Welcome back to book news corner!

Grab your cozy beverage of choice and settle in as we take a look at some book-related news stories from the past week. 

It’s quite the variety show this week, including some ranting about my college days because Hemingway. Also more GIFs than usual because I’m feeling punchy this morning after staying up past my bedtime yesterday. 

(Full disclosure: This post uses Bookshop.org affiliate links.)

---

Amazon Plans for a Lord of the Rings MMO

Remember that time Amazon bought the rights to Lord of the Rings for a kind of bananas amount of money? Well, they’re determined to milk their new IP for all it’s worth. 

This latest venture is an MMO (massive multiplayer online game) set in the world of Lord of the Rings. Think World of Warcraft, but more… Tokein-y. Somehow? Gizmodo covers what we know so far in this piece.

Not much info has been released about the game as of yet, but I’ll be curious to see where the project goes. 

(Source: Book Riot News newsletter, linking to Gizmodo article)

---

Hoover Fans Not Imprssived with First Photos from It Ends With Us Set

Photos from the set of the screen adaptation for Colleen Hoover’s massively popular It Ends With Us were released earlier this week. If my Instagram feed is any indication, people are not happy with this first look at the adaptation. Insider reports that folks on TikTok are feeling similarly, going so far as to question if the people involved in the project have even read the book. 

Personally I haven’t read and will not read It Ends with Us, so I don’t have a stake in the game here. But, it will be interesting to see how this pans out and whether Hoover’s massive following winds up being satisfied with the first adaptation of her books. 

(Source: Instagram generally, and Book Riot News newsletter linking to Insider)

---

Hemingway’s Worst Novel is Now a Movie, for Some Reason

Okay, Hemingway stans, don’t come for me, but Across the River and Into the Trees is a virtually unknown novel by this man for a reason. You can trust me, because I had an internship helping my professor work on his critical book about ARIT in college (this one, if you’re curious). I had to comb through that book repeatedly for an entire semester, so my nerdy little heart was shook to learn that it’s being adapted into a movie. Like, what?! And more importantly, why?

Furthermore, it stars Josh Hutcherson? As who? The super old guy having a romantic relationship with a teenage girl? I have questions. Okay, according to LitHub, he isn’t Cantwell but like… there aren’t really any other characters beside that guy, the teenage girl, and probably a bartender because it’s Hemingway? 

No date for when this will be distributed beyond the film festival circuit just yet, but I think I’m going to have to hate watch this one and relive my college days of shaking my head about Hemingway’s final novel. So, stay tuned for that. 

(Source: Book Riot News newsletter, linking to LitHub)

---

That’s all the book news (and Hemingway ramblings) for this week! See any interesting stories I missed? Let me know!