Ron Does Stuff

Virgilio Almario’s birthday, Anthony Hopkin’s memoir, Erin Entrada Kelly’s new book, and “Oculus” at the Frankfurt Book Fair in this week’s edition.

National Artist Virgilio Almario’s birthday

First off, happy birthday to National Artist for Literature Virgilio Almario, who turns 81 today! I met Virgilio Almario a long time ago when we interviewed him and his fellow National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera. They were a fun interview!

New Harper Lee short story collection

Publishers Weekly reports that HarperCollins Publishers will be publishing The Land of Sweet Forever: Stories and Essays by Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird. The book will feature eight unseen short stories whose typescripts were some of the ones left in Harper Lee’s New York apartment when she died in 2016. Eight nonfiction pieces will also be included in the collection.

People quotes Harper president and publisher Jonathan Burnham in its report, who says:

To Kill A Mockingbird remains one of the most beloved novels in American literature. The discovery of these short stories, long believed to have been lost or destroyed, shows Harper Lee exploring the fictional avenues that she would eventually make her own, as well as less familiar Lee territory in Manhattan.

The book will come out on October 21.

‘Oculus’ at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2025

“Oculus” is the country’s inaugural cultural program at the 2025 Frankfurt Book Fair and will feature an exploration of “the interplay of moving image, research, and installation” and “examine how ecology and imagination shape the condition of seeing things.”

The exhibition is by artists Stephanie Misa and Joscha Steffens, curated by Patrick Flores, and will run from March 15 to May 18, 2025 at the Heidelberger Kunstverein.

Anthony Hopkins memoir

I spent most of November and December last year watching Hannibal Lecter movies so I kind of have a fondness for Anthony Hopkins so this bit of news immediately caught my eye. Publishers Weekly quotes a statement put out by Anthony Hopkins explaining the book title.

There is a photograph I keep on my phone of my father and me on the beach when I was a child. I often tell that boy: ‘we did ok, kid.’ I wonder how a boy from Wales, the son of a baker, got here. My entire life is a great mystery. This book is my story.

The book comes out on November 4.

The Singing Detainee and the Librarian with One Book: Essays on Exile Taipei book launch

If you’re in Taipei on the 28th, you can pass by the Citizen Bookstore near Zhongxiao Fuxing MRT station for the launch of Michael Beltran’s book The Singing Detainee and the Librarian with One Book: Essays on Exile. The book is published by the Ateneo University Press.

Erin Entrada Kelly’s The Last Resort

Fresh from a Newbery medal win, People reports that Erin Entrada Kelly will be writing the middle-grade book The Last Resort, the first in a trilogy that will be written by three different authors. Aside from Erin, fellow Newbery winner Jasmine Warga will be writing the second book in the series while a yet unannounced author will write the third. The series is from Scholastic Books.

The book “follows the story of a 12-year-old named Lila who has to spend her summer in Ohio at her late grandfather’s ‘creepy Victorian Inn,’ where ‘strange things keep happening,’ and will also have a “cross-platform” component that will allow them to “see ‘ghosts’ rise from the pages of their books and ask them questions that give key details to the mysteries at hand” by scanning a QR code or clicking a web link.

This isn’t the first time that Scholastic has done an interactive book series. Back in the halcyon days of 2008, Scholastic released The 39 Clues, which featured collectible cards that would be used to unlock clues on the associated website.