Pantone has released a Queenly color wheel, made especially to mark Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee. The wheel is made up of the Pantone referents for the colors her Majesty has worn throughout her reign, and each chip bears a historical note on the particular hue’s tie to her wardrobe. This is especially good news if, like Slate, you think that the Queen is the most fashionable woman in the world.
A very colorful Queen!
What Would Atticus Do?
Harper Lee is suing her literary agent over royalties for To Kill A Mockingbird.
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Littérature Québécois
Translator Peter McCambridge has recently launched Québec Reads, a webzine focused on reviews and excerpts of contemporary Québec fiction. (Bonus: our own Michael Bourne provides a “Beginner’s Guide to Canadian Lit.”)
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Zora Neale Hurston, Girl Detective
“Where is the black version of Caddie Woodlawn (a 19th-century Wisconsin tomboy) or Harriet the Spy (a 20th-century Upper East Sider), smart, spunky, fictional heroines for the tween crowd?” Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon fictionalize beloved Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston as a girl detective in Zora and Me.
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Dr. Seuss Manuscript Surfaces
“All Sorts of Sports. Shall I play checkers? golf? croquet? There are so many games there are to play.” A never-before-seen Dr. Seuss manuscript, “All Sorts of Sports,” is up for auction. (via AuthorScoop)
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From Fantasy to Allegory
“Fantasy is a tool of the storyteller. It is a way of talking about things that are not, and cannot be, literally true. It is a way of making our metaphors concrete, and it shades into myth in one direction, allegory in another.” Neil Gaiman reviews Kazuo Ishiguro‘s The Buried Giant for the New York Times Book Review and considers the power, and risks, of fantasy. Pair with Ishiguro’s talk with The Telegraph about the 10 years since the publication of Never Let Me Go.
Making It
China plans to spend millions “sprucing up” Gaomi, the hometown of recent Nobel winner Mo Yan.
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Off Beat
Hollywood is romanticizing the Beat Generation in its recent adaptations of On the Road (trailer here), Big Sur (trailer here), and Kill Your Darlings, and you can blame Millennials. “In casting the authors as eternally and fundamentally adolescent, the recent revival tones down their behavior—both revolutionary and repulsive—as a sort of passing teenage phase,” Jordan Larson argues for The Atlantic.
Tuesday New Release Day: Irving; Hijuelos; Eco; Rothschild; Golden; Alarcón; Gaitskill
Out this week: Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving; Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise by Oscar Hijuelos; Numero Zero by Umberto Eco; The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild; Wherever There Is Light by Peter Golden; City of Clowns by Daniel Alarcón; and The Mare by Mary Gaitskill (who we interviewed today). For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
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