In today’s news, add some laugh-out-loud books to your beach bag, find out why Random House is in a tizzy, and check out Comic-Con 2010. Enjoy!
Sorry, surfers - this weekend, San Diego goes to the nerds.
- Literary or otherwise, your summer reading books should be fun (assuming they weren’t assigned by a canon-worshipping English teacher). In “Fun in the Sun: Laugh-Out-Loud Summer Reads,” NPR’s Heller McAlpin selects five books known to cause frequent bursts of laughter. The list includes two novels, two essay collections, and one memoir, all with prose McAlpin calls “as sparkling and refreshing as sand and water.”
- The e-book dispute betwen publishers and Amazon got a little more interesting Wednesday night when the Wylie Agency made a deal with Amazon to make twenty of the century’s biggest titles (including Lolita, John Updike’s “Rabbit” series, Invisible Man, and Midnight’s Children) exclusively available to the Kindle. The strange part is that Wylie, a literary agency, bypassed the actual publishers of the books to make the deal with Amazon. Random House is particularly displeased and claims they own the rights to several of these books. Jacket Copy wonders why this dispute is so public, and PWxyz gives more details on the deal.
- When you think San Diego, you may think of crashing waves and beautiful people in bathing suits, but not this weekend! With Comic-Con in town, San Diego has become a sci-fi mecca as movie studios, actors, book publishers, and eager fans converge to find out what’s next in the SF, pop culture universe. The Guardian gives a quick rundown of what’s happened so far and will post updates throughout the weekend.
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