Weblog Love on Wednesdays

Are Wednesdays quickly becoming your favorite day of the week? I bet I can guess why...

1. Fun and General Bookishness

I actually teared up when I read this portion of the essay on how reading changed an immigrant child's life from 5 Minutes for books: "She’d lean over my shoulder, breathing down my neck as I read, my finger tracing the words as I sounded them out. The pages began to surrender the magical words, and she found them enchanting!" It's beautiful. Please go read the whole thing. You won't be disapppointed.

2. Book Reviews/Features

Very Short List featured the Harvard Lampoon's book Nightlight, the much-attention-getting-in-the-industry parody of Twilight. People are quick to point out that Harvard hasn't touched anything since Lord of the Rings (with Bored of the Rings), but is this Harvard's way of saying that the Twilight Saga rivals the LOTR Trilogy in terms of literary weight? I certainly hope not. But that also doesn't mean, that as a reformed former-Twilight-obsessive, that I won't be reading it.

Books on the Nightstand chimes in on this Twilight phenomena and other literary fads--including the current trend of zombies being "all the rage" right now--during their 51st podcast. As somebody who is currently reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I'm happy to say that I'm on this particular bandwagon. You'll want to give this a listen because there are some books that you're likely to enjoy, but (likely) haven't yet heard of.

Edge of Seventeen posted an interview with The Heights author, Brian James. His take on re-imagining Wuthering Heights for young adults--from conception through contemporary characterization--hooked me onto his book.

3. Publishing Industry Tid-Bits

Eric (via Laura) at Pimp My Novel opened my eyes to the fact that Walden Books is "right-sizing" down from 330 to 130 stores. It's sad that people are losing their jobs, but he points out some up-sides to it that are worth considering.

Angela at Market My Novel wrote a post about Simon & Schuster's move toward selling individual chapters via digitital download and had some interesting thoughts on when/why this might be a good business model. She keeps it in the realm of nonfiction books, but I could also see this working for debut authors of fiction--sell the first couple of chapters on the cheap ($0.99, perhaps?), get people hooked, and then sell an "upgrade" for the rest of the book for the remaining balance on the full e-download price ($9).

Eric, in elaborating about the movie tie-in phenomena, writes, "Even if the reviews for the movie are uniformly abysmal, there will still be a bump in sales for the book. No one is quite sure why this is, but my theory is that most people bank on the book being better than the movie (or, alternately, they just want to see whether the book was just as bad)." I'll admit that I am one who helps contribute to the movie tie-in phenomena (although I rarely buy the tie-in version; more often the trade paperback) because I want to read the book before watching the movie. What about you?

4. Book Blogger Highlights

Speaking of PMN's guest, Laura, she's got her own brand-spanking new blog, Combreviations, that you should find a spot in your Reader for. So far, as of Monday morning (when I'm writing this), she's posted about the afore-mentioned Walden "right-sizing" and then Jane Austen's saucy ways. Check her out.

100 Scope Notes is hosting "Covers Week" this week. Design your own children's picture book, read interviews with designers, and much, much more. But be warned: You're likely to find tons of other fantastic kid-lit blogs (such as Art Director/Designer Chad Beckerman's blog Mishaps and Misadventures) that will require more blog-reading time. Is that bad?