News & Notes -- 8/17/13

News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, giveaways on this and other blogs, and other cool stuff.

Books & Ebooks in the News:

Illustration by Helen Stratton from The Lily of Life

• "500 New Fairy Tales Discovered in Germany".  The fairy tales were collected in the 19th century by Franz Xaver von Schonwerth, and were recently found in an archive in Regensburg, Germany.  (Oh No They Didn't! blog)
• The PEN Literary Award Winners for 2013 were announced on 8/14/13.  Sportswriter Frank Deford will recieve a lifetime achievement award.  (www.pen.org)
• "Amazon to Publish Biography Series" (Publishers Weekly)
• "Harlequin Expands Digital First Efforts" Harlequin, Harlequin MIRA, and Harlequin Teen will soon start publishing e-book-only originals.  (Publishers Weekly)
• "Penguin Signs 13-Year-Old Author" (Rachel Deahl, Publishers Weekly)

Worth Reading:

• "The New Explosion in Audio Books" (Alexandra Alter, The Wall Street Journal)
• "Have we literally broken the English language?" (Martha Gill, The Guardian)
• "I Hate Strong Female Characters" argues that SFCs are limiting (we don't talk about strong male characters as a 'type'), that they often serve as a sop (see, we put in a woman!), and that women are woefully underrepresented both behind and in front of the camera in film and television.  The comments are also worth reading; I was particularly interested in the comparison of Uhura from the original Star Trek series versus the "reboot" movies.  (Sophia McDougall, The New Statesman)

For Writers & Bloggers:

• "Universal Pictures to Accept Applications for Emerging Writers Fellowship".  Universal is sponsoring five one-year fellowships for screenwriters with potential but without "access to or visibility within" the filmmaking industry.  (Jason Boog, GalleyCat)

Book and Movie Announcements:

• City of Bones, the film adapted from the first of Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments series, opens in theaters on August 21.  You can see the trailer at the official website.
• Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters opened August 7th.  I haven't seen it, but my niece was not impressed.  I think it might be more fun to attend a real Camp Half-Blood, like this one in Austin.
• The teaser trailer for Vampire Academy: Blood Sisters has been released!  You can see it and read about the movie and series by clicking the link.  (GalleyCat)
• 160 previously unpublished Barbara Cartland titles will be released in digital format, including 57 that have never been seen anywhere.  (The others have been available on the official website.)  All 490 published titles will also be digitized and re-released.  (Liz Bury, The Guardian)

Free & Bargain books:

• Don't forget -- this is the last week to download free audiobook downloads from SYNC!  You will need to download the Overdrive Media Console to be able to download the audiobooks.  Here are this week's titles:
• Sold by Patricia McCormick, read by Justine Eyre (Tantor Audio) and Let Me Stand Alone by Rachel Corrie, read by Tavia Gilbert (Blackstone Audio)

Awesome lists: 

Library at the Benedictine Monastery of Admont (Admont, Austria)

• 49 Breathtaking Libraries from All Over the World (Buzzfeed)

Really cool:

• Check out this incredible Hobbit cake sculpture by "Marianne"! (Facebook) The chair and footstool are cake, fondant, and gumpaste; Bilbo is modeling chocolate and fondant; and the accessories are edible paper and fondant.  Amazing!

That's it for this week!

I'm always on the lookout for interesting articles, lists, and links for News & Notes, so please let me know if you see (or write!) anything that might be good for this feature.  You can leave me a comment or send me an email -- my address is on the About/Review Policy/Contact page.