Russell Smith’s Girl Crazy optioned for film

Canadian producers Bill House , Jennifer Jonas, and Leonard Farlinger have optioned Russell Smith’s novel Girl Crazy (HarperCollins Canada) for film. The book, released in April 2010, recounts  a college teacher’s obsession with a younger woman, who introduces him to a world of sex, drugs, and violence.

Smith, also a Globe and Mail columnist, is writing the screenplay. Production is slated to start in Toronto in 2011.

Poetry rains on Berlin

Berlin was bombed with poetry Saturday night as 100,000 bookmarks printed with poems by 80 German and Chilean writers rained from a helicopter above the city’s Lustgarten.

The blitz, which lasted half an hour, was organized by the Chilean art collective Casagrande in protest of war and in celebration of Chile’s 200th anniversary of independence. The Berlin bombing was Casagrande’s fifth: the group had previously poetry-bombed Santiago de Chile in 2001, Dubrovnik in 2002, Gernika in 2004, and Warsaw in 2009 – all cities that have suffered aerial bombings in their histories.

The Guardian reports:

Organisers say that just as wartime bombings were intended to “break the morale” of the inhabitants of a city, so the poetry bombing “‘builds’ a new city by giving new meaning to events of her tragic past and therefore presenting the city in a whole new original way.”

Calgary WordFest announces schedule

Alberta’s WordFest has announced the line-up for this year’s festival, taking place Oct. 12–17 in Calgary and Banff. The festival, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, will host over 60 events and 70 writers including Ann Beattie, Camilla Gibb, Will Ferguson,  Marc Levy, Pascale Quiviger, Miguel Syjuco, Wayne Grady, and Andrea Levy.

This year also sees the expansion of the festival’s French-language component, Festival des mots, as well as its Spanish-language events.

On Oct. 17, WordFest moves from the Art Gallery of Calgary to the Banff Centre for the Banff Distinguished Author Series event celebrating Paul Quarrington. It will feature a few of Quarrington’s friends such as Dave Bidini and Katherine Govier remembering the writer through film, words, and music.

BBC sues HarperCollins over The Stig’s memoirs

The BBC is suing HarperCollins over the publisher’s plan to release memoirs by Formula 1 racer and star of the BBC TV program Top Gear The Stig. According to the Telegraph, the BBC claims “that confidentiality agreements stop the driver from revealing his identity.”

The Telegraph also reports that former James Bond stunt double Ben Collins is rumoured to be the masked driver.

HarperCollins said in a statement: “We can confirm that the BBC is suing HarperCollins over the impending publication of the autobiography of the driver known as The Stig.

“We are disappointed that the BBC has chosen to spend licence fee payers’ money to suppress this book and will vigorously defend the perfectly legitimate right of this individual to tell his story.”

Daily book biz round-up: Obama reads Franzen; Pope to publish second book; and more

• Obama sets off small panic when he acquires an early copy of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom
• Vancouver bookstore gets an espresso machine that makes books instead of coffee
• German Nobel laureate Günter Grass’s new book, on the Brothers Grimm, to be his last
• The Pope is set to become a two-time author when his second book on Jesus of Nazareth hits shelves in March 2011

Price drop rumored for Kobo eReader

When it launched in May, one of the Kobo eReader’s big selling points was that it was one of the cheapest e-reading devices on the market at $149. But now, with Barnes & Noble selling the new wi-fi Nook for $149, and Amazon selling the new wi-fi Kindle for $139, the Kobo eReader – which requires a Bluetooth connection – suddenly has a lot less to recommend it. No surprise, then, that a Kobo price drop appears to be in the works. Though nothing has been announced officially as of yet, a current online-only piece in The New Yorker suggests that Kobo will be lowering prices very soon.

Reporting on a swanky rooftop party Kobo recently hosted in Toronto, The New Yorker had this to say:

Kobo is perhaps the scrappiest and most focussed player in the e-book war. Its online store has a vast and rapidly expanding catalogue of e-books that can be read on almost any mobile device (notable exception: the Kindle). And its own e-reader’s simplicity and affordability (it will reportedly be down to $99 in time for Christmas) has spawned a cult following. In Amazon’s rear-view mirror, Kobo is quickly gaining ground.

When asked by Q&Q to confirm the $99 rumor, Kobo vice-president of content, sales, and merchandising Michael Tamblyn said he wasn’t currently at liberty to comment on future pricing.

Dostoevsky subway station stirs controversy

This summer, Moscow unveiled a sombre Dostoevsky-themed subway station, filled with  macabre murals depicting stories from his novels. But instead of instilling Russian literary pride, the station is creating controversy among psychologists who say the depressing atmosphere could cause an increase in subway suicides and violence.

NPR reports:

The walls are gray and bare, except for murals capturing scenes from Dostoevsky’s famous novels: Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, and of course, Crime and Punishment, the book where Dostoevsky digs into the mind of his lead character, Raskolnikov, exploring a young man’s path to murder.

[...]

The fictional character — poor, desperate for money to help his family and mentally tortured — ends up killing two women. And it’s all depicted in a mural right on the subway platform in which Raskolnikov holds an ax over a woman’s head, while a corpse lies on the ground.

The tale itself is stirring, and the underground tunnel and echo of subway trains make it even creepier.

According to NPR, Mikhail Vinogradov, the head of a Moscow psychological help centre, said that “[t]here will be suicides more often [due to the murals]. I can’t rule out people will commit murders or attacks.”

But Alison Flood of the Guardian countered: “I think they look pretty great, and while they might not actually brighten up a journey they’d certainly make it more interesting.” She also argued that looking art based on Dostoevsky novels in the subway is a lot less depressing than reading the ads.

Cover of Justin Bieber’s memoir revealed

It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: HarperCollins has finally revealed the cover for 16-year-old Justin Bieber’s mini-memoir, Justin Bieber First Step 2 Forever: My Story, to be launched in October. According to People.com:

Fans can expect to read about Bieber’s jet-setting lifestyle (performing in front of thousands on his world tour), his road to stardom (from viral video to meeting Usher in Atlanta) and personal anecdotes about his family and best friends.

As an added bonus for those with “Bieber Fever,” the book, to be published by HarperCollins, will also include tidbits about the tween’s love life, including his history with girls and his very first date.

This Quillblogger’s favourite features on the book’s cover include the clever use of “2” in lieu of “to” in the title, and the little love note, circled in purple in the left-hand corner, and written, apparently, just for me by Bieber himself. (Swoon.)

Christopher Hitchens talks cancer and religion

In the September issue of Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens discussed his cancer diagnosis in an essay called “Topic of Cancer.” In it, he gave a more intellectual than emotional account of his illness, one that still managed to be moving.

Now, The Atlantic is following Vanity Fair’s lead. Last week, the magazine posted a video of Jeff Goldberg interviewing Hitchens at the latter’s home in Washington, D.C. Martin Amis even drops in to chat for a bit. According to the Los Angeles Times book blog, Jacket Copy, the video is one in a series “on the possibility of Hitchens having a religious conversion or awakening.”

Hitchens, for his part, does not consider such a thing likely.

Fidel Castro publishes his memoirs

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro is set to publish the first volume of his memoirs this week. The book, titled The Strategic Victory, recounts  Castro’s guerrilla campaign against Fulgencio Batista’s army in 1958.

According to The Guardian, the style and content of the book “owe more to Julius Caesar than Tony Blair or George Bush.” And while it won’t delve into conflicts between Castro, his brother Raúl, and Che Guevara, the first volume will include a short section on the 83-year-old’s youth and political history. The Guardian reports:

Over 25 chapters Castro recounts, using maps, photographs and diagrams, how his outnumbered rebels routed the dictator and paved the way for their triumphant march into Havana on 1 January 1959.

[...]

One of the titles Castro discarded, because it would have sounded “like science fiction,” was How 300 Defeated 10,000. The memoir’s dry detail, military focus and victorious arc evokes Caesar’s The Conquest of Gaul, but critics must await the full volume before deciding if it matches the Roman’s literary merit.

Castro also recently got cozy with interview-queen Barbara Walters for a chat on 20/20.