After almost two years since the release of the hardcover book, Simon & Schuster is due to publish the paperback of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs this fall. But don’t mistake the cover photo for a clean-shaven Ashton. The paperback cover art will feature 29-year-old Jobs in the same fashion as the hardcover’s iconic black-and-white portrait. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Michael Tran/FilmMagic
If you already love Amy Poehler, there might be room to love her even more. Just listen to the Parks and Recreation star singing the praises of the one-and-only Judy Blume:
“I am excited to see Judy Blume’s new movie, because she is a very special lady, and more movies should be produced with her name,” Poehler told Vulture about the film adaptation of Blume’s 1981 novel Tiger Eyes, out in limited release now. “Or she should just sit and read her books aloud and we should just gather at her feet.”
But every kid of Poehler’s generation loves Judy Blume, right? That might be true (let’s be honest, it is), but Poehler took her Judy IQ a step further when one of her PR reps suggested that the Ramona series belonged to Blume.
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George Orwell’s 1984 imagines a near-future dystopia in which all human activity is surveilled and most of it is controlled. Last week, the American government came under sudden, sustained scrutiny after several of its top-secret surveillance programs were revealed to the public. Today, 1984‘s sales are up 127 percent on Amazon while a two-fer of 1984 and Animal Farm is up 314 percent.
Coincidence? READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Jon Rou
The nation’s top poet is staying put. According to the AP, Natasha Trethewey has been reappointed poet laureate, entering her second year, the Library of Congress will announce Monday.
Trethewey is coming off a busy year as the first Southern laureate since Robert Penn Warren. She released a new collection, Thrall, last August, while continuing as a professor at Emory University. (That’s on top of her 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Native Guard.) In her second term, which officially begins in September, Trethewey will reportedly collaborate with PBS on reports “about poetry and society.”
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Remi Aubuchon announced last month that he is stepping down from his post as showrunner for TNT’s Falling Skies before the expected fourth season in order to focus on his debut novel. The TV job was simply “all-consuming” and left little time for writing a novel.
Ahead of the alien-invasion show’s season 3 premiere tomorrow, Aubuchon provided some details about the yet-untitled book: It will take place in a steampunk civilization on a Pangea-like supercontinent. “It imagines a world in which there’s one solid continent, but it’s in the middle of breaking up, so that’s causing a lot of havoc, [including] political havoc,” Aubuchon explains. READ FULL STORY »
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Simon & Schuster is willing to give a second chance to Jonah Lehrer, the best-selling author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist. Lehrer’s most recent book Imagine was pulled by his previous publisher Houghton Mifflin after he admitted to falsely attributing quotes to Bob Dylan. He subsequently resigned from his post at The New Yorker, where he was accused of recycling material from other publications. Despite the controversy, Simon & Schuster announced the future publication of Lehrer’s next book, tentatively titled The Book of Love.
According to a book proposal obtained by The New York Times, it appears Lehrer is actually using his public disgrace as the driving force of his next book. He wrote in the proposal, “Careers fall apart; homes fall down; we give away what we don’t want and sell what we can’t afford. … And yet, if we are lucky, such losses reveal what remains. When we are stripped of what we wanted, we see what we will always need: those people who love us, even after the fall.” READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Legendary Comics
Unleashing the Kraken would surely satisfy any appetite for cinematic destruction, right? Think again because Clash of the Titans screenwriter Travis Beacham went looking for bigger fish to fry (or, uh, more substantial sea monsters to sauté?) and the result is the Guillermo del Toro-helmed Pacific Rim, one of the most-anticipated genre films of 2013 and one of the very few that is not a sequel or a prequel, a remake or an adaptation, or (as in the case of Star Trek Into Darkness) some meta-hybrid of the above. Beacham has taken the story one step further and turned the origins of Pacific Rim into a companion comic, Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zero.
The story is set in a near-future where coastal cities are ravaged by giant beasties who enter our world through a mysterious inter-dimensional portal down in briny depths. Out this week, Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zero (112-page hardcover, $24.99 from Legendary) was written by Beacham and illustrated by Sean Chen, Yvel Guichet, Pericles Junior, Chris Batista, and Geoff Shaw. The Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures movie stars Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, and Ron Perlman and opens July 12 in 3-D and IMAX 3-D.
EW spoke with Beacham about the challenges of fitting the huge scale of the movie into a companion comic.
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Image Credit: Jason Bell
For her upcoming third outing, Bridget Jones has changed quite a bit — she’s older, living in present-day London, and she’s immersed in texting and social media — but judging from the title of the new book, she’s still having relationship issues. And yes, she’s still keeping a diary.
Knopf has announced that the third Bridget Jones novel by Helen Fielding, coming out Oct. 15, will be called Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, although everyone is keeping tight-lipped about who the “boy” is. The publisher has also released a micro-excerpt: READ FULL STORY »
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Lea Michele is writing her first book: The Broadway star and Glee actress has inked a deal with Harmony Books to release Brunette Ambition in spring of 2014. She joins other actor-writers from the cast, including Chris Colfer and Jenna Ushkowitz, whose Choosing Glee was released earlier this month.
“There wasn’t a guidebook when I was growing up, that detailed everything I would need to do, and know, to get where I am today,” Michele said in a statement. “But I believe I can write one of sorts: not a how-to-make-it-in-show-business book, but a guide to harnessing tenacity, passion, enthusiasm, and hard work to make your dreams come true.”
Daughter of Smoke & Bone blew us away; Days of Blood & Starlight didn’t disappoint; and now we’re anxiously awaiting Laini Taylor’s third and final installment of her celestial epic, which we’ve learned is called Dreams of Gods & Monsters (out Spring 2014).
Dreams starts where Days left off, with Karou and Akiva discovering each other alive — although Karou is still not ready to forgive Akiva for killing the only family she’s ever known. And now, through an act of staggering deception, Karou has taken control of the chimaera rebellion and is intent on steering its course away from dead-end vengeance. When Jael’s brutal angel army trespasses into the human world, Karou and Akiva must ally their enemy armies against the threat. It is a twisted version of their long-ago dream, and they begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people. And, perhaps, for themselves – maybe even toward love. But there are bigger threats than Jael in the offing. From the streets of Rome to the caves of the Kirin and beyond, humans, chimaera, and seraphim will fight, strive, love, and die in an epic theater that transcends good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy.
If you can’t wait for the conclusion, you’re absolutely not alone! Taylor’s fans are particularly vocal and involved, and to celebrate that enthusiasm, Taylor has hosted a contest for a fan-made trailer for Days of Blood & Starlight. See the winning video by Christine Tyler below, plus a few words from Taylor herself! READ FULL STORY »
