All sorts of good book news came our way this past week. In case you were snoozing and missed something, consider this your friend public service announcement from the land of book obsessives:

In book-to-TV news:

• The BBC announced that it will be producing a TV adaptation of Susannah Clark’s wonderful Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. So far, it sounds like this will be a six-episode mini-series airing in the UK sometime in 2013… let’s hope it crosses the pond to the US soon thereafter. You can read more about this delightful news here.
• Coming next summer on CBS: Stephen King’s Under The Dome! This was one of my favorite books read in 2011 — big, creepy, and scary in an all-too-human sort of way. I can’t wait to see how this translates to TV. Read about it here.

In sheer insanity news:

• Because apparently it’s not enough to have read and loved the Harry Potter series… Amazon is selling a $1,000 gift set about the Harry Potter movies. Sure, why not milk this cow for all it’s worth? If you’re thinking, “So worth it! Where do I get one?”, click here to read more. As of today, Amazon is offering this item at a 40% discount… so for just $600, all this can be yours:

Author updates:

• Herman Wouk has published a new novel — at age 97! The Lawgiver, an epistolary novel about screenwriters working on a movie about Moses, is Wouk’s 18th book, and, he says, not his last. According to this article in the New York Times, he’s already begun his next writing project.
• In early November, Philip Roth announced his retirement from writing. His last book, Nemesis, was published in 2010.

And in other bookish news:

• British author Nick Hornby will be writing the screenplay for the movie adaption of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild. I haven’t read the book yet, and I always enjoy Nick Hornby, so… wait for the movie version?
• Remember the Janie series from your distant or not-too-distant teen days? Starting with The Face On The Milk Carton, published 20 years ago, Caroline B. Cooney’s engrossingly addictive series focuses on a teen girl named Janie, leading a happy suburban life, who accidentally discovers that she may in fact have been kidnapped as a child. If you walked away from the final book in the series wishing for more, your wishes are about to come true! Janie Face To Face will be published in January, and promises to reveal (according to the Amazon blurb) “if Janie and Reeve’s love has endured, and whether or not the person who brought Janie and her family so much emotional pain and suffering is brought to justice.”
• Did y’all see this awesome creation from EpicReads? It’s a YA fiction map to the US, with a book for each of the fifty states. Pretty amazing — check it out. You may even want to hang up a copy, or use it as a checklist, or — just thinking here — put it up on the wall and throw darts at it in order to pick your next book. I’ve read 10 out of 50, and can definitely see a bunch more that I’d like to add to my TBR list. Fun!
• And finally, on a hopeful note, NPR Books reports that this is looking to be a good holiday season for independent bookstores. Which reminds me, I have more shopping to do…

Cheers, all! If you have any other interesting tidbits from the world of books, please share in the comments!