Faevourite

I didn’t have a blog planned for this week but have just seen this all over the book trade press so I have to post about it because I think as many people should get involved as possible.

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Watership Down (which just happens to be my favourite book), some academics are holding a 3-day conference at the University of Glasgow from 2-4 September 2022. It is hoped that a collection of essays, primarily based on papers given at the conference, will follow. Current keynote speakers include Richard Adams’ daughter Rosamond Mahony, as well S. F. Said and Briony Wickes.

Here’s the website: https://watershipdownat50.com/

It looks like more details are to come, currently they’re asking for 20-minute papers on “any aspect of Watership Down, its influences and legacy.” With a list of suggested topics:

• Adams’s other works
• Adaptations
• Animal-human relations
• Anthropomorphism
• Crossover fiction
• Ecology and the environment
• Influence on later children’s literature
• Invented languages
• Mythopoeia
• Precursors
• Real and fictional geographies
• Richard Adams’s biography
• The animal story tradition

If you’re interested in contributing then send abstracts (up to 200 words) to Dimitra Fimi (Dimitra.Fimi@glasgow.ac.uk), University of Glasgow, and Catherine Butler (ButlerC6@cardiff.ac.uk), Cardiff University, by 31 August 2021.

I don’t know about you but I’m fucking hyped.

(Unrelatedly, I have a YouTube video about rabbits and books coming out this Wednesday, make sure you’re following my channel when it drops…)

Isn’t it funny
How a bear likes honey?
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
I wonder why he does?

I don’t know if I’ve ever said this before on my blog but I think Winnie the Pooh is so fucking funny and underrated. One of my favourite moments from the books is when Pooh accidentally eats Eeyore’s birthday present (honey) and gives him the empty jar instead, as a Useful Pot to Keep Things In, inscribed by Owl to read:

HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY

I feel like this Hundred Acre Wood biscuits would be a great gift in a pot inscribed with HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY which imo is peak comedy. And this is a really ridiculously simple recipe that takes less than five minutes to put together. Since I originally drafted out this post (it’s been sitting in my drafts for… uhhh.. at least five years) I’ve become a vegan so I would recommend using a vegan honey alternative like Hunee instead, and a banana or vegan egg yolk substitute like Vegg for the yolk. And whatever butter substitute you probably already have in your house..

Ingredients

• 120g butter /vegan alternative
• 120g sugar
• 1 tbsp honey /vegan alternative
• 1 egg yolk /vegan alternative
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 180g self-raising flour

Method

1. Cream the ingredients together with a spoon
2. Roll the mixture into small balls with your hands and put them on a lined baking tray
3. Bake for 12-15 minutes at 180 degrees – take them out before then if they get too brown!
4. Wait for them to cool and then eat all of the biscuits

*I named the cookies ‘Hundred Acre Wood Honey Biscuits’ because I thought ‘Pooh biscuits’ wouldn’t sound as appetising, somehow.

I just wanted to share this old pic from when I realised I am literally my tween fave Anastasia Krupnik.

It is my way of saying (like I do every year….): I’m back babeey!

You might see I’ve renamed the site. I’m not sure how but someone stole the Gliterature domain from me, so now we will be known as FAEVOURITE! I will be focusing on fantasy books (and maybe video games and films). Byeeee!

• Coronavirus: Reed Exhibitions Cancels London Book Fair ‘With Reluctance’
• Book trade ‘disappointed’ but understanding as LBF cancelled due to coronavirus
• Hachette staff walkout to protest Woody Allen’s memoir
• Publishers report sales boom in novels about fictional epidemics
• In defence of modern children’s books
• Hachette USA Employees Walk Out to Protest Woody Allen Book
• Analysis: The ‘American Dirt’ apology tour goes streaming with emotional Oprah special
• Migrant Mother: Dorothea Lange and the Truth of Photography
• Ann Napolitano: Honor Your Obsessions—Especially the Weird Ones
• How Do You Write A Mystery When Every Plot Is Taken?
• No more ‘nagging wives’: how Oxford Dictionaries is cleaning up sexist language
• Chancellor scraps VAT on ebooks
• The coronavirus and the book trade
• Amazon: Staff told to work overtime as virus spikes demand
• Amazon Deprioritizes Book Sales Amid Coronavirus Crisis
• Covid-19 forces widespread bookshop closures as major publishers go remote
• George R. R. Martin says he’s writing next ‘Game of Thrones’ book while in isolation
• B&N’s Daunt: ‘Books Are Essential’
• Waterstones CEO James Daunt: Accusations we endangered book sellers are ‘utter s***’
• In pandemic, word definitions shift and new lexicon emerges
• You Have a Moral Responsibility to Post Your Boring Life on Instagram
• Plagues follow bad leadership in ancient Greek tales
• Book sales surge as self-isolating readers stock up on ‘bucket list’ novels
• Coronavirus: Book sales surge as readers seek escapism and education
• Jessica Kingsley launches prize for trans and non-binary voices
• Publishers encourage staff ‘trapped at home’ to use holiday now
• Finally working on that novel as you self-isolate? You’re not alone
• Locked down, but not out
• Albert Camus novel The Plague leads surge of pestilence fiction
• The Mirror and the Light top, but market data no longer available

• My Dark Vanessa controversy, explainedRare Charlotte Brontë ‘little book’ to go on show at Haworth
• American Dirt’s problem is bad writing, not cultural appropriation
• World Book Day strikes McDonald’s deal
• Reading Ferrante’s New Novel in Italian
• Barnes & Noble pulls editions of classic novels with people of color on covers
• Voices of Change: Tomi Adeyemi, Akwaeke Emezi, Elizabeth Acevedo, Angie Thomas, and Nic Stone are rewriting the rules of young adult fiction.
• What Does Jeanine Cummins Find Thrilling About the Border?
• How Anonymous became a star in publishing
• The Maggie Nelson Test for Lesbian Dating Success
• Missing mothers and motherhood in fiction
• Ambidextrous Authorship: Greta Gerwig and the Politics of Women’s Genres
• How Obama’s Reading Shaped His Writing
• The way we read now
• 594 Ways of Reading Jane Eyre
• From Sonic the Hedgehog to Star Wars, are fans too entitled?
• The Surprising 18th-Century Origins of Fan Fiction
• Hundreds of readers donate copies of depression memoir after Caroline Flack’s death
• Samaritans joins with SoA on guidance for writers on depicting self-harm
• Bookstore trolls J.K. Rowling by donating money from her book sales to a transgender charity
• Reed ‘monitors’ coronavirus situation, as Asia attendees stay away from LBF
• Brandon Taylor, Reluctant Novelist
• I would love to date a man who can’t read
• Who Should Decide What Books Are Allowed In Prison?
• The Post-Traumatic Novel
• Waterstones closes Camden High Street branch
• Waterstones defends minimum wage in year of record profits

Happy New Year!

• ‘People are so happy we exist’: indie bookshops grow despite retail slump
• What Your Choice of Dialogue Tags Says About You
• Nipsey Hussle Marathon Book Club creates a space for black men
• This Babushka has Talons (by Nell Zink)
• Small Worlds: The inward-looking lives of Little Women
• Can a work of fiction about the holocaust be inaccurate?
• For linguists, it was the decade of the pronoun
• Half of a Yellow Sun is a masterpiece in balancing truth and fiction
• Five rules for proofreading your own work
• LinkedIn’s SlideShare is a vast emporium for pirated e-books. Authors are paying the price
• 150m Shades of Grey: how the decade’s runaway bestseller changed our sex lives
• Audible settles copyright lawsuit with publishers over audiobook captions
• ‘Why would I close the door to a queer person?’ LGBTQ fantasy comes of age
• Sci-fi magazine pulls story by trans writer after ‘barrage of attacks’
• The Machines Are Coming, and They Write Really Bad Poetry
• Was it good for you? The evolution of sex in fiction
• Why women read fiction
• Whatever Happened to ______?
• Headline ‘proud’ of American Dirt as debate heats up
• Maaza Mengiste: ‘The language of war is always masculine’
• ‘Dating coaches’ target Kinokuniya Sydney
• She too
• Is Jane Austen the Antidote to Social Media Overload?
• Smorgasbords Don’t Have Bottoms
• Macmillan employees banned from attending DBW conference over ebook embargo
• Rediscovering the Lost Power of Reading Aloud
• How Not to Write a Book Review
• My Taco Laughs at You: On Death Threats Aimed at Women of Color Who Don’t Fellate White Supremacy
• Normal Novels
• Naming a Kid for a Fictional Character Is High Stakes
• Real Characters: Literary criticism and the existential turn
• When fonts fight, Times New Roman conquers
• Joanna Russ, the Science-Fiction Writer Who Said No

• Nine black Hermiones, and ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ still won’t talk race
• Britain has closed almost 800 libraries since 2010, figures show
• Without women the novel would die: discuss
• Fleabag star Phoebe Waller-Bridge discusses writing process at packed-out Southbank Centre
• Review of the Decade: the Grey years
• Sex and violence: what has changed for women since In the Cut?
• “We’ll buy you a harpoon, Lydia”: How Arthur Miller Adapted Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
• The Life Lessons of “Little Lulu” (by Margaret Atwood)
• What Was the First Book You Fell in Love With?
• What Your Draft (and Its Problems) Says About You
• How Hong Kong poet Mary Jean Chan is wowing Britain’s literary circles with first collection, Flèche
• To Be Mary MacLane
• Translating a Person
• Recognizing the Enduring Whiteness of Jane Austen
• AbeBooks’ Most Expensive Sales of 2019
• Why UK Publisher Riverrun Created 4 Book Covers For Kate Reed Petty’s Debut Novel ‘True Story’
• TS Eliot would not have minded Cats reviews, says his estate
• The Decade in Young Adult Fiction
• Why High-Profile Book Adaptations Bombed at the Box Office in 2019
• Who Has the Right to be a Writer?
• Rereading the Master of Dying Teen Lit
• The 10 Best Literary Film Adaptations of the Decade
• How William Gibson Keeps His Science Fiction Real
• How Kendall Jenner Became the Patron Saint of Alternative Literature
• How Do Some Authors “Lose Control” of Their Characters?
• Moon Mothering
• True meanings of words of emotion get lost in translation, study finds
• Meme Formalism
• Female Novelists Replaced White Male Authors in the 2010s.
• The Thought Process of Miss Piggy in the last five minutes of The Muppets Christmas Carol
• The Cranky Bookseller’s Guide to Holiday Shopping
• The Enchantments of Escape
• The Coffin is Closing on Vampires, At Least for Now

Bit late but……………… well….. here!

• Is Publishing Too Top-Heavy?
  
• Why the books we read as children are the ones that shape our psyche
• What Traditional Papermaking Looks Like in 2019
• Women’s writing began much earlier than supposed, finds academic
• How Lou Sullivan’s Journals Enrich the History of Trans Literature
• Diversity in UK publishing: what’s changed?
• ‘Bookshops pass on anything to the right of Tony Blair’: are publishers failing leave voters?
• Cult of the Literary Sad Woman
• An early look at the adaptation of Normal People, with commentary from my Irish colleagues.
• The Disappearance of John M. Ford
• Oprah’s Book Club Changed the Game—and Created a New World for Black Readers Like Me
• ‘Your throat hurts. Your brain hurts’: the secret life of the audiobook star
• On the Patchwork Approach to Piecing Together a Book
• Labour wins book trade’s backing as poll shows opinions hugely swayed by Brexit
• George Eliot translation of Spinoza sheds new light on her fiction
• In the 2010s, The Handmaid’s Tale Arrived Margaret Atwood on whether anything shocks her anymore.
• On Jane Austen, Elizabeth Warren, and the Legacy of the Stoic Woman
• HarperCollins to Launch Native-Focused Imprint
• Times Literary Supplement adopts new TLS identity
• Which is greener, books or e-books? Neither.
• HOW DID KENDALL JENNER GET A COPY OF MY BOOK, ‘LITERALLY SHOW ME A HEALTHY PERSON’?
• The Smell of Old Books Could Actually Help Experts Preserve Them
• The Making of Margaret Atwood
• The Book of Bad Literary Puns That Took Over the Cocktail World
• The New Trend In Feminism Is Feeling Nothing
• Is the Debutante One of the Most Misunderstood Characters in Literature?
• Women Writers Give Voice to Their Rage
• (Almost) Every Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV or Movie Adaptation in the Works Right Now
• How Ian McKellen Almost Didn’t Play Gandalf

Happy Halloween y’all! Here’s some more stuff I’ve read that you should too:

• Are Prose Poets Trolling Us?Selling Books in London from a 100-Year-Old Dutch Barge
• Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction (by Zadie Smith)
• Malfunctioning Sex Robot (by Patricia Lockwood)
• Can Fiction Introduce Empathy Into AI? Do We Want It To?
• On audiobooks and literature in the post-digital age
• What makes the sympathetic plot a universal story-type?
• Jane Eyre translated: 57 languages show how different cultures interpret Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel
• On Monsieur Bovary, One of Literature’s Most Necessary Characters
• Climate Messaging: A Case for Negativity
• On the Darkness at the Heart of Jamaica Kincaid’s Children’s Mystery
• On the Endless Parade of Literary Dead Girls
• Why Campaigns to Change Language Often Backfire
• Earliest book found in tomb written off by archaeologists
• Students at a Georgia University Burn a Latina Author’s Book After She Gives Talk on White Privilege
• How the internet is changing language as we know it (ikr lol)
• Lost chapter of world’s first novel found in Japanese storeroom
• Who Decides Which Books Are “Great?”
• 50 Fictional Librarians, Ranked
• Literary Wedding Ideas For People Who Don’t Really Understand Books
• British Library accused of ripping off historians
• Spoken word the new focus for Spotify
• Can Everyone Stop Slagging Off Brighton, Already? (by Lynne Truss)
• The Book People surveys national reading habits
• Calls for trade to tackle ‘shocking’ lack of black British male children’s writers
• Panic is Worse Than Pain: How Fiction Failed Me After Trauma
• Opinion: I paid my fee at the DMV with $24 and a book of my poetry. Miracles do happen
• PICTURING THE FUTURE: How a shadowy consortium controls the evolution of emoji
• ‘It’s an escape’: the Americans who want to live like Jane Austen

Feeling driven to post something so here’s a quick round-up of some articles about books/reading/etc. that I found interesting last month. Enjoi~

• • Superfans: A Love Story
    
  • What can kids’ books teach the post-Harry Potter generation?
  • On the Haunted Lives of Girls and Women
    
  • How Reese Witherspoon became the new high priestess of book clubs
  • The Far Side trails ‘new online era’ for Gary Larson’s beloved cartoons
  • Faster Than We Thought: What Stories Will Survive Climate Change?
    
  • First novel at 12, gone at 25: the mystery of Barbara Newhall Follett
  • Books Won’t Die
  • Who gets Emily Dickinson?
  • Dragons and rabbit pie: Should we be scared of danger in picture books?
  • In defense of reading the same book over and over again
  • What’s the most messed up children’s book? A nationwide vote once and for all
  • Almost Everything About Goodreads Is Broken
  • Stella Count shows gender bias in book reviews is changing
  • Why Do So Many Book Covers Look The Same? Blame Getty Images
  • Secreted history: what happened to Donna Tartt’s women?
  • Barrington Stoke releases dyslexia-friendly Miss Jean Brodie
  • We Are Writing Against Our Own Erasure
  • Gollancz and Aaronovitch launch writing prize for BAME authors
  • 7 Novels About Women Getting Revenge
  • ‘It sounds dorky, but it’s really fun’: inside the cosy world of bookstagram
    
  • How to Save a Wet Book