Fifty Shades of Grey Film to Recast Male Role

Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam will not play the male lead in the film based on E.L. James’ bestselling novel. From USA Today:

Charlie Hunnam has dropped out of the lead role of Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey, Universal Pictures announced Saturday.

"The filmmakers of Fifty Shades of Grey and Charlie Hunnam have agreed to find another male lead given Hunnam's immersive TV schedule which is not allowing him to adequately prepare for the role of Christian Grey," Universal Picture said in a statement.

James responded to the news of Hunnam's departure on Twitter on Saturday saying, "I wish Charlie all the best. x"

After casting was announced in early September, fans of the book vocalized their displeasure. A petition to replace Hunnam and Dakota Johnson went live almost as soon as the casting was announced. The change.org-based petition had collected 75,000 signatures by September 8th. The petition demands that Hunnam and Johnson be replaced with Matt Bomer (White Collar) and Alexis Bledel (Gilmore Girls). The news that Hunnam had pulled out caused petition organizers to rejoice:

I'M SO FREAKING OUT LIKE YOU GUYS I CANT BELIEVE THIS I'M SO HAPPY AND I DONT KNOW WHAT TO SAY IT'S LIKE A MIRACLE I DONT KNOW GUYS PLZ NOW MORE THAN EVER WE MUST JOIN FORCES UNTIL ARRIVE 100 K SIGNATURES WE WILL DO ALL THE POSSIBLE TO SEE MATT LIKE GREY DONT GIVE UPPPPPP XXXXX

Despite the current lack of a male lead, fans can anticipate seeing the film at a theatre near them late next summer.

Ice Cream Flavored Like... Books?

What would make more sense than ice cream flavors inspired by books? Well, quite a lot actually, but that wouldn’t make much of a story! And this one is more fun. From the Quirk Books web site:

It's National Ice Cream Month! It's also July, and it's also very, very hot. And while we love all the regular kinds of ice cream just fine (you can pry Chubby Hubby from our still-warm, heatstroke-dead hands), we wondered what would happen if worlds collided and books became ice cream (not literally, though, because that would be gross). Get your hybrid freezer/bookshelves ready, because here are six tasty samples!

Sadly, these seem to be fictional flavors, not real ones. Still, a fun daydream for a sultry late July day.

See all of the flavors here.

Don’t Read This

In a world where it sometimes seems that everyone is trying to tell you what to read, it’s strikingly refreshing to have someone tell you about books to avoid. That’s just what comedian and late night talk show host Jimmy Fallon has been doing during a periodic segment Fallon calls his “Do Not Read List.”

“Every book I’m about to show you is real,” Fallon said as he started out the March 18th segment. “These are actual books.” And the reassurance is necessary because, at least in some cases, the truth is stranger than a whole lot of fiction.

This time out Fallon’s picks were all non-fiction, ranging from How I Cured Deadly Toe Fungus to an oddly illustrated book called A Day in the Life of Canada, a book didn’t appear to have a lot to do with Canada and a business book called Beat Your Way to the Top: Masturbation as a Technique for Business Success.

The real danger might be that, as many people in the book industry will tell you, any type of significant media attention will sell books. Though it’s possible that a book on success through masturbation might do well on its own.

You can see Fallon go through his picks below. If that taste gets you started, you can see Jimmy Fallon’s previous Do Not Read List segments here.

The Best of the Worst Book Covers

The Guardian books blog sallies into a field of best ofs with a discovery of a blog that specializes in worst ofs. Or, as the Guardian itself says, “The best crap book covers”:

I’ve said it before and I'll say it again: I love crap book covers. And my favourite romance blog Smart Bitches Trashy Books has just pointed me in the direction of a glorious new source of awfulness: Lousy Book Covers (tagline: "Just because you CAN design your own book cover doesn't mean you SHOULD").

Alison Flood’s Guardian piece is here. You can find the Lousy Book Covers microblog here.

Dictator Lit 101

“When not tyrannising their people,” Leo Benedictus writes in today’s Guardian, “it seems despots such as Colonel Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein like to turn their hand to writing books.” Not only that, Benedictus notes, it appears that it’s difficult for dictators to find an honest editor.

This is a silly piece. Some will find it annoying or even offensive. We think it’s sort of brilliant, and it’s here.

Book Fair Visitors Get Pie in the Face

This is a great story that comes to us via The National Post. All we’re going to share here is the paper’s headline. Sometimes, that’s enough:

Militant vegans in pie-throwing fiasco at San Francisco book fair

Really, what more needs to be said?

The National Post story is here.

Simpson’s Farce

We’ve refrained from commenting at all on the stomach-turning mutations of the Simpson book saga. We weren’t shy -- we seldom are -- but the clamour everyone else was making was enough, somehow. More than that. Through all of the odious permutations to this story, there’s been something untouchable about it. Almost as though any type of comment was more than what was deserved. And maybe -- just maybe -- there was a touch of denial in that response. As though if we ignored it hard enough, it would all just go away.

Well, we ignored. And it went away. And then it came back in a different form. As I write this, it’s a top bestseller. Despite all our ignoring.

In Friday’s Los Angeles Times, Pat Morrison nailed the odiousness perfectly:

When someone pulls on gloves to open a book, it’s usually a priceless volume: a Jane Austen first edition or a signed galley proof of “Harry Potter.”

I wanted to put on gloves to read “If I Did It” also, but for different reasons. The “yuck” factor in O.J. Simpson’s “hypothetical” account of how he would have murdered his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman is so high that the needle soars right off the scale.

We won’t revisit this one. We don’t need to. This isn’t literature. As Morrison says so well, “the book fits Karl Marx’s useful observation about history: first act tragedy, second act farce.”

’Nuff said. Here’s the link to Morrison’s piece.

You Know You’ve Been Hanging Around the Book Business Too Long When...

... You see this headline:

“D.C. Madam” case enthralls capital

... And all you wanna know is when the book deal will be announced.

Spears Prepares to Dance With her Muse

I’m a little embarrassed to be typing these words, but it is news and people will care. And though I suspect a lot of January’s readers might not be those people who care about this particular piece of news, they’ll still want to know, if you follow. And so here we are.

According to Inside Entertainment’s virtual edition, “Britney Spears is supposedly going to put pen to paper and divulge all her inner thoughts and secrets in an autobiography.”

Here’s the thing: if she does somehow manage to get all those words into book form -- or find a way to trick someone else into doing it for her -- the book will find a publisher and will likely sell a lot of copies.

Sometimes you just can’t help wonder why you get out of bed in the morning.

The virtual Inside Edition piece is here.

Teen Boys Scarred and Scared by Lesbian Sex Book

This one definitely comes to us via the WTF department:

A Bentonville, Ark., man is seeking $20,000 from the city after his two teenage sons found a book on lesbian sex on a public library bookshelf.

He also wants the library director fired.

Earl Adams said his 14- and 16-year-old sons were “greatly disturbed” after finding the book, titled “The Whole Lesbian Sex Book.” Adams said the book caused “many sleepless nights in our house.”

There’s just so much wrong with these there short paragraphs. In the first place, I’m having a tough time imagining the teen boys who would be put off their feed by literary descriptions of lesbian sex, let alone tell their father about it. And just in case you’re wondering what sort of porn the Bentonville, Arkansas library is stocking, “The book, by Felice Newman, is a sex guide deemed suitable for all public libraries, according to the Library Journal, which the Bentonville library uses to decide what to place on its shelves.”

It astonishes me that Bentonville has acted so quickly and pulled the book. Just about every library and bookstore in the world has at least one copy of something that will disturb someone on some level. (I routinely avoid photographic depictions of insects, for instance.) If a book bothers you, it’s very easy to avoid it. (I know this from personal experience. Back up a few lines to see about the whole insect thing.) What I never get is how some people are so concerned about what other people are reading/eating/watching on television. Please: if something bugs you, don’t read it. Just leave the library shelves -- and the good people who keep them stocked -- alone.

And it should be mentioned that all of this has nothing at all to do with The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden. AP recently called the Iggulden’s book “a deliberately retro tome that has become the publishing sensation of the year in Britain.” The book has been on UK bestseller lists for months and was named Book of the Year at the Galaxy British Book Awards in March. Again from AP:

Exuding the brisk breeziness of Boy Scout manuals and Boy’s Own annuals, “The Dangerous Book” is a childhood how-to guide that covers everything from paper airplanes to go-carts, skipping stones to skinning a rabbit.

The Book Standard suggests that The Dangerous Book for Boys has sold “more than 550,000 copies to date” and all of this without even a hint of lesbian sex.