As you celebrate Memorial Day this weekend, take some time to remember all our soldiers stationed overseas.

If you want to help these men and women far away from home, we’ve collected five different ways you can share books with our troops. For instance, E-Books for Troops will help you send an eReader to our troops overseas. Army Sgt. Andre Corbin explained at the site:

When soldiers deploy, they have a mandatory packing list of equipment/clothing which must be fitted into a rucksack and a duffel bag – and it takes good packing to get everything required stowed. Any personal items must fit into a backpack, that is basically a carry-on bag – not a lot of room. When you only have about 1.5 cubic feet of space to pack personal items to last a year (or at least until care packages start arriving), you have to be very judicious in what you decide to bring … For me, a voracious reader who is addicted to the written word and regularly devours several novels/books a week, having the room for only a few books – even paperbacks tightly packed – could be a very frustrating dilemma.

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Last night, Judy Blume and her son Lawrence Blume appeared in New York City at a special promotional event for the film Tiger Eyes. Attendees watched the film and joined a Q&A session with both Blumes.

One audience member asked Judy how she dealt with the controversy and library challenges that followed her work.

Judy replied with some important writing advice: “You cannot write with a censor on your shoulder … I was a fearful kid and for some crazy reason, a pretty fearless writer.”

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Seattle’s Once Sold Tales is currently offering $10, $12, $18 and $20 book grab bags for readers.

As we wrote earlier this week, the owner is struggling to find homes for 500,000 books before her warehouse closes at the end of the month.  If you live near Seattle, follow this Google maps link to visit the warehouses yourself. Explore all the grab bag options at this link:

Paypal is the way to pay. All payments to be made to sales@oncesoldtales.com. Subject should be your products and the optional message is not optional. Make certain to share your category selections, but note: while Once Sold Tales will try their hardest to get you what you want, only Category 0 can be guaranteed. We will send it off to you immediately and email you as soon as it’s on its way! And, Voila’! It’s like Christmas! — feeling excited at Once Sold Tales Bookstore Outlet.

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If you want to make a personalized audiobook for the kid in your life, StorySticker can help you with the transition.

Created by stkr.it, the tool will be unveiled at BEA next week. AppNewser has all the details:

StorySticker lets you do create audio recordings of yourself reading their favorite book so that they can listen to your voice at bedtime. The StorySticker audio book works through the combination of an app and a unique coded sticker that attaches to the inside of any children’s book. You can buy the stickers at a book retailer and paste it into your child’s book. Then you can download the free app and follow the prompts to record your reading. The recording is linked with the sticker and your child can hear your recording by scanning the StorySticker code or by selecting the book within the app.

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Looking for some literary Memorial Day viewing? Try Black Books, a classic British sitcom about a dysfunctional bookstore.

You can watch it for free on Hulu or Netflix streaming. We’ve embedded the trailer below–any fans in the audience? BBC America has more about the show:

In this TV show, Bernard Black (Dylan Moran) owns a bookstore, but he’s more keen on hanging out with his friends than helping customers, resigning to using a bullhorn to announce to shoppers that the store is closed. His gal pal Fran Katzenjammer (Tamsin Greig) has a shop next door, making it even more tempting to close up early. His handy dandy assistant (Bill Bailey) isn’t much help either.

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Here are some handpicked titles from our Coming Attractions page. Want to include your book? Just read our Share Your New Book with GalleyCat Readers post for all the details.

The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas: “Mair Ellis clears out her dead father’s house and finds an exquisite shawl–a kaleidoscope of silvery blues and greens. Wrapped in the folds of this delicate object is a lock of a child’s curly hair. With nothing else to go on, Mair decides to trace her roots back to Kashmir…” (January 2013)

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Pop Chart Lab has created The Cocktail Chart of Film & Literature, collecting the most literary cocktails for your summer mixology. Check it out:

A catalog of 49 drinks culled from great works of film and literature, depicting everything from Philip Marlowe’s Gin Gimlet to Fredo Corleone’s Banana Daiquiri to the simple yet effective Buttermaker Boilermaker … Each print is signed by the artists and numbered from a first printing of 500, and comes packaged in a custom Pop Chart Lab Test Tube … Using 100 lb. archival recycled stock certified by The Forest Stewardship Council, this poster is pressed on an offset lithographic press with vegetable-based inks in Flatlands, Brooklyn.

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For your weekend reading pleasure, here are our top stories of the week.

They included a bookstore struggling to find homes for a half million books, the Nobel Prize candidates and a word that finally describes a book lover’s unique problem (embedded above).

1. Tsundoku: Illustrated Definition of a Book Lover’s Problem

2. Once Told Tales Struggles with 500,000 Books

3. Most Searched for Books & Authors on Google

4. Nobel Prize in Literature Candidates Chosen

5. Amazon To Allow Writers To Sell Fan Fiction

6. This Is a Bookshop Sign Goes Viral

7. Free Sites To Promote Your Book

8. How a Poem Spread to 1,500 Baseball Fields

9. Amazing Treehouse Reading Nook

10. Successful query letters for literary agents

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You can apply for the second annual John E. Nance Writer-in-Residence program at the Thurber House from now through June 3, 2013.

The four-week program includes a $4,000 stipend, “community outreach opportunities” and a stay in the two-bedroom apartment where writer and New Yorker cartoonist James Thurber once lived. Here’s more about the fall 2013 program:

Applications are now being accepted, and the genre for applicants is fiction. Residents will be chosen by July 15, 2013 and the residency will take place in September and October 2013. The application guidelines are as follows: Candidates must have had a book published by a traditional publisher within the last three years or have a current piece of their work under contract … Follow this link to learn more details and download the application.

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Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Atkinson will publish a narrative history trilogy about the American Revolution with Henry Holt and Company.

The former Washington Post staff writer won the Pulitzer Prize for An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, part of his bestselling trilogy about World War II–a 15 year writing effort. 

 The American Revolution trilogy will begin with 1775 and 1776; volume two will cover 1777 to 1779 and volume three will cover 1780 to 1781. Macmillan editor at large John Sterling acquired and will edit the books. He has edited all of Atkinson’s books.

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An official trailer for the Tiger Eyes film adaptation has been released. The trailer includes a first look at Willa Holland as Davey and Tatanka Means as Wolf.

We’ve embedded the video above–what do you think?

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tiger Eyes will be the first time a Judy Blume title has been adapted into a feature film. Lawrence Blume, Judy’s son, directed this project. He worked on writing the screenplay with his mother.

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Simon & Schuster and Folger Shakespeare Library will release a set of interactive apps aimed at helping students explore the work of William Shakespeare.

AppNewser has more about the upcoming apps:

Coming this November, the joint effort will release app versions of Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They will continue to release plays thereafter until the entire collection is available. The app versions will include audio recordings, videos and photos, which are designed to help teach the texts. This includes audio performances produced at the Folger Theatre, as well as expert commentary from Shakespeare scholars. The apps will also have social networking reading tools on a private network so that teachers and students can take digital notes and share them with each other within the networked text.

If you are looking for un-interactive versions of these famous plays, follow the links below to download free copies of Shakespeare’s most popular works on Project Gutenberg.

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Universal Pictures acquired the rights to Soman Chainani‘s The School for Good and Evil in a seven-figure deal.

The newly released novel is the first installment in epic fantasy trilogy published by HarperCollins.  Slated for three films, Jane Startz will produce and Chainani will write the script with Malia Scotch-Marmo. Deadline Hollywood had the scoop:

Deadline revealed last Thursday that the Oz The Great And Powerful producer had partnered with Jane Startz Production to acquire movie rights to The School For Good And Evil. After a spirited auction, Universal Pictures won the property in a seven-figure deal for book and scriptwriting fees.

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Journalist and author Katherine Boo has won the New York Public Library’s 2013 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Behind The Beautiful Forevers.

The $15,000 award goes to “journalists whose books have brought clarity and public attention to important issues, events, or policies.” Boo had this comment as she received the award:

Consistently, the recipients of this award make the argument through their work that you can’t just complain or accept that the American public don’t give a damn about genocide in Rwanda or ruined lives in the inner city … What this award symbolizes to me is that as a journalist working in the field, you have to report harder and work harder, until you make the American public give a damn. That’s what good writing with a capital ‘W’ is. Over the years, the Library has honored some bad-ass women, and has always honored hard-core, fierce reporting.

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CoverGirl has created a Hunger Games-inspired makeup line called the “Capitol Collection.”

Lionsgate struck a sponsorship deal for the Catching Fire adaptation with the cosmetics company. Paula Kupfer, the vice president of promotions and consumer products at Lionsgate explained in the release:

We are excited to announce COVERGIRL as the exclusive makeup partner for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The exquisite beauty and style in the world of the Capitol is a focal point of this film. Partnering with an innovative brand like COVERGIRL to create an additional layer of beauty storytelling and inspiration for the fans is new territory that we’re delighted to explore.

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Senator Elizabeth Warren will publish a book about “how Washington is rigged against America’s middle class” with Henry Holt and Company’s Metropolitan Books imprint.

Publication is set for the spring of 2014. Robert Barnett of Williams & Connolly negotiated the deal with publisher Stephen Rubin. Editor at large John Sterling will edit. You can read her work on Twitter, where she has more than 82,000 followers. Here’s more from the release:

The main focus of the book, however, will be the conflict America now faces between giant institutions and the needs of everyday citizens. Senator Warren will bring her wide professional experience – as a Harvard law professor, head of the Congressional panel that tried to bring some oversight to the bank bailout, and assistant to the President for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – to outline how the American middle class can be strengthened. The book will discuss how powerful interests in Washington have rigged the system to benefit themselves and what actions must be taken at every level – from campaigns to legislation to government agencies – to level the playing field.

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Lydia Davis has won the fifth Man Booker International Prize, chosen from among nine finalists.

The announcement was made at Victoria and Albert Museum in London. We’ve included the complete list of finalists below. Here’s more from the official release:

 The Prize, worth £60,000, is awarded for an achievement in fiction on the world stage and Davis’s achievements are writ large despite often using startlingly few words (some of her longer stories only stretch to two or three pages). Her work has the brevity and precision of poetry. Sir Christopher Ricks, chairman of the judges, said her “writings fling their lithe arms wide to embrace many a kind. Just how to categorise them? They have been called stories but could equally be miniatures, anecdotes, essays, jokes, parables, fables, texts, aphorisms or even apophthegms, prayers or simply observations.”

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Kathleen Schmidt will be the new publicity director of Weinstein Books. She will join the publisher (a Perseus Books Group and Weinstein Company partnership) on July 1.

Currently,  Schmidt runs her own publicity firm, KMS Public Relations–working with around 120 books a year. You can follow her work on Twitter. In the past, she served as director of publicity at Atria Books, director of publicity at Dutton and Gotham Books and a publicist at Pocket Books. Here’s more from the release:

At Weinstein Books, Kathleen will personally create and implement digital and traditional publicity campaigns for all hardcover, e-books, trade paper original and trade paper reprint titles on the list, and will work alongside Publishing Director Georgina Levitt and Editorial Director Amanda Murray.

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Crime journalist Steve Lillebuen painted a complex and spooky picture of a killer in The Devil’s Cinema: The Untold Story Behind Mark Twitchell’s Kill Room.

We caught up with the journalist to find out what digital tools he used to build his book. Lillebuen explained how he used valuable tools like OCR software and the Wayback Machine to explore the killer’s life. We’ve embedded the complete interview below, but here’s an excerpt:

My advice, however, is to treat the Internet as just another tool and not abandon old research and journalism skills. You still have to get out there and have good contacts, speak to a lot of sources, ask them questions, door knock, be very patient, and be prepared to be yelled at. Nobody loves a police reporter, as Edna Buchanan liked to say. You’re prying into people’s lives during their most traumatic moment. You’re bound to face a lot of abuse. My book research ended up straddling both the digital and the real world. I spent a year interviewing the killer in prison. He didn’t have access to a computer and could rarely make phone calls, so he ended up sending me more than 350 pages of hand-written letters.

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Celebrity chef, author and Food Revolution host Jamie Oliver has jumped to HarperCollins’ Ecco imprint after working with Hyperion on earlier books.

Ecco will publish the first book in fall 2014 with another book coming one year later. The publisher did not reveal the subjects of the books. According to the release, the chef sold more than two million copies of 30-Minute Meals in the UK. Oliver had this statement about his change of publisher:

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have worked with such a supportive publisher in Hyperion but I am really excited about this new relationship.  It is an honor for me to join the company of the great chefs on Ecco’s roster.  Many of them are my friends and I look forward to this partnership.

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