of care.

Beneath the sunset’s golden sheaves
The awful deep walks with the deep,
Where silent sea doves slip and sweep,
And commerce keeps her loom and weaves
The dead red men refuse to rest;
Their ghosts illume my lurid West.

~ Joaquin Miller


Sea Fever


I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea’s face, and a gray dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way, where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

~ John Masefield


The Sea Limits



Consider the sea’s listless chime:
Time’s self it is, made audible,—
The murmur of the earth’s own shell.
Secret continuance sublime
Is the sea’s end: our sight may pass
No furlong further. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death’s,—it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world’s heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Gray and not known, along its path.

Listen alone beside the sea,
Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes
Shall have one sound alike to thee:
Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
Surge and sink back and surge again,—
Still the one voice of wave and tree.

Gather a shell from the strown beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea’s speech.
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art:
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti


The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls



The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on the roofs and walls
But the sea, the sea in darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Ebb Tide

When the long day goes by

And I do not see your face,

The old wild, restless sorrow

Steals from its hiding place.

My day is barren and broken,

Bereft of light and song,

A sea beach bleak and windy

That moans the whole day long.

To the empty beach at ebb tide,

Bare with its rocks and scars,

Come back like the sea with singing,

And light of a million stars.

~ Sara Teasdale

Jane Austen Graces the British 10 Pound Note

NBC News: Pounds and Prejudice

The writer of classics such as "Sense and Sensibility" and "Emma" will replace naturalist Charles Darwin on the reverse of Britain's most popular banknote.

Britain's central bank sparked an outcry in April when it announced former prime minister Winston Churchill would replace social reformer Elizabeth Fry on the reverse side of the five pound note, depriving the currency of its only female historical figure.

Mark Carney, the first foreigner to head the bank in its 319-year history, praised Austen as "one of the greatest writers in English literature" and said the choice of future banknote characters would be reviewed to ensure a row of this sort did not erupt again.

"We believe that our notes should celebrate the full diversity of great British historical figures and their contributions in a wide range of fields," he told a gathering at the Jane Austen House Museum in Chawton, the 17th century house where the author wrote some of her best-known novels.

The Austen notes are likely to come into circulation in 2017 and will feature a portrait adapted from an original sketch by Jane's sister together with the quote 'I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!' from Pride and Prejudice. ('A thousand times yes' does not appear in the book. That's a Keira Knightley special from the 2005 film based on the book.)
MORE AT LINK . . .

J.K. Rowling Admits Writing The Cuckoo's Calling

J.K. Rowling has pulled a fast one on the publishing world - having her crime novel The Cuckoo's Calling published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. I don't recall seeing this book on any of the Summer Lists in my previous post.

We know Rowling loves a good joke, and this one is worthy of the Weasley Twins. The cover reminds me of Dumbledore on Privet Drive turning out the street lights. The name of her detective, Cormoran Strike, sounds suspiciously like Severus Snape!

I guess you should order soon if you want Galbraith's name on the cover! The price has come down on Amazon from $20 to $16.90 just in the past 24 hours - if you want the real paper book that is. On Kindle it's $9.99.



NY Daily News

A detective novel secretly written by J.K. Rowling surged to the top of bestseller lists on Monday after the true identity of the author was revealed, embarrassing some publishers who had rejected the manuscript.
Rowling, whose Harry Potter series made her Britain's best-selling author, posed as a retired military policeman called Robert Galbraith to write "The Cuckoo's Calling", only to see her cover blown at the weekend by a Sunday newspaper.
The novel had only sold 1,500 hardback copies since being published in April. But by Monday it had raced to the top of Amazon.co.uk's best-selling list, leaving high street and online book merchants unable to slake demand.
"For a title that isn't even in our top 5,000 to shoot to number one so quickly is almost unheard of," Darren Hardy, books manager at Amazon.co.uk, told Reuters by email.
Hardy said this meteoric rise in sales meant "The Cuckoo's Calling" has established itself as a contender to become one of the biggest-selling books of the summer.

Editor Admits Rejecting Secret Novel

Kate Mills, fiction editor at Orion Publishing, came forward to admit that she had unwittingly turned down the new Rowling work, and suggested that colleagues at other publishers had done the same.
She told The Independent: “I thought it was well-written but quiet. It didn’t stand out for me and new crime novels are hard to launch right now.” Asked if she regretted revealing she had passed on the book, Ms Mills said: “No, it’s out there. You’ve got to love a book to take it on. It wasn’t for me.”
. . . The Cuckoo’s Calling follows private investigator Cormoran Strike, who is brought in to investigate when a model falls to her death from a Mayfair balcony. It received praise from crime writers including Ms McDermid, Mark Billingham and Alex Gray.
Ms McDermid said she was “gobsmacked” to find out the truth, bursting out laughing on Saturday when she was told. “It never crossed my mind at all. Nobody had any suspicion. The fake biog is very plausible.”
Ms McDermid had even asked for Robert Galbraith to join her Theakstons Crime New Blood panel, only to be told he would be away on holiday for the summer.

From Forbes

Once more, J.K. Rowling has a hit on her hands, as Robert Galbraith follows Richard Bachman with ‘cancer of the pseudonym’ and ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’ becomes a best-seller.
An interesting experiment has been unfortunately curtailed, and we’ll never know just how successful Galbraith’s detective series would have been. Now that the true author has been outed, the series is going to be a guaranteed hit. But it was already on course to do just that. As a debut novel the 1500 hardback copies shipped, with around 500 sales, was an impressive number given the circumstances of a saturated genre, a debut author, and little marketing spend behind the title. Rowling more than likely had another hit series on her head as Galbraith, and it would have been delightful to get to book three or four in the series, a potential movie deal in place, Patterson Joseph cast as Cormoran Strike, and then do the reveal.

Sail Away with These Summer Reading Lists

The Best Summer Reading Lists from around the Internet:

The Frisky: Crack That Spine Girl ~ Best Summer Beach Reads

Jane Austen Book Sleuth: New Books in the Queue for Summer 2013

BookPage: Private Eye July ~ Your Mystery Summer Reading List

Abe Books: Retro Summer Reading

Buzzfeed: 15 Book Series to Read if you Enjoyed Hunger Games

NY Times: Riding the Waves with Stephen King, Kevin Kwan, Carl Hiaasen and More

Flavorwire: 20 Highbrow Books to Read on the Beach

UC Berkley Freshman List ~ What Would Seniors Read?

Goodreads Popular Summer Reading List 2013

Entertainment Weekly: Ten Books for your Beach Bag

NPR Critics Complete Summer List 2013

LA Times Summer Fiction List

New BBC Series: Death Comes to Pemberly by P.D. James

The BBC is making a mini-series from the P.D. James Pride and Prejudice sequel Death Comes to Pemberley. Pemberly, of course, is the vast estate owned by the Darcy family.

WETA Blog: Watch Out Jane Austen Fans

The BBC has ordered a three-part adaptation of the novel Death Comes to Pemberley, a Pride and Prejudice sequel written by P.D. James, which tells the story of Austen’s famous couple six years into their marriage. But the question everyone wants to know is – who’s playing Mr. Darcy this time?

Answer: It’s Matthew Rhys. You may have seen him on ABC’s Brother’s and Sisters, the Masterpiece adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood or FX’s The Americans. And he’s aware of the inevitable Firth comparisons headed his way.

“Exciting as it is, one of the challenges of a part such as Darcy are the comparisons that will be drawn to those who've institutionalised him in the past,” Rhys said. "The beauty of 'Pemberley' is that it is an entirely new and different Darcy 6 years on. And also, I don't have to appear from a lake in a white shirt and breeches.”



Rhys will be joined by The Bletchley Circle’s Anna Maxwell as Lizzie, and Birdsong’s Matthew Goode is set to play the nefarious Wickham. The official synopsis says that the series will “combine classic period drama with a highly suspenseful and brilliantly crafted murder mystery plot,” apparently involving the murder of a friend of Wickham’s. Casting for the rest of the novel's major characters hasn't been announced yet, so we'll have to wait and see if any more recognizable faces will be part of this project.

Mixed Reviews for Lavish Great Gatsby

I haven't seen The Great Gatsby yet, but my husband and my two older children really enjoyed it. And yes, they were all quite familiar with the book.

Having said all that, here are some review excerpts - a mixed bag, indeed! But I don't see that as negative - on the contrary. Movies are art based on books but never word for word. That's why there can be two movies based on True Grit, each amazing and true to the book by Charles Portis, but with different endings. That's why there can be five versions of Pride and Prejudice, or countless versions of Sherlock Holmes. No director can please all of the people - he merely films his vision of the material.



From Muse

The Great Gatsby is very successful in conveying the seedy glitz of New York City in the roaring 20s, which is the setting for Fitzgerald’s classic novel. Anyone who has read the book and saw the film can attest to the fact that it stayed very true to the plot: Nick Carraway (Maguire), a shy, would-be writer is drawn to Long Island by the lure of Wall Street and its promise of riches. He becomes fascinated with his neighbour, Jay Gatsby (DiCaprio), an enigmatic millionaire with a taste for hosting extravagant parties.
Through Carraway’s relationships with his beautiful cousin Daisy (Mulligan), her cheating husband Tom Buchanan (Edgerton), and Gatsby himself, he bears witness to the sordid going-ons of the super rich of Long Island.

Ron Charles in Washington Post

Twelve hours after surviving the cultural desecration that is “The Great Gatsby,” it hit me: Baz Luhrmann’s movie version could be the next “Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
. . . Every time Daisy speaks, yell, “Her voice is full of money!” and throw Monopoly bills at the screen.
When Gatsby tells Nick, “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can,” sing, “Let’s do the time warp again!”

The Jane Austen Book Club

Just ignore the critics. Go and enjoy the spectacle that is The Great Gatsby. It was a pleasant surprise, after reading some fairly critical reviews.
The costumes were breathtaking. I mean truly breathtaking. Along with the sets. I particularly liked the way they dressed the little house next door to Gatsby's mansion where Nick Carraway lived. Arts and Crafts decor done to perfection. Makes me want to see it again.

New York Times Movie Review

“Gatsby” is not gospel; it is grist for endless reinterpretation. Mr. Luhrmann’s reverence for the source material is evident. He sticks close to the details of the story and lifts dialogue and description directly from the novel’s pages. But he has also felt free to make that material his own, bending it according to his artistic sensibility and what he takes to be the mood of the times. The result is less a conventional movie adaptation than a splashy, trashy opera, a wayward, lavishly theatrical celebration of the emotional and material extravagance that Fitzgerald surveyed with fascinated ambivalence.

The Age

This thoroughly modern reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald's great 1925 American novella is radically different in size, shape and tone to its source material. It also contrasts starkly with its cinematic predecessors, all of which had their own issues.
. . . Ultimately, though, what brings this Gatsby crashing down to Earth isn't its blatant disregard for the nuances so prevalent in Fitzgerald's book (which Luhrmann says he hasn't physically read), nor its overly earnest cravings for attention.
Rather, it's the nagging feeling that after 142 minutes, this Gatsby feels as disposable as the socialite parasites who inhabit the great man's world. Luhrmann understandably wants his Gatsby to be great, but he has inadvertently reminded us of one very simple truth: the Great American Novel belongs precisely where it still lives on, 90 years after its inception – on the page.

E.B. White ~ Letter About Libraries

Via @JohnFugelsang on Twitter. I wonder what Mr. White would make of the internet, or ebooks? And hey kids, in case you think this letter looks strange, it was done on an old-fashioned typewriter.

Murdoch Mysteries

Netflix is so addictive, especially when you find a new TV series with lots of episodes. And if the series is based on a book, it's a little bonus because when the episodes are over you can enjoy the characters a different way.

Right now I'm addicted to Murdoch Mysteries, which only has three seasons on Netflix, so books here I come!

Based on books by Maureen Jennings, this Canadian series set in Toronto was never shown in the U.S. and for the life of me I can't understand why, especially with the success of Downton Abbey and Mr. Selfridge on PBS.

There's a handsome lead actor, Yannick Brisson, who owns the character of Detective Murdoch. The supporting cast are delightful and funny - especially Constable Crabtree and his endless list of Aunts with flower names. The plots are imaginative, and the topic is completely trendy - the "Steampunk" turn of the century when inventions and discoveries were being made right and left. Yet society was still Victorian and repressed, which adds much of the tension between strait-laced Constable Murdoch and his lady love and fellow mystery-solver, Dr. Julia Ogden.

If you like old-fashioned mysteries with a little bit of gore, but also enjoy romance, this is the series for you.

Canadian Author Maureen Jennings on Amazon

Remembering E. L. Konigsburg

“The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except the part you carry with you. It's the same as going on a vacation. Some people spend all their time on a vacation taking pictures so that when they get home they can show their friends evidence that they had a good time. They don't pause to let the vacation enter inside of them and take that home.”
― E.L. Konigsburg, From The Mixed Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

My husband's favorite childhood book is From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. He says the story made him want to run away and live in a museum. I had a different favorite - a book that my younger sister and I read over and over called Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, the story of two very different girls, one of whom purports to be a witch, and who is a really good friend. E. L. Konigsburg was that rare writer whose books defied categorization by gender or age group, and that explains their long-running mass appeal. She went on to write The View from Saturday about a school Academic Bowl which was on all the gifted book lists when my children were in grade school in the 1990s - such a long career for a truly talented writer!


From NYICD Blog

Konigsburg was the only person to ever win two Newbery awards in the same year, recieving the Newbery honor (honorable mention) for her first manuscript, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, and the Newbery Medal for her second, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

She was perhaps best known for the latter work, in which a brother and sister run away from their suburban home and take up residence in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) in New York City. It is told from the point of view of the 82-year-old wealthy and eccentric Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, who is dictating the story to her attorney.

The story inspired a scene in the wonderful Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums during which siblings Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Richie Tanenbaum (Luke Wilson) also run away to live in the Met. In 1997, 29 years after her initial award, Konigsburg would again win the Newbery Medal for her story The View from Saturday. After winning the award, marking the longest gap between wins for any author, she told The Associated Press in an interview: "The award represents a kind of validation that I find most gratifying."

From the Detroit News

Konigsburg, better known to millions of young readers as E.L. Konigsburg, died April 19 in Falls Church, Va., after suffering a stroke. She was 83. In "Author Talk," a book edited by Leonard Marcus, Konigsburg said her books were based on what she perceived as a missing type of children's literature.
As a girl, she said, "I never found any characters in books whose lives resembled those of my classmates, my family and me. Years later, this made me want to write for children about things as they are — about people and places that my own children would recognize as real." In "Mixed-up Files," Konigsburg tells what happens when Claudia and Jamie decide to run away from their suburban Connecticut home and hide out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Once there, the children make themselves at home — even sleeping on a historic bed — solve an art mystery, but most importantly discover truths about themselves.

Poetry Passion ~ Green Spring

Daffodowndilly

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,
She wore her greenest gown;
She turned to the south wind
And curtsied up and down.
She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbour:
"Winter is dead."

~ A.A. Milne

[in Just-]

in Just-

spring          when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far          and             wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

         the

                  goat-footed

balloonMan          whistles

far

and

wee 

~ by E. E. Cummings

Spring Plowing

West of Omaha the freshly plowed fields
steam in the night like lakes.
The smell of the earth floods over the roads.
The field mice are moving their nests
to the higher ground of fence rows,
the old among them crying out to the owls
to take them all. The paths in the grass
are loud with the squeak of their carts.
They keep their lanterns covered.

~ Ted Kooser




Spring Storm

He comes gusting out of the house,
the screen door a thunderclap behind him.

He moves like a black cloud
over the lawn and---stops.

A hand in his mind grabs
a purple crayon of anger
and messes the clean sky.

He sits on the steps, his eye drawing
a mustache on the face in the tree.

As his weather clears,
his rage dripping away,

wisecracks and wonderment
spring up like dandelions.

~ Jim Wayne Miller












Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

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