Category: News & Curiosities

Pieces of eight

And by eight, I mean news:

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Ah–! Art Student Hand-Illuminates, Binds a Copy of the Silmarillion; Tolkien fans across the world experience heart palpitations.

Check here for an interview with the artist, and larger images of his gloriously detailed work.

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And some incredible (belatedly posted, here) news for fans of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn. Since the release of the 1982 animated adaptation, Beagle had been denied payment of contractually due royalties for the film. At the beginning of August, Connor Cochran, Beagle’s business manager, sent this announcement:

“THE EIGHT-YEAR STRUGGLE FOR PETER’S LAST UNICORN RIGHTS IS OVER!

Really. No joke, no fooling. It’s over. And everybody won. […] For now suffice to say that Peter has signed an agreement with ITV that (a) ends the whole mishagosh in a way that is great for him, and (b) great for ITV, and (c) great for LAST UNICORN fans everywhere, since now all kinds of things are going to be possible that could never be done before.”

This is news that I’ve been waiting to hear for years.

I’d been exploratorily rereading bits from The Last Unicorn, lately – exploratorily because I know I’ve been growing out of a lot of things that used to fill my head and make me cry. We’re safe; TLU still makes me cry. (It probably helps that I still feel completely unironically about unicorns.) I sound a little flippant, but it’s a deeply beautiful, wise, and timeless book. I don’t like recommending it willy-nilly because I know unironic books about unicorns and mortality and love aren’t everyone’s thing (even though it is sometimes ironic, too! and meta!), but consider this my sideways plea for more people to read it.

Hey, “unironic” and “unicorn” are almost anagrams. Coincidence? I think not.

Go to:
Peter S. Beagle: bio and works reviewed
The Last Unicorn comic #1 (2010): review by Emera
The Last Unicorn comic #2 (2010): review by Emera

The faces of Endicott

Endicott Studio is an association of writers, artists, and performers dedicated to arts based in mythological and folkloric traditions. (Wikipedia tells me that it began as a warehouse-turned-salon-space in Boston; wish I had been around for it then.) I was aware of their work on the Journal of Mythic Arts, but wasn’t quite clear on who all comprised the studio. While I was looking for something else (that I’ve now forgotten, in the way of the Internet), I stumbled upon this nifty compilation celebrating 20 years of Endicott, featuring photos from 1987 and 2007 of many of the creatives behind Endicott: founder Terri Windling, Charles Vess, Neil Gaiman, Ellen Kushner,  Delia Sherman, the Frouds, Holly Black, Catherynne Valente, Theodora Goss, and a host of other Black Letters favorites.

A lot of the 1987 photos are downright adorable, it goes without saying. (prom! ’80’s hair! scrunchies and onesies!) Check them out here:

Twenty Years of Mythic Arts

P.S. Terri Windling keeps an Endicott Studio blog here, filled with art, music, history, and links galore, for those of a mythical inclination.

– E

The long good-bye

Say farewell to Borders: “Borders to shut down for good after deal collapses.”

In a twist or knell or something or other, I received what will theoretically be my last-ever package from Borders yesterday, too.

Any Borders reminiscences to share? I just remembered that Borders was the first legit bookstore in my vicinity to stock manga; prior to that I’d scoured E. B. Games and, occasionally, Toys ‘R’ Us, to pick up single, frequently battered issues of Pokémon, Digimon, and some horrifically translated Gundam Wing. I think my first high-intensity exposure to manga (lots of it! all in one place! in a bookstore!) was a long, dazed afternoon in a Borders spent flipping through, among others, a CLAMP series that seemed really cryptic and creepy at the time, probably partly because the first volume was missing. I’m not going to say what series it was, just to preserve the imagined mystique.

Edit: This article does a great job of explaining what Borders’ closing will mean for consumers, publishers, and authors.

“How To Buy a Book,” and authorial fisticuffs

For anyone who’s ever fussed over conscientious book-buying and the care and keeping of indigent authors, Nick Mamatas advises on How To Buy a Book (or where, really). Much of it seems to come down to whether a retailer feeds into BookScan, a book-sale data compiler that informs many publishers’ decisions. More interesting details with which to inform your future Amazon vs. indie decisions over at the post.

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If you’ve ever found yourself wondering what China Miéville would look like with hair, you may well fall within the target audience for this blog: Could They Beat-Up China Miéville? In a sort of long-form, extra-nerdy variation on Chuck Norris facts, two bloggers take turns scripting deathmatches between everyone’s favorite weird-fiction pioneer/nerd sex symbol and a variety of cultural icons, e.g. Sting and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Why not?

– E

All-new and unexpurgated

My favorite book-news of late! An uncensored edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray has been published, based on Wilde’s original typescript. Some previously snipped and pruned bits: Basil Hallward’s more explicit effusions towards Dorian (“It is quite true I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man should ever give to a friend”); a sinuously creepy/sexually charged episode in which a stranger pursues Dorian in the street, “passing and repassing him many times;” references to Dorian’s “mistresses;” and other elements that might offend “an innocent woman.”

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Ever wondered how all those prodigious sellers on Amazon actually get their books? A Slate contributor unloads his guilt regarding his current profession: trawling used-book sales with a barcode-reading PDA in search of books that can turn a profit online. It’s a pretty depressing read, but says some interesting things about bookselling, reading, and bibliophile culture.

“The book merchant of the high-cultural imagination is a literate compleat and serves the literate. He doesn’t need a scanner, because he knows more than the scanner knows. I fill a different niche—I deal in collectible or meaningful books only by accident. I’m not deep, but I am broad. My customer is anyone who needs a book that I happen to find and can make money from.”

…

“When I work with my scanner and there’s someone else shopping near me who wants to read books, I feel that my energy is all wrong—high-pitched, focused narrowly in the present, and jealous. Someone browsing through books does it with a diffuse, forgetful curiosity, a kind of open reckoning that she learned from reading.”

(emphasis mine, just because I liked the observation so much.)

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And my silly overlapping-fandom squee for the week: Cat Valente and Ursula Vernon briefly discuss an aviating capybara.

– E

SJ 2010

2010 Shirley Jackson award nominees are out – which I’m selfishly extra-excited to see this year because Kakaner and I have scheduled a week this summer to go gallivanting off to Readercon, where the awards are presented. Awwww yeah. (This will be my first-ever con, for the record.)

Dribs and drabs of thought –

  • More title synchronicity (“A / Dark Matter”) – as with “Palimpsest” for the 2010 Hugo noms.
  • Joey Comeau!! Did not expect to see him there. (He’s better known as the word-provider for A Softer World, though Kakaner and I have been sorta following his standalone prose since he started with Lockpick Pornography back around… 2005?)
  • Clearly I really need to pick up Haunted Legends, though I’ve kind of spiralled out of my horror anthology phase.
  • I also need to look into Karen Joy Fowler at some point. See her name everywhere, know nothing about her work.

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Go to:

Shirley Jackson

A few things Gaiman, one thing not

Neil Gaiman will be writing the script for an English-language film adaptation of Journey to the West. This sounds like it should be very fun, indeed. There might also be some Guillermo del Toro in the mix, hurrah.

At first when I read the news I also thought that this might be the project that Gaiman’s been alluding to during his extended travels in China these past couple years, but I suspect that there’s still something else (or maybe several somethings else) to come out of that.

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The Gneil has also revealed that a film adaptation of American Gods is underway, helmed by a director with “many, many Oscars.” I must admit that the idea of an American Gods movie seems to me only slightly less disastrous than a Sandman movie, but I’ll keep mum till more details are out.

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The winner of the 2010 Tiptree Award, for sff that explores and challenges ideas of gender, has been announced! I also recognize lots of titles on the short- and longlists as books that I Really Should Be Reading…

– E

Go to:

Neil Gaiman

http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/news/a311009/neil-gaiman-confirms-american-gods-film.html

Another sad farewell

Diana Wynne Jones has passed away at the age of 76. I had had no idea that she was ill. Apparently, at least as late as last summer she was still working on two books, which makes me think yet again how much I love authors as people, how much I admire their devotion to their creations and their readers.

While her books weren’t a big part of my childhood, apart from a brief love affair with The Dark Lord of Derkholm, I very much wish they had been – a later read of Howl’s Moving Castle had me cursing myself for not having read it when I was a bit younger. And regardless, I’ve always had a strong sense of her presence and influence in the worlds of fantasy and children’s literature, of her warmth and irreverence.

Good-bye, Diana.

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Part of what had me so shocked when Brian Jacques passed away was my longstanding impression that Redwall, as a world and as a series, could go on forever. For better or for worse, in the case of the series – to me the books began to seem unbearably repetitive somewhere around Taggerung. But regardless of the quality of the later books, and regardless of the criticisms of moral black-and-whiteness and so on, there was so much good in Redwall. And my impression always included my image of Jacques himself – the mousethief, loving, mischievous, honorable, stubbornly old-fashioned – as part of that good, that heartening sense of solidity, comradeship, and simple joy. I mean, come on, he was a bearded, twinkly-eyed former sailor. He started telling the Redwall stories to children at a school for the blind when he was working as a milkman. Repeat what I said above about loving authors as people.

Andy of Anagnorisis shares her remembrances of growing up with Redwall, and meeting Brian Jacques, in a beautiful memorial post here. And – eulalia!!!

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This is perhaps a morbid thought, but all of this is making me want to hunt down the addresses of my most favorite children’s authors and send them letters to tell them how much they mean to me, while I still can.

Picture Book Report comes to an end

I was too scatterbrained to link to this while it was running, but I recently saw the sad news that Picture Book Report, a blog bringing together 15 extremely talented illustrators to create an “extended love-song to books,” is retiring after one year of operation.

Check out the blog for varied illustrations and associated commentary on classic and, more importantly, beloved works from Where the Red Fern Grows, to Sabriel, to Brave New World (the latter done by one of my absolute favorite illustrators, Emily Carroll).

– E