Reading Copy Book Blog

When giving out an award, or doing any public speaking it is best to read your lines carefully and whatever you do … don’t do this

J.R.R. Tolkien’s two children are embroiled in a bitter lawsuit with New Line Cinema over unpaid royalties from the three Lord of the Rings movies.

According to the LA Times, “Tolkien licensed motion picture rights to United Artists back in 1969 for a low six-figure sum and 7.5% of the gross receipts.” however New Line has not actually paid any money to the Tolkien kids or the charitable trust fund.

The article explains how law suits are nothing new to New Line and that none of this will be solved for years because the courts are too backed up…. but the interesting bit is RIGHT at the end…

Of course, the Tolkien’s do have one giant club in their arsenal. Part of the remedy they’re seeking is to terminate New Line’s rights to Tolkien’s books, including the two “Hobbit” films, which are now in the works with “Pan’s Labyrinth” director Guillermo del Toro.

“I think they have every right to terminate, ” says Eskenazi. “If New Line engaged in gross misconduct, which I believe they did in this case, are you forced to continue in business with them?”

So we will have to wait and see how this plays out…

In Brittan the Norfolk city council has been secretly undertaking an £82,000 sting operation to eradicate a scourge that has plagued the county and left its citizens cowering for far too many years… over due library books.

I would hate to see what they do if you don’t pay your parking violations.

The books listed here were the top 10 best selling books on AbeBooks.com for the month of June, 2008

1) Big Russ and Me by Tim Russert
2) Wisdom of Our Fathers by Tim Russert
3) Change Your Brain, Change Your Life by Daniel Amen
4) Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama
5) The Pillars Of The Earth by Ken Follett
6) The Red Car by Don Stanford
7) A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
8) Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
9) The Wordsworth Dictionary of Culinary and Menu Terms by Rodney Dale
10) Night by Elie Wiesel

Toni Jordan, who novel Addition was just selected by Richard and Judy for their summer reading list picks her top 10 flawed romantic heronines

1. Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
2. Prudence Merridew in The Perfect Rake by Anne Gracie
3. Ayla in The Valley of Horses by Jean M Auel
4. Lucinda Leplastrier in Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
5. Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch by George Eliot
6. Harriet Vane in Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers
7. Lisa Palmer by What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn
8. Christabel LaMotte and Maud Bailey in Possession by AS Byatt
9. Miss Haversham in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
10. Esther Evans in Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies

An Indiana teacher was suspended for 18 months for teaching from the bestselling book The Freedom Writers Diary. Apparently one member of the teachers union disagreed with the fact that the book contained some swearing, because you all know what a little colourful language will do to an inner city kid!

The Writers Diary, a series of true stories written by inner-city teenagers, was put together by a teacher, Erin Gruwell, and has been celebrated as a model for transforming young lives. It was made into a film with Hilary Swank last year.

Connie Heermann, a teacher for 27 years, sought permission to introduce the book to her students last autumn after attending a training workshop held by the Freedom Writers Foundation. “If you read the whole book you will see how these inner-city students grow and change and become articulate, compassionate, educated young people who want to do something good in their lives despite the environment in which they were raised,” she told the Guardian. “I thought my students would very much relate to those kids.”

Spanish chef and cookery author, Simone Ortega, died yesterday at the age of 89. Ortega was the author of 1,080 Recetas de Cocina which sold over 3 million copies, until his death in 2002 she was married to publisher José Ortega Spottorno, son of famous philosopher José Ortega y Gasset and founder of the Spanish daily newspaper El País.

Their daughter, Ines Ortega Klein, has followed in the footsteps of her mother to become something of a celebrity chef and is also a cookbook author.

So what’s the number one book in the UK right now? The Outcast by Sadie Jones. The book received the Richard and Judy treatment last week and took off - here is our interview with Sadie from earlier in the year.

Bloomberg, oddly enough, writes about the growing genre of wine memoirs.

Two recent examples of the genre offer very different views of what it’s like to spend a life discovering and peddling wine. Sergio Esposito’s unabashed love letter to Italian wine and food, Passion on the Vine, and Neal I. Rosenthal’s often querulous, Reflections of a Wine Merchant go well beyond vintages and varietals to explore wine’s cultural context.

I wonder if there is a market for a memoir about drinking Newcastle Brown. Now that would have some interesting fight scenes.

Like AbeBooks revealed a few weeks ago, weird things can be found inside books. Here’s an example of some pornography recently discovered.

A collection of Harry Potter deluxe editions - all first editions of this particular version - have sold for £17,800 at auction, reports The Guardian. Don’t confuse these deluxe editions with proper firsts. I wonder if the value of collectible Harry Potter books is falling - I think it is.

The Independent tells me about the prequel to Treasure Island, which will be 125 years old in November. John Drake has written Flint and Silver, and he’s prepared to shatter a few myths.

One of the biggest myths that Mr Drake wanted to dispel was that pirates buried their treasure: “This is nonsense. Pirates never bury their treasure. There is no known proven example of pirates burying their treasure on an island. Pirates led short, violent lives and when they got money, they went to an island and spent it on booze and girls and when they’d run out they went and got some more.”

The Chicago Tribune reports on how librarians are mixing video games in with the books to sneakily encourage those teenage gamers to become interested in books. Here are a few suggestions from me….

Grand Theft Auto with American Pyscho by Bret Easton Ellis
Guitar Hero with Rock Star by Jackie Collins
Mario with The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Pacman with Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
Sim City with Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Sam Tanenhaus, the gaffer at the NY Times book review, writes about summer heat and literature.

In William Faulkner’s fiction, the “ardent and unheeding sun” pours down mercilessly on parched country roads and backwoods hollows. “Heat quivered up from the asphalt, giving to the familiar buildings about the square a nimbus quality,” Faulkner writes of a sleepy town in his novel “Light in August.” Elsewhere he describes the grim fates dealt in “the bloody September twilight.”