My week in books (#6)

My week in books is a feature where I share things I've found interesting from the past week that concern books, literature and all things book blogging.

It's a bank holiday weekend here in England, and for once the weather's going to be good apparently. At the moment, it's a bit grey and drizzly (although not cold), which is great reading weather, so I'll be immersing myself in some good books this weekend. What's your preferred reading weather?

If you want to test yourself a bit over the next few days, Buzzfeed has a quiz here on opening lines from books. Some are very obvious, others not so much. Let me know how you get on.

I'm a massive advocate for getting children reading as early as possible, since I read lots as a child and firmly believe it helped me academically, as well as just expanded my world and gave me an escape. Schoolrun.com has a piece here on how to get children to read.

For those who love Roald Dahl, TruffleShuffleBlog has teamed up with the Roald Dahl Literary Estate for a fantastic competition here. You've only got until August 28 to enter, so get going!

A couple of things to help you get inside the minds of authors:

• I meant to link to this ages ago, but New York Magazine did a good piece on Samantha Shannon a while back, which you can find here.
• There's a great interview on Goodreads here with Matthew Quick, who answers questions from members of the site.
• MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood is released soon. To tide you over until it's out you can buy a t-shirt here, or watch this video interview with Atwood.
  

Kirsty Gunn at The Guardian has done a piece here about ultra long books coming back, and what that says about us as readers.

And finally, an amusing little amusing gossip piece here from Axegrinder about Harper Collins future office move.

Have you found anything interesting you want to share? Let me know in the comments.