Can you feel it, everyone? Harry Potter Day is just around the corner! In just two mere days, not only will it be Harry Potter’s birthday (happy 36th, we believe) but it will also see the release of the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child‘s script! Between that and the upcoming movie, there’s a lot of heat coming from the Wizarding World, and we wanted to make sure that we were completely caught up on all things HP. We’ve uncovered four side-projects and companion books you might not’ve known were in the Harry Potter canon. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find …
Unless you’re an active follower of prize culture or a glutton for disappointment, you’re not likely to pay attention to awards until after the winner has been announced. A marquee-level author is usually promised to win, whereby you can be decently convinced he or she is as good as the hype, or express outrage – OUTRAGE! – over a personal favorite getting snubbed and what it may mean for the lit world as a whole. This year’s Man Booker Prize, which just today announced its longlist for the best English-language fiction books of 2015/2016, may be a little different. As with …
We’ve had what feels like a lifetime’s worth of debates over who should be the next James Bond. Bookies hope to keep adaptation stars in the family by rooting for James Norton (Andrei Bolkonsky from War & Peace), Stephen Spielberg has his sights on Idris Elba, and Elba’s pick is not throwing his back out on-set. But long before this admittedly entertaining bickering began, Ian Fleming created Bond in his own image, distilling portions of his own military and personal life throughout the agent’s twelve novels and sundry short stories. The trajectory of Bond has been out of his hands now for some …
Mention Roald Dahl’s countless children’s books (let alone the movies they inspired) to any generation of readers and their faces practically melt with joy. His boundless imagination in The BFG, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Matilda is rightly revered as some of the most madcap in children’s literature. The other side of that coin is that some of his lesser works, and the odd writing jobs that he assumed, are buried underneath the fame of his most celebrated works. Here are five works you may have never realized Dahl had a hand in at all! The Gremlins Published in 1943, “The …
Where did this week go? We don’t know either, but we’re not about to start complaining! We – the writers of Bookstr/The Reading Room – are people of diverse interests. It’s our duty to expose you to some great books, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do that by way of some choice tunes as well! We’ve got another curated list of 25 songs that not only speak to us, but are also connected to the book and lit news that we’ve passed on through the week. Two birds with one stone! Our weekly rundown of the top …
