Tidbits

I am only what is best described as incredibly behind, so enjoy this collection of links you've probably already seen elsewhere, while I enjoy sleeping past 6 am for the first time since my 9 day first week of school back started, 9 days ago.

Business:

• Four different people have sent me the link to Mental Floss' roundup of 11 Amazing Librarian Tattoos.  So I think now is as good a time as any to reveal that I have a tattoo of my favorite misogynist Melville Dewey's face in a very secret location.  Not.  But there are some awesome additional photos in the comments, so scroll down when you visit! 
• The Atlantic Fall preview of YA lit is fairly decent - I've read and will write brief reviews of three (let's just say I liked two).  
• In news that is not news to librarians or booksellers anywhere, sales of YA literature to adults account for more that 55% of total sales - and we cold, hard, selfish adults aren't buying for our disenfranchised teenage friends. 
• With that said, I'd also like to vote negative on this whole new 14-35 year old "New Adult" labeling. Stop trying to make it happen, Guardian.  If you want to raise that age bar to people who can drive cars, and lower it to people who can't afford to buy new cars because of their student loans, maybe I'll reconsider.  
• In a sweet twist of irony, Amazon is basically the only winner in the publishing anti-trust brouhaha, which makes total sense in trying to prevent monopolies, right?  Good work, team!
• Oh Wikipedia.  You are the best friend of iPhones and dinner party debates, but not Phillip Roth! Mwahaha - no way I'm not using this in this years research orientations!

Design:

• OhEmGeeWhiz you guys! Tablescaping based on literature.  I think I'd like to go to a Game of Thrones dinner party the most. 
• In addition to work, I've been furniture shopping. Okay, so it's just for a kitchen table.  But whatever whatever.  I found these instead.  Please enjoy my new bathtub and my new lounge chair.   I think they'll go well with my new candles. 

The Talkies:

• Did I black out and miss the news that Divergent is going to be a movie?  Because now it has a release date.
• Also, we're still talking about Y: The Last Man being a movie.  Can't HBO or FX or somebody just get on board and adapt it to the miniseries it would do so well as? (Not that I'm complaining - this news excites me).
• The Wuthering Heights trailer makes it seem almost endurable.  Unlike Heathcliff. 

PrE-view:

• Daughter of Blood and Shadow!  Which apparently has had its movie rights optioned too.

Bonus:

• Kind of hoping POTUS uses the white folks soundbite during debates... 

Tidbits: Good vs. bad ideas by Hollywood, pr-E-views, mini-mashups

• Queen Mary had a thing for dollhouses, and as everyone who is someone knows, no house regardless of size is complete without a library.  QM's library redefines the term pocket book, and answers a very important Zoolander question.  These dollhouse books are unbelievably cute!  And also, how did they make them so tiny?!??  Read about it at the first link, or tour the dollhouse library at this link.   [via Parathentical]
  
•  Have you always harbored a secret desire to replace steal Gilbert from Anne? Hear Captain Wentworth tell you that you pierce his heart?  Rest easy, daydreamer.  You can now special order a copy of a classic book with your name, and that of your friends/family/part-time lovers in the place of the characters.  BONUS: the company also does romance novels.  Best gag gift ever?  Bonus BONUS:  Oh, snap.  They also have a category called "vampire."  I can't even...[via GalleyCat]
• 
  
• The first twentish pages of Maggie Stiefvater's newest book, Raven Boys, is up on EW for your perusal.
  
• Ditto for an pr-E-view of  The Book of Blood and Shadow, by Robin Wasserman (who I met once, and who was very very nice!).
  
• Bad idea by Hollywood:  Robert Pattinson as Finnick Odiar?  Please, no.   
  
• Good idea by Hollywood: Oooh, I have spotted the moste curiouse tweet from Patrick Ness regarding the script for The Knife of Never Letting Go (I'm still nervous about it, even after Hunger Games didn't stink):
  
  
  CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER.  
  
  

Tidbits: PrE-Views, the Hunger gets Vain, Outlander gets a Kitchen, and there goes the COPPA, ruinin' Facebook for 12-year-olds EVERYWHERE

Peeta, why are you dead?

• Oh look, another movie has gotten on board with the zombie/vampire/ghost craze.  Just kidding.  But seriously, why does Peeta look dead?  There's more pictures and information in the Vanity Fair coverage, but really, this is all we need to talk about, other than Rue being appropriately tiny.
• This is actually a really interesting albeit long read on the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.  It's also totally about how parents are now not only totally salting the game of their prepubescent kids most days, but egads, also enabling them on the book of faces.  Enablers!  But what I'm really more interested is the eventual future study in the levels of embarrassment in teens whose parents have made and maintained a Facebook page for them from conception.  
• PrE-view:  John Green has made the first chapter of his newest book, The Fault In Our Stars, available online.  Lots of the usual quirky, romantical, witty kids, but definitely an interesting concept and already a good read!
• Outlander Kitchen: OMG. OMG. OMG YOU GUYS.  Someone has made a food blog with recipes she's created based off of the Outlander books.  It is totally wordy, but committed to the DGabs cause.  Brianna's Bridies look delish.  Personally, I want a recipe for the crazy potion that DGabs takes when she writes these.

Tidbits: $0.50 on 50 Cent's

So, 50 Cent is writing a book.  A book about bullying.  A book titled Playground.  Yeah, you read that correctly.  EW has a three chapter preview up for your reading perusal.   I'm going to assume by the title page that he is...somewhat affiliated?  Not because he can't write.  In fact, I bet if he did more of the writing it'd sound a million times better, and I'd probably be about to make less fun of it.  But the voice?  It's a bit White lady trying to sound like a teenage Black boy.  Insert huge eye rooooollll.   I hope the book gets better in chapter 4.  Here's what you need to know:

• It is about bullying.  I'm going to guess about how one becomes a bully.  Since that's what Fiddy tells us in his intro. 
• It is "partially autobiographical," which leads me to wonder why they didn't use the term semi-autobiographical.  Are they different?  Is this wordplay?  Am I overthinking?
• The protagonist is a 13-year-old boy named Butterball from Garden City, NJ.  Except I only learned that he was 13 from reading the EW preface blurbage, not the book, unless I missed something.
• In fact, I spent a solid few minutes while reading it trying to figure out how old this Butterball character is.  Because...how old could they be if they are hanging out on a playground during school, and then talking about getting invited to a coed party?  The party part pegs them at at least middle school, since there is a solid no boys at girls party (and vice versa) cootie rule from second to sixth grade.  Everyone knows that.   It's just science.  But then again, what middle school still has a playground?  Or recess?
• Another thing has me confused in the first three chapters.  Initially, you think the bully may be Maurice.  But you'd be a fool, despite the tricksy fat-kid mislead, because what bully is named Maurice?  Maurice is Belle's dad in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.  Everyone knows that.  It's just science!  Craaaazy old Maurice!  Moreover, what kind of bully named Maurice sits on the swings by himself reading a book?  Clearly, it is Butterball, he of the rotund, Thanksgiving association.  And he of the sock filled with D-batteries that he beats the stuffing out of Maurice on the confusing playground.  See what I did there?  This book is so written by a White lady.
• It has illustrations.  Much like The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian.  Clearly Razorbill has a target audience.  
• I should add that I like that the topic is bullying from the bully's POV; it's not something you'd expect from a celebrity author.  Snaps on that account. 
• This is now about as long as the exerpt. 

PrE-views! Patrick Ness' A Monster Calls

Oh, fine, ENGLAND.  Have yourselves a merry little holiday tomorrow while America wakes up early at ungodly hours and fantasizes about spiking our tea as we watch the royal wedding.  But we can't! Because we're a workaholic nation of workaholics! That's cold.  But you know what really hurts? 

A Monster Calls drops on Cinco de Mayo across the pond.

It doesn't drop here until SEPTEMBER.  Single tear.

ICE COLD. 

But you know what slightly, kind of, maybe, not really but whatever, makes up for it?

The Guardian has a preview of a few pages up!  Yay!  Delight in the magic of Patrick Ness!
But seriously, SEPTEMBER?  England, I will glower over my margarita in your general direction on 5/5/2011!

PrE-views! Ally Carter's Uncommon Criminals

Confession:  I am an Art History dropout.  It is a sad but true fact of my life.  I love it, truly, madly, deeply.  I geek out indecently over old paintings and museums.  But apparently at 18 I thought that majoring in Spanish would be much more viable career path.  And now I am a high school librarian.  GO FIGURE! 

Um...but really my wild fantasy dream job was never art historian extraordinare.  It was, is (if this library thing doesn't work out!), top shelf art thief.  You can't really avoid this thought if you are say, an art-luvr living in a city where the Gardner Heist, the greatest unsolved art theft in all the lands  occurred (debatable, but I'm always right, so you lose!).  Thusly, when Heist Society dropped I was stoked!  And now that the second one (Uncommon Criminals) is imminent, I am doubly stoked! Unfortunately for all of us, it does not drop until June 21.  BUT.  BUT.

Join me in tiding ourselves over by reading the first two chapters online!  I salute you for inspiring my criminal mind to dream big, Ally Carter! 

Thusly, when it DOES drop, I promise to release my dream art theft hit list in its honor.  Check your security systems, museums of the world!  Thomas Crowne PaperblogPrincess is coming for you!