Sales of the first two books were likely spurred by the prices being discounted to $5 each at most ebook stores for a period of time, though they have since increased.

Full story here.

Neil notes that it’s still a work in progress and promises to have it polished in time for next halloween; still, it’s not too late to participate this year, and the website is definitely worth a look.

When I went to work in earnest on The Corrections, in the mid-90s, I found my way blocked by shame. I was ashamed of almost everything I’d done in my personal life for the last 15 years. I was ashamed of having married so early, ashamed of how strange and singular my marriage had been, ashamed of my guilt about it, ashamed of the years of moral contortions I’d undergone on my way to divorce, ashamed of my sexual inexperience, ashamed of what an outrageous and judgmental mother I had, ashamed of being a bleeding and undefended person instead of a tower of remoteness and command and intellect like DeLillo or Pynchon, ashamed to be writing a book that seemed to want to turn on the question of whether an outrageous midwestern mother will get one last Christmas at home with her family.

Read the rest here.

Though most of them aren’t especially well-known, we’ve also got the names of many of the dwarves:

• Richard Armitage as Thorin
• Aidan Turner as Fili
• Rob Kazinsky as Kili
• Graham McTavish as Dwalin
• John Callen as Oin
• Stephen Hunter as Bombur
• Mark Hadlow as Dori
• Peter Hambleton as Gloin

Source: Deadline

And now their creators are eyeing up the poetry market. According to Dmitriy Genzel, a Google software engineer, the internet’s favourite one-stop shop is now working on the machine-translation of not just words, but meter and rhyme.

The story is actually referring to this post, dated October 5th, from Google’s research blog. Translating poetry sounds infinitely more challenging than plain text, and automated plain-text translators are far from perfect. Still, it’ll be interesting to watch the progress of the project.

And though it’s been rumored for months, we finally have official confirmation that Peter Jackson – who directed the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy – will return in the same role.

Full information is available on theonering.net.

In an interview recorded in Scotland [J.K. Rowling] told chat show star Oprah Winfrey the characters were still in her head and she “could definitely” write several new books about them.

She said: “I’m not going to say I won’t.”