If you spent you holiday weekend selling books to folks who weren’t working, you may have missed these interesting bits of Internet flotsam.

Nobody is really sure who is going to direct a film adaptation of Hunger Games, but everyone is pretty sure that the lead will be played by Kick-Ass’ Hit Girl. She’ll definitely have to tone down the potty mouth if this film is to get a PG-13 or younger rating.

The New Yorker eviscerates Rhonda Byrne, The Secret and the mega-cottage industry it has spawned.

The new Odd Couple: he digs his iPad, she likes old-fashioned books. Can two readers devoted to different content delivery systems live in the same apartment without driving each other crazy?

Speaking of Hit-Girl, the actress who plays her (and possibly Hunger Games’ Katniss), Chloe Grace Moretz, is playing the eternally prepubescent vampire in the American remake of Let the Right One In, now titled Let Me In.

Okay, this isn’t exactly new. I had avoided looking at this for a long time, but it turns out my fears may be unwarranted. As long as they don’t tack on a Hollywood ending, it should be pretty good. Check out the trailer and see if you agree. If you haven’t seen the Swedish film of Let the Right One In…do it…now!

If you’re wishing to trigger premature blindness, you might want to check out HuffPo’s piece on The 11 Worst Memoir Covers Ever.

Some of them aren’t really that bad (like Ricky Martin’s…it almost looks like Andre Agassi’s), but I really with I could un-see Jamie (M*A*S*H’s Klinger) Farr’s cover (below).

So, in the interest of making sure that I’m putting something up on this blog, I give to you this bit from io9, which lists Fantastic Scifi Graphic Novels (That Will Hook You For Life).

It’s a really good list, without any of the obvious contenders (Dark Knight Returns, Maus, and Sandman, I’m looking in your direction). I’m especially happy that both Charles Burns’ Black Hole, and Paul Pope’s Heavy Liquid (below) made the list.

I’m also really happy that somebody in the comments made a case for the Vertigo Crime graphic novels. Each is a stand-alone story, featuring writers from within the comics realm (BrianAzzarello) and without (Ian Rankin and Peter Straub). The ones I’ve read so far range from really good to awesome.

Azzarello

I can’t decide whether I want to go for the Jack Kerouac alarm clock or the Gertrude Stein stein (below).

Bottom line: you still have to wait until Tuesday September 31st to buy the darn thing.

Also, if you want to have a good laugh, you should check out the Twitter feed from Emperor Franzen (below)

(via Shelf Awareness)

]]> http://blog.partners-west.com/?feed=rss2&p=2467 0 http://blog.partners-west.com/?p=2458 http://blog.partners-west.com/?p=2458#comments Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:05:53 +0000 Gerry http://blog.partners-west.com/?p=2458

Netflix just released an iPhone app that allows users to stream movies over their phone. Just pick the movie, click the screen, and away you go (assuming that you have a a strong signal over AT&T’s 3G network).

Usually, I like to read a book while I’m in situations where I have short distractions, like waiting in line at the post office, or waiting for a movie (in a theater) to start. It seems almost perverse that I can just fire up Fast Times At Ridgemont High, or season one of The Rockford Files anytime and nearly anyplace I want to.

GalleyCat used this occasion to list the Best Netflix Streaming Movies for Readers: Dramas Based on Contemporary Literature. It’s a swanky list that includes adaptations of Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, Omega Man (based on Richard Mathison’s novella I Am Legend), and Stand By Me (based on the Stephen King short story The Body).

The list itself is culled from dozens of movies that Netflix has listed under that rubric.

One obvious choice that I can’t believed they missed was the Swedish adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I guess they figured that nobody would want to strain their eyes trying to read the subtitles on such a tiny screen.

AMC, the basic cable channel that brought us Mad Men, will tackle Robert Kirkman’s zombie comic The Walking Dead (published by Image Comics), turning it into a live-action series.

Yes, I am tired of all the zombie mash-ups, but this is a good old-fashioned hordes of undead trying to turn the survivors into Meow Mix.

Appropriate, the series will premiere on Halloween, which I guess will become National Speak Like a Zombie Day.

Fortunately, there’s enough time to stock up on the twelve volumes (so far) of Walking Dead graphic novels. They’re already selling like hotcakes, so it’s not hard to imagine their sales skyrocketing once these zombies star to strut their stuff.

io9 has posted a feature listing what they call All the Books You’ll Be Lusting For This Fall Season.

Since they are a SF/Fantasy blog, the books tend to gravitate towards those genres, and wow what a list.

When you come across these titles in catalogs, they are usually buried in amongst cookbooks and books telling you how to feel good about yourself while losing twenty-pounds and making a million dollars.

But, laid out end to end in a veritable smorgasbord…let’s just say that my eyes are bigger than my brain, or my available leisure time.

While I was expecting to see new books by Scott Westerfield and William Gibson, I’m so glad that they gave a shout-out to a (slightly) lesser known writer. In this case, Richard Kadrey. He wrote a novel that went under a lot of readers’ radars called Sandman Slim, which was a great book to handsell once you laid out the plot. His new one is a sequel called Kill the Dead, and I can’t wait to read it.

Time to switch into mooch-mode and call my Harper rep.

Marketing guru (and author of books such as Purple Cow and the recent Linchpin) Seth Godin has announced that he is ditching traditional publishing after successfully publishing 12 bestselling titles.

According an upcoming interview with Mediabistro, he says “I like the people, but I can’t abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don’t usually visit to buy something they don’t usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that’s hard to spread”.

It’s hard to argue with him on this front, especially since he’s the kind of author who has bestsellers even after giving away the contents for free online. He writes the type of books that are quick to read, but somehow manage to resonate for a long time afterwaradsf; basically hit-and-run jobs on the business brain.

Still, it would be nice to think that if the market still exists for his books in the traditional paper and ink format (and it’s hard to believe that there isn’t), that he might license the content via print-on-demand.