The Reading Book Post, March 30th

The end of March is here. Finally, the sunny days have arrived and I hope that they will continue! But with that it's getting really hard to stay inside and work. Oh well. But let's take a look at all those things that happened the past week in the literary world.  

• As usual, this week's Reading Book Post will begin with some award news. On one side, The Orwell Prize announced its longlist, which includes four first-time authors and other well established political writers. On the other side, The Man Booker Prize announced the shortlist and the winner is due to be made public on May 19th. Lastly, the winners of the 2015 Bancroft Prize were publicized, an award focusing in the field of history.

• Go Set a Watchman is approaching its day of publication and this week it officially has a cover! Which one do you prefer? I like the colours in the US cover, but I like better the UK one. 

• In a similar story, this week the cover for the Illustrated Harry Potter edition was revealed and it's amazing! What do you think? Do you like it? The book will be published on October 6th.

• But this week there were some really sad news too. The Swedish and Nobel-winning poet, Tomas Transtormer, died at the age of 83. He was awarded the Nobel Prize of literature in 2011. Check out his poems, they were wonderful! But his was not the only loss of the literary world. Martyn Goff, literary administrator, author and bookseller died at the age of 91. He contributed to the organisation and popularity of the Booker Prize and he was also known for his efforts to increase literacy in children.

• Clean Reader app, brought some strong protests among the authors. This app applies a filter to the ebooks purchased by its store and changes the profanities, for example, "hell" becomes "heck" and "shit" becomes "crap". But after the protests all the titles of the authors were removed by the application's catalogue. Author Joanne Harris, know for her novel Chocolat, declared that this is "a small victory for the world of dirt". What do you think about that? Do the profanities bother you in a book?

• Although I didn't read the Diary of a Wimpy Kid as a child, I know that elementary and middle-school kids love the series (my nephews and nieces included). If you happen to know such a kid you can make them really happy, because the tenth book of the series will be published on November 3rd. 

• Which Stephen King Character Are You? This fun quiz lets you know which character from the master of horror you are. Take it and let me know which one you got. I got Christine.