According to this item on MTV.com:

With Halloween mere days away, it was a nice surprise when Neil Gaiman dropped by the MTV offices to discuss his latest project, “The Graveyard Book” — now number one on its respective New York Times list. Given the intense interest in Hollywood to adapt it before it ever came out, we had to ask: Will there be a movie version?

Yes, according to Gaiman.

“I don’t know if I can talk about this, but seeing that you’ve asked me, and seeing that I haven’t been told by anybody that I can’t talk about it,” Neil revealed, “but yes.”

[...] “They want to start making films, and start producing their own films,” Gaiman said. “And they read it, and they loved it, and I spoke to them, and they said all the right things, and they seem to listen. So I don’t think it’s going to be transported to a graveyard in Los Angeles where they’ve been burying bathing beauties or anything. I think we’re actual going to stick with where the book is written and film that. And I think part of the idea is that they know they can also do the special effects cheaply.”

That will be a big issue for this film, considering most of the characters are “dead, or werewolves, or ghouls, or something else mysterious,” Gaiman said.

Exactly how that will be achieved — what levels of transparency are the ghosts? How corporeal can they get? — is “part of the fun of making the film,” he said. “There’s probably going to be an awful lot of screen tests to figure how you can pull it off in the subtlest, coolest, and most convincing way, and that will be a job for next year.”

The fact that Gaiman is producing the film fills me with hope that it’ll be a good adaptation.

I’m so looking forward to this book, but it may be some time before I can afford to buy it. How cool is it then that Harper Books and Gaiman are allowing us a sneak peek with this widget?

Additionally you can see video of Gaiman reading one chapter on each of his tour stops as he promotes the book at this website. So by following along you can enjoy the whole of the book for free as read by Gaiman himself. How frickin’ cool is that? It makes me want to buy the book that much more.

I almost forgot to mention that it’s one again Banned Books Week:

Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than a thousand books have been challenged since 1982. The challenges have occurred in every state and in hundreds of communities. People challenge books that they say are too sexual or too violent. They object to profanity and slang, and protest against offensive portrayals of racial or religious groups—or positive portrayals of homosexuals. Their targets range from books that explore the latest problems to classic and beloved works of American literature.

According to the American Library Association, more than 400 books were challenged in 2007. The 10 most challenged titles were:

1. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
2. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
3. Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes
4. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
7. TTYL by Lauren Myracle
8. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
9. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
(Click here to see why these books were challenged.)

During the last week of September every year, hundreds of libraries and bookstores around the country draw attention to the problem of censorship by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a variety of events. The 2008 celebration of Banned Books Week will be held from September 27 through October 4.

Take a moment to celebrate your freedom to read whatever the hell you want this week by sitting down with a banned book for a few hours. The American Library Association maintains a list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged books from 1990 to 2000 that has lots of potential reading material. Several books by Mark Twain are on the list as well as the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, but those are just two of my personal favorites. There’s something on the list for everyone.

I’m a huge fan of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (which, at last count, totaled five books) and I was very disappointed with the big budget movie version because it lacked what made the books so good and that was Adams’ wonderful dialog. I was saddened when he passed away a few years back which is unusual for me as there aren’t that many celebrities I get all that attached to, but I’ve always enjoyed his work and I was bummed to think we wouldn’t see any more from him.

Now word comes that his wife has tapped children’s book author Eoin Colfer to write a new Hitchhiker’s book:

Douglas Adams’s increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy is to be extended to six titles, after Adams’s widow Jane Belson sanctioned a project which will see children’s author Eoin Colfer taking up the story.

And Another Thing… by Colfer, whose involvement with the project was personally requested by Belson, will be published next October by Penguin. No information has yet emerged about the plot of the novel but Hitchhiker fans will be hoping for a resurrection of much-loved characters Arthur Dent, Trillian and Ford Prefect, who were all apparently blown to smithereens at the end of the fifth novel, Mostly Harmless.

I’m a picky fiction reader as it is, the number of authors who I’ll buy a book outright from can be counted on one hand, and while my heart sped up a bit at the thought of a new Hitchhiker’s book it settled right back down again at the thought that it wouldn’t be coming from Adams’ pen. I have no idea who Eoin Colfer is, he may very well be a perfectly wonderful author, he might actually produce something that’s a commercial success, but it’s still a derivative of books I have very fond memories of.

Which isn’t to say that it shouldn’t happen or that I feel they are cheapening what has come before. I’m not that kind of book snob. Just that I’m not as excited about it as I would be had it turned out to be a previously unpublished work by Adams’ himself. For his part Colfer is a big fan of the original series as well and is delighted to have a chance to finish the story, though he won’t be trying to write like Adams’ did:

Colfer, who has been a fan of Hitchhiker since his schooldays, said being given the opportunity to continue the series was “like suddenly being offered the superpower of your choice”. “For years I have been finishing this incredible story in my head and now I have the opportunity to do it in the real world,“ he added. “It is a gift from the gods. So, thank you Thor and Odin.“

The book will “make no claims for Eoin being Douglas”, according to Prior. “It’s not Eoin Colfer writing as Douglas Adams, as was the case with Sebastian Faulks,“ she said, pointing to Penguin’s successful publication of Faulks’s new James Bond novel Devil May Care earlier this year. “It’s absolutely about him being himself – Eoin the author, but with the cast of Hitchhiker.“

Which is probably how it should be, though it makes me even less likely to pick up the new book. Perhaps I’ll try one of his original novels first to see how I like it before making any final conclusions. I’m buoyed by the fact that Colfer appears to be aware of people who are thinking along the same lines I am:

Colfer himself is currently grappling with nerves over the quality of his addition to Adams’ oeuvre. “I feel more pressure to perform now than I ever have with my own books, and that is why I am bloody determined that this will be the best thing I have ever written,“ he said. “For the first time in decades I feel the uncertainty that I last felt in my teenage years. There are people out there that really want to like this book.“

I’m one of those people, but I know how finicky I am about the fiction I read. For now I guess I’ll be cautiously optimistic and hope for the best. It would be fun to visit with Aurthur, Ford, and Zaphod once more.

Neil put up the announcement on his blog just recently:

Kids! Free! Book!
The good news is the link to the free online American Gods is up on the front page of the neilgaiman.com website. The bad news is that the link is wrong.

For the next month, your free copy of American Gods is waiting for you at
http://tiny.cc/WRiXE

Feel free to spread the link as widely as possible around the web. If it works, and people read it, then a) we may be able to put up another book and b) sooner or later they’ll simply let us give away the book in electronic form….

It’s an excellent book and I recommend checking it out if you haven’t already. I got my copy through my mother who’s also a big Gaiman fan.

One of my favorite authors just posted on his blog that he’s done with his latest novel titled The Graveyard Book. Here he tries to explain what it is about and who it is for:

Over the last few months people have written in and asked what kind of a book The Graveyard Book is, whether it’s for kids or adults, all that sort of thing. And I haven’t answered because it wasn’t actually finished, and I figured I’d find out when it was done. And it’s done now.

I think The Graveyard Book is a book for pretty much all ages, although I’m not sure how far down that actually starts. I think I would have loved it when I was eight, but I don’t think that all eight-year olds were like me.

[...] But it’s not a children’s book. It’s a book that I think children will enjoy, but there’s also stuff that’s there for adults too. It’s a book about life and death and making families. It has ghouls in it, and the Hounds of God, and the Sleer, and the Indigo Man, and a lot of very dead people.

It’s not that easy to describe. I’m reminded of Kim Newman’s review of Anansi Boys, which began “Anansi Boys is one of Neil Gaiman’s books for grown-ups, which means that it’s a lot less ruthless than the material he produces for children”, and it’s a very true observation. From that perspective, it’s definitely one of my children’s books.

Children’s book or not, I’ll be adding it to my wish list as a must have. It’s due out here on September 30, 2008.

Neil also points out that the trailer for Coraline is now available on the web.

One of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, has just celebrated his blog’s seventh anniversary and in celebration he’s asking fans to vote for which book will be made available online for free:

As you may have deduced, it’s the blog’s 7th birthday today. On February the 9th 2001, I started writing this thing. And now, 1,071,213 words later,  it is still going. (Until the wind changes, as Mary Poppins said.)

One thing we’ve decided to do, as a small celebratory birthday thing is, initially for a month, make a book of mine available online, free, gratis and for nothing.

Which book, though…? Ah, that’s up to you.

What I want you to do is think—not about which of the books below is your favourite, but if you were giving one away to a friend who had never read anything of mine, what would it be? Where would you want them to start?

The possible offerings consist of American Gods, Anansi Boys, Coraline, Fragile Things, M is for Magic, Neverwhere, Smoke & Mirrors, and Stardust. A list that made me realize there’s at least one Neil Gaiman book I’ve not yet read (M is for Magic) so I’ll have to add it to my wish list. So go vote for whichever one you think would be the one you’d recommend to a new reader.

Got a package the other day that I thought was one of the gifts I had purchased for my wife, but it turns out upon opening it up today that it was for me. SEB member Lost Alaska was kind enough to send me some books from my wish list: Spook Country and Pattern Recognition by William Gibson and The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. Had I know they were gifts I would’ve waited until Christmas day, but I’m not complaining about getting them a little early. Thank you very much, LA.

Now I just need to figure out where that last package for my wife has gotten itself off to…

SEB regular DaBroad dropped by with a couple of links to articles about a warning from the American Family Association about the upcoming release of The Golden Compass. It seems they’re the latest religious group to get their panties all in a twist over this movie without even having seen it yet. They’re so in a panic that they put out this drastic warning to parents:

Therefore, without yet seeing the film, at least one pro-family group—the American Family Association—is alerting Christians to the

potential dangers

of The Golden Compass. Because of Pullman’s clearly articulated anti-Christian motives, AFA is

warning all viewers to run from the film

.

Potential dangers? Viewers should run from the film? Makes it sound like Godzilla is attacking or something. The way their talking you’d think that this film had some sort of unholy power to deconvert people into atheists within the span of an hour and a half or something. It leaves you wondering just how fragile their faith really must be if they’re that worried that a single film will cause so much damage to innocent young Christians. Whatever happened to their unshakable faith in Christianity that they’re so upset over one little film that will, by all reports, have its anti-religious message watered down to the point of not really being there to begin with?

Of course it’s not so much the adults they’re worried about, it’s the kids. They know they’ve got to get ‘em while they’re young and you can’t afford to allow any competing ideas get in their heads or something akin to common sense or the questioning of authority might take hold. This is made clear in the second link provided by DaBroad to an article about the film at BreakingPoint.org:

One of the prominent themes of the book is “Dust,” a mysterious “charged particle” from the sky. In the closing chapters of the book, the protagonist, Lyra, finally learns that Dust is “the physical evidence for original sin”; and Dust is what powers her “alethiometer” (the golden-colored, compass-looking device for which the book is named). From the Greek, alethiometer means “truth-measurer.” It is a device she consults, through a kind of clairvoyant process, to learn secrets and discover truths; it never lies or misleads. Dust and the alethiometer—central symbols in this book—together send the clear message that truth is measured by the power of original sin. In the closing pages, Lyra decides that Dust is a good thing after all, and she determines to go on and defend this original sin against the Church. Thus we are ushered into the second book.

This is certainly not a message we want our children to take to heart. Still, we cannot lose sight of the fact that Pullman is working on our turf when he tells his tale. I’ll gladly stand up our story against his! The story of Christ has drama, it has strong characters, it has relevance, it has a truly stupendous surprise ending—in short, all the elements of great story. Best of all, it’s not fiction. It happened! So we need not respond defensively, or with anger, or by picketing the movie, or with any of the worldly methods Paul warned against in 2 Corinthians 10. This is the time—especially since the movie is coming out at Christmastime—for us to tell the true story of Jesus Christ, in love and with a positive tone.

I’ve read both the Bible and all three books in the His Dark Materials trilogy now and I have to say that the former pales in comparison to the latter in terms of enjoyability, but then some might say I’m biased.

These folks, however, are most upset that Scholastic is involved in helping to promote the book with materials offered to schools:

Yet there is a limit, and Christian parents ought to stand guard on behalf of the next generation. The Golden Compass—book or movie—does not belong in our schools.

Again it’s interesting to note how fragile they consider their religion to be that it needs such efforts on their part to keep it protected even from total fictions that challenge it. At least with Pullman’s works he’s not trying to pretend it’s reality.

... The Golden Compass today. Anne ordered the box set from Amazon.com the other day after hearing about it from me and she’s already well into the second book. So I’m playing catch up at this point, but it’ll give me something to do during the occasional downtime at work.

I’ll post about it some more as I get into it further.

Well one advantage to having so much downtime at work is the fact that I’ve read more books in the past month than any other time in my life. Or so it seems. I’m averaging a book and a quarter a week and I’ve managed to finish some books that I’ve had for a long time — e.g. Susan Jacoby’s Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism — but never gotten all the way through for various reasons. So I’ve been working on some reviews of said books that I’ll be posting soon.

For some reason I’ve finding a couple of the reviews difficult to write so a couple of them may be somewhat short, but I’ll come up with something.

JK Rowling says wizard Dumbledore is gay - washingtonpost.com

Speaking at Carnegie Hall on Friday night in her first U.S. tour in seven years, Rowling confirmed what some fans had always suspected—that she “always thought Dumbledore was gay,“ reported entertainment Web site E! Online.

Rowling said Dumbledore fell in love with the charming wizard Gellert Grindelwald but when Grindelwald turned out to be more interested in the dark arts than good, Dumbledore was “terribly let down” and went on to destroy his rival.

That love, she said, was Dumbledore’s “great tragedy.“

“Falling in love can blind us to an extent,“ she said.

The audience reportedly fell silent after the admission—then erupted into applause.
...
Rowling said she had read through a script for the movie adaptation of the sixth book in the series, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” and corrected a passage in which Dumbledore was reminiscing about past loves by crossing it out and scrawling “Dumbledore is gay” over it.

I never would’ve suspected that Dumbledore was supposed to be a gay character, but then I suppose that was probably the point. It should make re-reading the novels in the future a little more interesting as now I’ll be looking to see if there’s any subtle hints as to Dumbledore’s sexuality in them.

Update: Had to include the LOLCat once I saw it.

It’s official: The last installment in the seven-part Harry Potter series has been named and a release date has been set:

The print run and number of pages have yet to be revealed, but judging from the suggested cover price, a meaty $34.99, $5 more than Potter 6, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,“ the last book will likely match or exceed the 600-plus page length of previous releases.

“We have held the price for the past four years,“ Scholastic publicist Kyle Good told The Associated Press. “In that time, costs of production, paper, trucking, gas and security—to be sure all readers can enjoy the book at the release time—have all increased.“

Many fans will pay much less for “Deathly Hallows,“ with Amazon.com quickly announcing the book would be sold for $18.89, a 46 percent discount. Price competition has been so intense over the years that many retailers have acknowledged they don’t make money on the fantasy series, depending instead on customers buying other books along with Potter.

The Harry Potter is such a big hit with my family that in the past we’ve often purchased two or more copies of a book when it was released so that more than one of us could read it at a time. Word that a release date is imminent for the last book is sure to stir up excitement in this household.

Update: Not two seconds after I hit submit and an email came in from Amazon.com with details about the pre-order special.

***Dave has a good write up on The Myth of a Christian Nation by Gregory A. Boyd that’s worth taking a gander at. Here’s a small snippet from his entry:

Gregory Boyd is a theologian and pastor of a large Protestant congregation in Minnesota. Disturbed by what he saw as increasing identification between the evangelical Christian church and the political right wing, he started in 2004 a series of sermons on “the cross and the sword,” arguing that such close ties were not only harmful to the church, but were against the message of Jesus. The result was a serious diminution of his congregation — but its strengthening and rebound, in numbers, since. And, of course, this book.

Myth of a Christian Nation is written by a Christian, primarily for Christians (though it has much of value to say for non-Christians, too). It is steeped in both citations from the Bible and in evangelical theology and terminology. It answers those who think that’s all Christianity’s about is taking over the reins of government, via the Religious Right, and turning the US into a theocracy (both to those who would seek such an occurrence and those who fear it).

I believe I wrote about Mr. Boyd awhile back praising him for his stance, but I didn’t know he was working on a book. Based on ***Dave’s positive review, however, I’m seriously hoping a lot of Christians will pick up a copy, read it, and carefully consider what he has to say. ***Dave gives a lengthy review of the book which has convinced me to put it on my Wish List.

NoProphet from Beware of the Dogma tagged me with this book meme and it’s been awhile since I’ve done one so I thought I’d go ahead and tackle it.

I should mention that I’m an Amazon Associate and all the links here will net me a few pennies should you happen to click one of them and buy the book. Don’t feel obligated to do so, but I thought I should be upfront about it. Just sayin’ is all.

A book that changed my life:
Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do : The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country by Peter McWilliams - This book is largely responsible for the libertarian aspects of my political outlook. It managed to completely change my opinion on everything from the drug war to prostitution. If you don’t want to buy the book (and it’s a big read) you can read it online for free thanks to the generosity of the author. I recommend buying it, though, as it’s a worthy addition to your library that will probably challenge you on many levels.

A book I’ve read more than once:
Neuromancer by William Gibson - The novel that got me hooked on Cyberpunk fiction. Wish someone could do a movie that would do the book justice.

A book I would take with me if I were stuck on a desert island:
Any of the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling - Most of which would’ve qualified for the “books I’ve read more than once” category as well.

A book that made me laugh:
The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story by Douglas Adams - I cheated on this one as this “book” is actually all five novels in the Hitchhiker’s Triology (as Adam’s himself described it) in one volume. Few books have made me laugh out loud as much as these have, particularly The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy itself. If you haven’t read them then you owe it to yourself to do so.

A book that I wish had been written:
This is a tough one as I’m always trying to think of something that hasn’t been written so I could try to write it. I’ll have to go with NoProphet’s choice and answer with Credulity: A guide for the perplexed. I wonder if he’d be upset if I wrote that book…

A book that I wish had never been written:
Another tough question. I could go the easy route and say something obvious like The Bible, but the truth is I don’t really have a problem with the fact that The Bible exists so much as the fact that too many people buy into it wholesale as though it were true. My annoyance with The Bible is not unlike my annoyance with Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code in that too many credulous people think it’s non-fiction. My sense of freedom of speech is such that I think people should be allowed to write what they want no matter how stupid it happens to be. I just wish more people had the critical thinking skills needed to sort the fact from the fiction.

A book I’ve been meaning to read:
Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby - I already own this and I’ve started on it, but I keep getting distracted by other things and losing my place and starting over on it so it’s become a bit of the “I’ve been meaning to finish reading this soon” than I’d like it to be. What I’ve read so far has been excellent and the book should be required reading in at least one college class devoted to American History.

I’m currently reading:
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris - It has a strong opening and starts to go astray about halfway through, which is where I am in the book at the moment, and based on some other reviews I’ve read I’m expecting to be disappointed with the last third of the book. Still it’s been an interesting read and the first half or so is one I agree with completely.

Now I’m supposed to tag five other bloggers, but I’m not going to do that—if you feel like doing this meme then consider yourself tagged—instead I’m going to provide a bonus question not part of the original meme:

Book I just finished reading:
A Mind of its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives by Cordelia Fine - I’ll be writing a full review of this book shortly, but in summary let me say that if you want a greater insight into how your mind works then this book is a must read. It’s a very easy read as it’s a high-level overview of a lot of the studies done in recent years on how the brain does what it does that reveals how your mind literally has a mind of its own and why you can’t always trust your brain. It’s bigoted, vain, deceptive, stubborn, and pigheaded, but once you understand that you are better equipped to deal with how it twists your perceptions of reality. Cordelia Fine’s book includes an extensive list of citations for all the studies that she uses as the basis for each chapter so you don’t have to take her word for it, but can look them up on your own. Great stuff.