Hello, Book Lovers! It’s time for another installment of The Pulse and boy do we have some gush-worthy items to share. From unnecessary, yet totally unsurprising drama in the book world to some fabulous book-to-film announcements that readers are absolutely going to love. We have some inspiring news coming from across the pond, too. Heck, there’s even a surprise for Harry Potter fans! So, grab a refreshment and get comfortable as BookTrib spills the tea.

STANDOUT READS BOOKTRIB’S DISCUSSING

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby van Pelt: “Brilliant storytelling that evokes emotion — from tears to laughter. This was a Read With Jenna pick and I highly recommend it, as well! My new favorite recommendation!”

May’s Top 10 Audiobooks: “This month, listeners visit a small island in the Gulf of Finland, banter with book lovers, meet the man Jane Goodall dubbed the “chimp whisperer” and much, much more. So, grab your earbuds and queue ’em up!”

West Side Love Story by Priscilla Oliveras: “It has all the romantic yearning and simmering chemistry of Shakespeare’s original but with a hard-won and happy ending that left me with a big, deeply satisfied smile on my face.”

NEWS FROM THE BOOK WORLD

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) acted swiftly and decisively when they announced the removal of this year’s SFWA Grand Master, Mercedes Lackey, from the virtual conference on May 22, 2022, after she used a racial slur during the “Romancing Sci-Fi Fantasy” panel.

The Hunger Games’ prequel The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes cast its lead actress this week, and it’s none other than West Side Story’s Rachel Zegler who will play the role of Lucy Gray Baird in this highly anticipated book-to-screen adaptation. In other film adaptation news, Taylor Zakhar Perez (The Kissing Booth 2 3) and Nicholas Galitzine (Cinderella) have been tapped to lead Prime Video’s romantic comedy Red, White Royal Blue, based on Casey McQuiston’s bestselling novel of the same name. Deadline reported that Charmaine Wilkerson’s Black Cake is headed to the small screen, with Adrienne Warren set to star.

For podcast listeners, it’s being reported that a podcast series based on Laurie Faria Stolarz’s Jane Anonymous is in the works, with actors Mina Sundwall and Michael Cimino cast in leading roles.

Some great news worthy of celebration comes from the UK! Penguin Random House UK donated its entire audio back catalogue to Calibre Audio, a charity providing a free-for-life audiobook service to anyone who has a disability that makes reading print difficult. Bravo!

AWARDS AND ACCOLADES WORTHY OF NOTE

Audiofile announced the recipients of the 2022 Golden Voices Audiobook Lifetime Achievement honors: Adjoa Andoh, Rupert Degas and Juliet Stevenson. Sui Annukka has won the Women’s Prize Trust’s Discoveries Writing Award for her “original, intriguing” coming-of-age novel in progress. IndieReader announced the 2022 Discovery Award winners this past week. Ghost Forest author Pik-Shuen Fung wins the 2022 Amazon Canada First Novel Award. BookTrib would like to extend a hearty congratulations to all the winners!

MORE BOOKS THE MEDIA’S BUZZING ABOUT

Tom Felton, better known to millennials and Harry Potter fans as Draco Malfoy, has announced his upcoming memoir, titled Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard, which is set to release this fall.

Kathleen Buhle, the ex-wife of Hunter Biden, recently spoke about her upcoming memoir — titled If We Break: A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction, and Healing — and her fraught marriage with President Joe Biden’s younger son in an interview with People magazine.

Barnes Noble selected Leesa Cross-Smith’s Half-Blown Rose as the latest pick for its book club.

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According to Australian website news.com.au, the Chinese version has chopped six seconds from the film’s final cut, including two lines of dialogues that referenced a previous romantic relationship between lead characters, Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald, played by Jude Law and Mads Mikkelsen, in the movie.

The lines in question were, “because I was in love with you” and “the summer Gellert and I fell in love.” The Secrets of Dumbledore is the third film in the Fantastic Beasts series, a prequel spin-off in the popular Harry Potter franchise based on the book series by JK Rowling.

Also starring Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Ezra Miller, Alison Sudol, Dan Fogler, Callum Turner, and Jessica Williams, the film was released in China on April 8.

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Warner Bros said the spirit of the movie remains “intact” despite the cuts. “As a studio, we’re committed to safeguarding the integrity of every film we release, and that extends to circumstances that necessitate making nuanced cuts in order to respond sensitively to a variety of in-market factors. “Our hope is to release our features worldwide as released by their creators but historically we have faced small edits made in local markets. In the case of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, a six-second cut was requested and Warner Bros accepted those changes to comply with local requirements but the spirit of the film remains intact,” the studio said in a statement to Variety.

The company said they want the audiences, including in China, to enjoy the film. “We want audiences everywhere in the world to see and enjoy this film, and it’s important to us that Chinese audiences have the opportunity to experience it as well, even with these minor edits,” Warner Bros further said in the statement.

In 2007, Rowling announced that Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is gay and that he and Grindelwald were in a relationship when they were young. The English author made the remarks following the publication of the seventh and final Harry Potter book, The Deathly Hallows. Dumbledore was not explicitly gay in the book series.

The Secrets of Dumbledore officially acknowledged the character’s sexuality on screen for the first time. Previously, Bohemian Rhapsody, the Freddie Mercury biopic, was famously chopped by Chinese censors, omitting all references to the Queen frontman’s sexuality.

Even the best actor Oscars acceptance speech by Rami Malek, who played Mercury in the film, was altered on Chinese television when the subtitles replaced “gay man” with “special group”.

YEREVAN, APRIL 20, ARMENPRESS. Armenian readers have the chance to dive into the Harry Potter world thanks to Alvard Jivanyan, the translator who has translated the immensely popular series of the fantasy novels by J.K. Rowling.

Speaking to ARMENPRESS about the art of translation, the peculiarity of the Harry Potter novels and children’s literature, Jivanyan emphasized that nowadays there is big demand for children’s literature.

According to Jivanyan, both children and parents prefer the fantasy genre, the “escape from reality”, something that is dictated by the social-political context.

However, the translator says that the Harry Potter novels aren’t at all solely for children.

“Even the volume of the book is telling us that it’s not just the children who are going to read it. Any serious children’s book has its adult readers as well. Let’s not forget that today the adult readers of Harry Potter are from the generation when the Harry Potter books were first being published during their youth,” she said.

Asked to present her opinion on what made the Harry Potter novels so popular and what feelings and emotions the book caused during translations, Jivanyan said: “I’m translating already the fifth volume which has numerous themes on war. The author, Joanne Rowling, is speaking with irony about the human tribe through the centaur, saying that they must learn to live in the brief period of peace between two wars. It is a surprising book with all its relations, and Rowling’s success is explained by the fact that she was able to bring back the young readers with her exclusive talent and skills of telling rich stories, something many contemporary authors lack.”

What might seem like a scene straight out of any mystical film, where avians are pros at singing, a European starling is breaking the internet with its musical talent. The bird called Zephyr, who can not only croon but also beatbox recently went viral on TikTok singing the Harry Potter theme song without a hitch.

Posted by its “bird mom” user @farijuana_ on the platform, a woman who keeps sharing various videos of the talking bird, wowed all with the recent video that amassed over 20 million views. “The breath he takes in the middle,” the woman wrote in the text on the video amused by the bird’s antics of showing off its skills.

“I love how he even mimics the breath I take in the middle of whistling,” the woman wrote on TikTok sharing the now-viral clip.

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A post shared by Animals Doing Things (@animalsdoingthings)

Meanwhile, ‘Muggles’ on social media were amazed how the bird nailed the theme music so well, with some remarking it would fit in the Hogwarts’ setting perfectly.

Earlier this year in January, the Harry Potter reunion ‘Return to Hogwarts’ not just gave fans a galore of nostalgia, it took them back to Hogwarts and what went behind the making of the mega-franchise as lead actors sat down for a chat.