Scholastic has announced that they sold more than 450,000 copies (hardcover and ebook) of Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay, the final book in The Hunger Games trilogy, in its first week on sale. It debuted at number one on both the USA Today and NY Times bestseller lists. You can read our spoiler-free review of Mockinjay here or join our spoiler-filled discussion of the book here.

Scholastic also announced that they have gone back to press to print an additional 400,000 copies of Mockingjay. Since the initial printing was 1.2 million, that means there will be a total of 1.6 million copies of Mockingjay in print in the US.

“After months of anticipation, sales for Mockingjay have exceeded all expectations, as has the outpouring from countless teen and adult fans of the trilogy who have been blogging, tweeting, and coming out to meet Suzanne Collins on the first leg of her North American tour,” said Ellie Berger, President of the Scholastic Trade Publishing division, in a press release.

Now that Suzanne Collins has completed the trilogy, it seems that filmmakers are eager to get going on The Hunger Games movie. Deadline is reporting that the script for the movie has been turned in and Lionsgate is looking at Gary Ross, Sam Mendes or David Slade to direct. We’ve been chatting about the rumors that Chloe Moretz and Kristen Stewart are being considered for the role of Katniss, so feel free to join the discussion and tell us how you’d like to see the movie cast.

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Do you want to know the endings of 50 classic novels without actually having to read the books? How about the names of every character killed in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? If so, check out this video put together by The Fine Brothers. Naturally, spoilers abound!

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There was excitement in the literary world this week as the shortlist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction was announced in London. The award is given annually to the best full-length English novel authored by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe published in the award year.

Books that are nominated for the prize by each imprint are reviewed by a group of judges. The judges then select a group of them that are under consideration for the prize (known as the longlist). The nominees are furthered narrowed down into the shortlist, which this year is comprised of:

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey (Two time winner)
Room by Emma Donoghue
In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
The Long Song by Andrea Levy
C by Tom McCarthy

The Man Booker Prize website also lists the books that made the longlist, but didn’t make it to the shortlist.

The winner will be announced October 12 at a dinner in London, which will also be broadcast on BBC News (both TV and radio). Along with a cash prize, the award usually brings a surge of sales due to the notoriety of the awards.

Have you read any of the nominated books? What did you think of them?

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Towers of Midnight is the penultimate thirteenth novel in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time Series (now continued by Brandon Sanderson). The book won’t hit bookstores until November 2nd, but there’s a new book trailer that might help you pass the time while you wait. It’s the first official book trailer created for the Wheel of Time series, and it was produced by Dragonmount.com and Mythmakers Entertainment.

Publisher’s summary of Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (Available November 2, 2010):

The Last Battle has started. The seals on the Dark One’s prison are crumbling. The Pattern itself is unraveling, and the armies of the Shadow have begun to boil out of the Blight.

The sun has begun to set upon the Third Age.

Perrin Aybara is now hunted by specters from his past: Whitecloaks, a slayer of wolves, and the responsibilities of leadership. All the while, an unseen foe is slowly pulling a noose tight around his neck. To prevail, he must seek answers in Tel’aran’rhiod and find a way–at long last–to master the wolf within him or lose himself to it forever.

Meanwhile, Matrim Cauthon prepares for the most difficult challenge of his life. The creatures beyond the stone gateways–the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn–have confused him, taunted him, and left him hanged, his memory stuffed with bits and pieces of other men’s lives. He had hoped that his last confrontation with them would be the end of it, but the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. The time is coming when he will again have to dance with the Snakes and the Foxes, playing a game that cannot be won. The Tower of Ghenjei awaits, and its secrets will reveal the fate of a friend long lost.

This penultimate novel of Robert Jordan’s #1 New York Times bestselling series–the second of three based on materials he left behind when he died in 2007–brings dramatic and compelling developments to many threads in the Pattern. The end draws near.

Dovie’andi se tovya sagain. It’s time to toss the dice.

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The media is in a tizzy over Stephen Hawking’s new book, The Grand Design, in which he argues that God did not create the universe.

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing … It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going,” writes Hawking.

Hawking’s new theories about the origins of the universe have grabbed headlines all over the world. The media frenzy was led by the London Times (subscription only) last week with the front page headline “Hawking: God did not create universe.”

Of course, all the publicity surrounding Stephen Hawking has boosted sales of his book. The Grand Design is currently the number one top seller on Amazon, beating other hot books like Mockingjay, Freedom, and Tony Blair’s memoir.

Here’s more information about The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow (Available September 7, 2010):

THE FIRST MAJOR WORK IN NEARLY A DECADE BY ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREAT THINKERS—A MARVELOUSLY CONCISE BOOK WITH NEW ANSWERS TO THE ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF LIFE

When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the nature of reality? Why are the laws of nature so finely tuned as to allow for the existence of beings like ourselves? And, finally, is the apparent “grand design” of our universe evidence of a benevolent creator who set things in motion—or does science offer another explanation?

The most fundamental questions about the origins of the universe and of life itself, once the province of philosophy, now occupy the territory where scientists, philosophers, and theologians meet—if only to disagree. In their new book, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow present the most recent scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe, in nontechnical language marked by both brilliance and simplicity.

In The Grand Design they explain that according to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence or history, but rather that every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously. When applied to the universe as a whole, this idea calls into question the very notion of cause and effect. But the “top-down” approach to cosmology that Hawking and

Mlodinow describe would say that the fact that the past takes no definite form means that we create history by observing it, rather than that history creates us. The authors further explain that we ourselves are the product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe, and show how quantum theory predicts the “multiverse”—the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature.

Along the way Hawking and Mlodinow question the conventional concept of reality, posing a “model-dependent” theory of reality as the best we can hope to find. And they conclude with a riveting assessment of M-theory, an explanation of the laws governing us and our universe that is currently the only viable candidate for a complete “theory of everything.” If confirmed, they write, it will be the unified theory that Einstein was looking for, and the ultimate triumph of human reason.

A succinct, startling, and lavishly illustrated guide to discoveries that are altering our understanding and threatening some of our most cherished belief systems, The Grand Design is a book that will inform—and provoke—like no other.

(Source: Guardian)

Here’s a first for me—I think Finny by Justin Kramon is the first book I’ve picked up solely on the basis of the book trailer. The trailer, which you can check out below, is very well done and totally captures what the book is all about, but I’ll describe it anyway. It’s a coming of age story about Delphine “Finny” Short, a spirited fourteen year old girl who likes to push people’s buttons just to see if they’ll push back. Her straight-laced family has old-fashioned expectations of how a young lady should behave and are perplexed by Finny. When she meets a neighbor her age, Earl, and his father, she is instantly taken with them because, with all their eccentricities, they are very different from her uptight family. Finny and Earl begin what will be a lifetime friendship that spans high school, college, and beyond.

Just because Finny is about a teenage girl, don’t mistake it for a Young Adult novel. The story follows Finny from her teen years until she’s in her late thirties, and it’s definitely an adult book. The thing I liked most about Finny was watching her go through the ups and downs of life. I was totally engrossed in the stories about her family, friends, and love life.

During the course of the book, Finny meets lots of interesting people—from a germaphobe to a narcoleptic to a school administrator with a sycophantic assistant—it seems like everyone in the novel has some sort of weird little personality quirk. Sometimes he takes it too far and they seem more like caricatures, but these offbeat characters add something special to the book.

So check out the book trailer and see if you become as captivated by Finny as I did.

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BC Ferries spokeswoman Deborah Marshall says they came to that decision “Because we’re obviously a ‘family show’ and we’ve got children in our gift shops, we had suggested we could carry the book if there’s what’s called a ‘belly band’ wrap around the photo.” Lyon and the book’s publisher, Random House, refused this idea, so BC Ferries banned the book.

On her blog, Lyon says that they won’t carry the book “since the trade paperback still features a bare bum on the cover. Oh, BC Ferries. You have one too, you know you do!”

The Golden Mean is an award winning fictional account of the time when Alexander the Great was tutored by Aristotle. It won the 2009 Rogers Writers’ Trust fiction prize and was a finalist for the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award.

Most book bannings are over a book’s content—sex, drugs, subversive ideas—which makes this whole thing seem silly in comparison. It reminds me of cases where naked statues have been deemed inappropriate and removed from public places. The cover art is tastefully done if you ask me. What do you think? Is this book cover too obscene for children?

(Source: Calgary Herald)

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Top Gear‘s “The Stig” and HarperCollins have won their court battle with the BBC over the right to publish his autobiography and reveal the mystery man’s identity. The BBC had argued that the confidentiality agreements they had with The Stig should prohibit him from writing about his time on Top Gear. The court rejected that argument and HarperCollins will proceed with their plan to publish The Man in the White Suit on September 16th.

So (spoiler alert?) the man behind the white helmet has been revealed to be…Ben Collins. He’s been involved in racing since 1994 and has driven in Formula 3, NASCAR, and at the Le Mans 24 hour. He also was a stunt double for Daniel Craig in the James Bond movie, The Quantum of Solace.

Collins has been The Stig for the past 7 years, but his future with the show is uncertain. The BBC hasn’t announced their plans for the upcoming season of Top Gear and some have speculated that they could eliminate The Stig from the show altogether. However, Sky News quotes Jana Bennett, Director of BBC Vision, as saying “Viewers of Top Gear shouldn’t worry The Stig lives on and will be back in the new year.”

The Man in the White Suit by Ben Collins will be released on September 16, 2010 in the UK. There’s no word on when it will be available in the US.

(Source: Mirror)

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The title Good Christian Bitches certainly gets your attention, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s part of the reason why, according to Deadline, three networks—ABC, NBC, and CBS—all want the new show based on Kim Gatlin’s book.

GCB is produced by Sex and the City creator Darren Star and will be written by Robert Harling, who also wrote Steel Magnolias and The First Wives Club. The project is described as “Desperate Housewives in Dallas.”

Gatlin says she wrote the book about the ladies who use bible study as a forum to gossip or who talk about people behind their backs under the guise of asking for prayers. Here’s more about Good Christian Bitches (from the publisher):

For Heaven’s sake…Never let God get in the way of a good story. Good Christian Bitches is the lighthearted tale of Amanda Vaughn, a recently divorced mother of two. To get a fresh start, she moves back to the affluent Dallas neighborhood where she grew up. In an Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Desperate Housewives on steroids style, her old friends are already out to destroy her reputation. In the whirling midst of salacious gossip, Botox, and fraud, Amanda turns to those who love her and the faith she’s always known. Will the Good Christian Bitches get the best of her, or will everyone see that these GCBs are as counterfeit as their travel jewelry?

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With the release of Mockingjay, the Hunger Games trilogy is complete, leaving us fans with time to speculate on the upcoming movie. The question we’re all asking is “Who will play Katniss?” According to USA Today, Kick-Ass star Chloe Moretz is currently the front-runner for the role. They say Kristen Stewart is probably on the shortlist as well.

Author Suzanne Collins wrote the screenplay for The Hunger Games movie herself. Production on the movie will start next year.

Personally, I’d like to see the kids played by unknown actors, like they did with Harry Potter. I think a well-known actress like Kristen Stewart would just be distracting. What do you think? Can you see Chloe Moretz as Katniss? How about Kristen Stewart?

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