California woman spied on through book-camera

Those worried about Google and Apple’s ability to track what e-books their customers are reading should be grateful the companies aren’t literally spying on them. One California woman discovered she wasn’t so lucky upon finding a tiny camera lodged in her copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul.

According to the Los Angeles Times, a man from Carpinteria was arrested last week for allegedly spying on the woman.

The 30-year-old woman found the camera trained on her bed through a hole cut near the inspirational volume’s spine.

Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s detectives arrested Donald Lee Bedford, 54, Thursday and seized computers and other items from his home. They also found recordings in the camera of the woman and her boyfriend “in various states of undress,’’ according to a Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

Nick Cave pens remake of The Crow

Australian musician and author Nick Cave is writing the screenplay for a remake of the 1994 film adaptation of James O’Barr’s comic-book series The Crow. Actually, according to The Wrap, Cave is rewriting a script originally penned by the forthcoming movie’s director, Stephen Norrington. The Wrap reports:

Hiring Cave to rewrite Norrington’s script is a bold move, but it may prove to be worth it in the long run, as Cave may be the perfect choice to help resurrect the fading franchise.

And according to The Guardian, “The new version [of the script] is said to be closer in spirit to James O’Barr’s comic books than the original film.”

Cave, who in 2006, was named one of Variety’s 10 most promising screenwriters, has also  completed the screenplay for a film adaptation of his 2009 novel, The Death of Bunny Munro (HarperCollins).

Two Canadians make Dylan Thomas Prize longlist

Canadian authors Adebe D.A. and Eleanor Catton have made the Dylan Thomas Prize for Young Writers longlist – Adebe D.A. for her debut poetry collection, ex nihilo (Frontenac House), and Catton for her debut novel, The Rehearsal (McClelland & Stewart). The £30,000 prize is given out by the University of Wales to English-language authors under 30.

Adebe D.A. is a 23-year-old writer who recently completed her master’s degree at York University, where she served as assistant editor of the literary journal Existere. She was also named Toronto’s first Junior Poet Laureate in 2005. Twenty-four-year-old Catton was born in London, Ontario, but grew up in New Zealand. The Rehearsal has already won the Adam Prize for Creative Writing and the U.K. Society of Authors’ Betty Trask Award.

The Great Gatsby becomes a video game

Lucky for die-hard The Great Gatsby fans, there’s a new way to experience the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic: as a downloadable video game. (The novel wasn’t listed alongside books such as The Metamorphosis and Heart of Darkness in Wired magazine’s “10 Literary Classics That Should Be Videogames.”)

Website bigfishgames.com describes the game as having “gorgeous scenes” and “a variety of minigames”:

Join Nick Carraway as you explore the mansions and bungalows of Long Island, the parlors of New York City, and the heart and soul of the Roaring Twenties. Attend extravagant parties and lush gatherings as you dance the Charleston with a happy couple harboring scintillating secrets. Sip bootleg gin with a mysterious millionaire desperate to bring the passions of the past into the present in Great Gatsby, a fun Hidden Object game.

Al Capone’s niece stirs controversy with possible book about her uncle

Kafka isn’t the only famous figure stirring up familial and literary controversy this week. Al Capone’s relatives are arguing about whether or not the late mobster’s 70-year-old niece, Deirdre Marie Capone, should publish a book about what it was like to grow up in the infamous crime family.

Deirdre Marie – who until recently, used her father’s middle name, Gabriel, as her last name to keep her family ties secret – has been working on the book, titled Uncle Al Capone, for years, and only started using her real last name when she began pitching the project.

But many relatives aren’t so happy about the prospect of another Capone book being published. The Wall Street Journal reports:

“I wouldn’t read it if somebody bought it for me,” says Theresa Hall, a granddaughter of Al Capone. Katherine Seal, 43, a great-granddaughter, says, “What is the benefit to all this, you have to ask oneself? He’s been dead for 60 or 70 years. Why keep rehashing it?”

Canadian Children’s Book Centre announces finalists

The Canadian Children’s Book Centre has announced the finalists for its 2010 awards.

The English-language winners will be announced at a gala at the Carlu in Toronto on Nov. 9, and the French-language winners will be announced at a gala at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal on Nov. 2.

The finalists for the $25,000 TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award are:

Janet McNaughton, Dragon Seer (HarperCollins Canada)

Sharon Jennings, Home Free (Second Story Press)

Arthur Slade, The Hunchback Assignments (HarperCollins Canada)

William Gilkerson, A Thousand Years of Pirates (Tundra Books)

Nancy Hartry, Watching Jimmy (Tundra)

The finalists for the $20,000 Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award are:

Janet Perlman, The Delicious Bug (Kids Can Press)

Geneviève Côté, Me and You (Kids Can Press)

Joanne Schwartz; Laura Beingessner, illus., Our Corner Grocery Store (Tundra)

Colleen Sydor; Nicolas Debon, illus., Timmerman Was Here (Tundra)

Frieda Wishinsky; Kady MacDonald Denton, illus., You’re Mean, Lily Jean (Scholastic Canada)

The finalists for the $10,000 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-fiction are:

Priscilla Galloway and Dawn Hunter, Adventures on the Ancient Silk Road (Annick Press)

Charis Cotter, Born to Write: The Remarkable Lives of Six Famous Authors (Annick)

Scot Ritchie, Follow That Map! A First Book of Mapping Skills (Kids Can Press)

William Gilkerson, A Thousand Years of Pirates (Tundra)

Kathy Kacer and Sharon E. McKay, Whispers from the Ghettos (Puffin Canada)

The finalists for the $5,000 Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People are:

Laura Best, Bitter, Sweet (Nimbus Pubishing)

John Wilson, Crusade (Key Porter Books)

Barbara Haworth-Attard, Haunted (HarperCollins Canada)

Shane Peacock, Vanishing Girl: The Boy Sherlock Holmes, Book 3 (Tundra)

Nancy Hartry, Watching Jimmy (Tundra)

The finalists for the $25,000 Prix TD de littérature canadienne pour l’enfance et la jeunesse are:

Geneviève Côté, Comme toi! (Éditions Scholastic)

Mélanie Tellier, Le géranium (Éditions Marchand de feuilles)

Philippe Béha, Monsieur Leloup (Éditions Fides)

Guy Marchamps; Marie-Claude Favreau, illus., Rêver à l’envers, c’est encore rêver (Soulières éditeur)

Angèle Delaunois, Venus d’ailleurs (Éditions Hurtubise)

British e-reader company Interead folds

Interead, the British start-up that created the colourful Cool-er e-reader, is folding just over a year after it launched. The Guardian reported that a Liverpool high court ordered the company to “wind-up” over a month ago.

According to Wired, which reviewed the Cool-er in May 2009, the device sold for about $250 U.S., was thin and lightweight, but had no “truly stand-out” features. “Its appeal is in that it is a reasonably good looking e-book reader at an attractive price.”

As for the companies recent troubles, The Guardian reports:

Earlier this year Interead reportedly said it had 20% of the e-reader market in Britain and before Christmas claimed it had already broken into profit. Since then, however, the business has failed to win essential support for its expansion from its bank, HSBC, under the government’s enterprise finance guarantee, according to sources close to the company.

Meanwhile, Interead claims an order for 17,000 Cool-ers from a high-profile American retail group was cancelled at the 11th hour, plunging relations with its Taiwanese manufacturers into crisis.

Vancouver indie bookshop Sitka Books & Art to open in August

As Q&Q reported in March, Ria Bleumer, the former manager of Vancouver’s Duthie Books, which closed in February after a 53-year run, is opening up a new bookshop. The new store, called Sitka Books & Art, will open just two blocks from Duthies’ old location on West 4th Avenue in Kitsilano this August.

Bleumer decided to open the shop with her business partner Karel Carnohan as soon as she realized Duthies was succumbing to the pressures of high rent. Bleumer told Vancouver’s 24 Hours:

Independent bookstores are representative of culture. If we didn’t have them and only had big box stores that have some books and art, we would water down our culture.

[…]

I have knowledge of our customer base because I worked in [the industry] … for 16 years. Customers will find books they won’t see anywhere else and ones you see everywhere else, but not as many, making us unique.

According to The Georgia Staight, Bleumer said she and Carnohan expect stay in business in a neighbourhood where Duthies could not because they’ve signed a lease that has them paying about $10,000 a  month less in rent.

This Ain’t the Rosedale Library to re-emerge

Despite the stifling heat and humidity, Book Madam Julie Wilson and Invisible Publishing’s Nic Boshart hosted an al fresco reading outside the troubled This Ain’t the Rosedale Library bookstore last night. Originally slated as a stop on Jeff Miller’s summer tour for Ghost Pine: All Stories True (Invisible Publishing), the reading became a celebration of the bookstore instead.

Besides Miller, who hails from Montreal, the readers included Joey Comeau and Liz Worth, both of Toronto, and Dave Roche of Kansas City. Listeners crowded around the concrete patio, sitting on benches and cross-legged on the ground. After the readings, each reader recounted how indie bookstores have affected their writing, and Charlie Huisken gave a This-Ain’t state-of-the-union: It’s “business as unusual.” Once he and his son and partner Jesse have extricated themselves from their current situation, he said, they can work on getting This Ain’t up and running again. He gave no details, but said the business will probably look quite different than it used to.

Event photos: Totstock 2010

Totstock, a children’s festival organized by childrens’ literary event series Small Print Toronto took place on June 27 in Toronto’s Sorauren Park. The event featured special guests Anna Maria Tremonti, Don Kerr, and Lynda Hill, children’s authors such as Lana Button and Patricia Storms, and an array of kid-friendly indie bands.

Author Lana Button reads from her children’s book, Willow’s Whispers (Kids Can Press).

Willow’s Whispers illustrator Tania Howells draws for kids in the story tent.

The Totstock story tent. (Photos courtesy of Kids Can Press)