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