1. A Mighty Girl Last month a new website called
A Mighty Girl launched and I am not a skilled enough writer to describe how excited I am about this website. A Mighty Girl features recommendations of books and movies that feature strong, confident females. Who needs Bella Swan when you have Katniss Everdeen and Lyra Belacqua? Perfect for teachers and parents, the site offers the world's largest selection of great books and movies for girls, from Judy Blume to Hayao Miyazaki. It's a great site (with an adorable logo) that offers a huge, well organized selection of recommendations. The site was founded by Carolyn Danckaert and Aaron Smith, based on the idea that all girls should have access to books and movies that offer positive female role models. And who can argue with that? You can also follow A Mighty Girl on
Facebook.
2. J.K. Rowling is Everywhere! Since she is infamous for making people wait (whether it's for books, tweets or website updates) it has been wonderful to hear so much from the creator of
Harry Potter this past week. Her first novel for adults,
The Casual Vacancy, will be released September 27th of this year. You can read more
here.
It was also revealed that Jo is writing the long awaited Harry Potter encyclopedia. (
x) Pottermore was also opened to everyone this past week. Thanks to an all-nighter back in the summer, I was lucky enough to be one of the Beta testers for
Pottermore. After what felt like forever, I was finally able to login to the site around Labour Day, and was overjoyed when I finally got to go to Hogwarts, have my word choose me (elm with a phoenix core, 14 and a half inches, unyielding) and be sorted (Ravenclaw.) I also got to learn new information about the Potter universe, duel and make potions. This interactive site was originally supposed to be open to the public in October, but instead there was a long wait reminiscent of the push back of the
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince film, and Pottermore was finally open to the public on April 14th. Now anyone can be on Pottermore, regardless of where you live or how pure your blood is. While I know many people were disappointed with the site, I was impressed with its accuracy of sorting and all the new information J.K. Rowling provided. I hope everyone who has signed up in the past few days thought it was worth the wait.
3. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries I'm kind of worried for Hank Green's well being, since he seems to do everything! The co-founder of the
Vlogbrothers and
Crash Course has embarked on a new project called
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, in which
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is retold through vlogs made by the story's protagonist, Lizzie Bennet. Adapting a novel through video vlogs is so simple it's brilliant. As far as I know, no one has ever done it before and
Pride and Prejudice is a perfect place to start. While
The Lord of the Rings would make terrible vlog diaries (it would just be Frodo vlogging, minus all the action and would make no sense)
Pride and Prejudice is perfect because it's so character based. Just three episodes in, I think the series is clever and entertaining, with great acting. There are a few changes so far: the story is set in the present U.S, not Regency England. Lizzie also has two sisters (Lydia and Jane) instead of four. The series was created and executive produced by Hank Green and Bernie Su.
4. Holden Caulfield Thinks You're a Phony I am incredibly excited about
this t-shirt! I first saw it in
this video and I fell madly in love. The shirt of course references Salinger's
The Catcher in the Rye and even though I hate shipping things from the US to Canada, I bought one yesterday. I'm going to wear it to my wedding. And funeral. Just everywhere.
5. Insurgent by Veronica Roth Ever since Veronica Roth posted
pictures of the hardcover copy of her new book
Insurgent, I've been itching to read it
. This book is the sequel to
Divergent and will be released on May 1st.
From websites to book releases, what is everyone else excited about lately?
