To celebrate National Poetry Month, we found a video featuring pop star Madonna and her reading of the poem “If You Forget Me.” Pablo Neruda originally wrote this poem in Spanish and called it “Si Tu Me Olvidas.”

Madonna’s reading is featured on The Postman (Il Postino) movie soundtrack. It also contains poetry recitations delivered by Oscar-winning actress Julia Roberts, UK musician Sting, and The Avengers actor Samuel L. Jackson.

Neruda, a celebrated Chilean writer, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. You can read more pieces written by Neruda at The Poetry Foundation’s website. What’s your favorite Pablo Neruda poem?

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For your weekend reading pleasure, here are our top stories of the week, including our vampire-themed writing contest, free samples of the most challenged books of the year Samuel L. Jackson‘s picture book campaign video (embedded above).

Click here to sign up for GalleyCat’s daily email newsletter, getting all our publishing stories, book deal news, videos, podcasts, interviews, and writing advice in one place.

1. Read Free Samples of the Most Challenged Books of the Year

2. Robert Gottlieb Responds to Penguin Lawsuit: ‘Authors Beware’

3. Samuel L. Jackson Reads ‘Wake the F*** Up’ to Support Barack Obama

4. Free Sites to Promote Your eBook

5. 90+ Published Novels Began as NaNoWriMo Projects

6. 99-Cent Sale Sweeps Self-Published Bestsellers List

7. 50 Shades of Infographic

8. Harper Voyager to Accept Unagented Manuscripts for Two Weeks

9. Book Centerpieces for a Wedding

10. Rewrite Victorian Vampires for Fun & Prizes

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The first official trailer for Marvel’s The Avengers has arrived. What do you think?

Directed by Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon, the star-studded cast includes Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Chris Evans as Captain America, , Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow and Chris Hemsworth as Thor.

The Huffington Post talked to Evans about the film. He explained: “It’s not easy trying to bring all those characters together and find a story, but the best thing about Joss is that Joss is a fan, Joss is a comic book guy … the people I am trying to please is Joss. Joss is one of those dudes. And if Joss is happy with the dialog, if Joss is happy with the wardrobe, if Joss is happy, then I’m happy. Because he’s Comic-Con, he’s one of these dudes who would be in the audience geeking out, so if he’s happy, I’m happy.”

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What celebrity would you choose to read your favorite book? The program will add more celebrities in the future. We’ve included the current list below…

Kate Winslet explained why she read Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola:  “You use a different part of your brain and it keeps your creative juices flowing … It is challenging, and it’s a heck of a lot of fun as well. As a listener, being able to tune out and be taken into another world, an atmosphere, an environment that is being created entirely for you by somebody else’s voice is really a wonderful, magical thing.”

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For your mid-July publishing news pleasure, we bring you a video (embedded above) of the brooding actor Christopher Walken retelling the classic children’s story, ‘Three Little Pigs.’

Thanks to Roger Ebert for pointing us to the link from a 1993 episode of the British television series, Saturday Zoo. If you enjoyed his performance, you might want to check out Samuel L. Jackson‘s profane audiobook version of Go the F*** To Sleep.

If you really want to go down a YouTube rabbit hole, check out all the satirical posts entitled “Werner Herzog Reads….” For years, fans have made fake videos of the iconic film director reading children’s books. (Via Reddit)

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Adam Mansbach‘s profane children’s book for adults has spawned a number of unofficial videos on YouTube as well. These earnest readers have earned hundreds of thousands of views, sharing the book with a new online audience.

We’ve embedded a few video book readings below, but beware: ALL THESE VIDEOS CONTAIN NSFW LANGUAGE.

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Currently (as of this June 15 writing) Audible is offering the funny audiobook for free–follow this link to download. Apparently filmmaker and brilliant narrator Werner Herzog will also record an audiobook version.

Jackson explained in the narration: “I was anxious to do the audio read of this book because my agent has twins and he gave me the book and I read it and I fell out laughing. I remember all those times when I did read to my daughter when she was that age. Everybody tells you reading stories will put kids to sleep, but it never works. It didn’t in my house.”

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