A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

The People Versus George Lucas.

Star Wars enthusiasts have made a documentary about their obsession, and how they feel Lucas has failed the franchise:

Fan debate over the extensive changes made by Lucas in special editions of the films released long after the original theatrical runs gets pretty intense in The People vs. George Lucas, Phillippe said: “As documentary filmmakers, we had to distance ourselves from the fact that we’re fanboys and fangirls at heart, to deliver an objective, uncensored, no-holds-barred examination of a unique cultural phenomenon.”

The British Library goes head to head with Google and offers Public Domain works online.

Many of the downmarket books known as “penny dreadfuls” will also be made available to the public, including Black Bess by Edward Viles and The Dark Woman by J M Rymer.

Altogether, 35%-40% of the library’s 19th-century printed books — now all digitised — are inaccessible in other public libraries and are difficult to find in second-hand or internet bookshops.

Author Susan Morgan committed suicide. Under the pen names Zoe Barnes and Sue Dyson, she is said to have popularized the “Chick Lit” genre.

After the breakdown of her relationship with husband Simon, the author – who fought chronic pain caused by two rare auto-immune conditions – became depressed and ‘began to loathe the life she had’, the inquest was told.

A review of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks:

The woman who provides this book its title, Henrietta Lacks, was a poor and largely illiterate Virginia tobacco farmer, the great-great-granddaughter of slaves. Born in 1920, she died from an aggressive cervical cancer at 31, leaving behind five children. No obituaries of Mrs. Lacks appeared in newspapers. She was buried in an unmarked grave.

To scientists, however, Henrietta Lacks almost immediately became known simply as HeLa (pronounced hee-lah), from the first two letters of her first and last names. Cells from Mrs. Lacks’s cancerous cervix, taken without her knowledge, were the first to grow in culture, becoming “immortal” and changing the face of modern medicine.

A manuscript sequel to the Gormenghast novels has been found in an attic:

Titus Awakes was written by Maeve Gilmore shortly after her husband’s death from Parkinson’s Disease in 1968.

She decided to write the book, which runs to 210 pages, after he left her a page and a half of fragmented notes about how he might have continued the story.