Just one month after announcing plans to publish his memoirs, the musician Prince has died.

His agent, Esther Newberg told the Wall Street Journal at the time that Prince had already turned in 50 pages of the manuscript for the book, which was to be titled The Beautiful Ones. It was set to be published next year by the Penguin Random House imprint, Spiegel & Grau.

The cause of death has not been announced. Prince was 57.

The HBO documentary, Love & Mercy, released last year, looked at the many painful aspects of the life of the co-founder of the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson.

Wilson was not involved in the making of the movie, but he called it “very factual.”

He is about to add more facts to the story, in a memoir titled I Am Brian Wilson (Perseus/Da Capo Press, October 11, 2016). The press release announcing the publication  date has been picked up by several news sources, including the New York Times.  A brief  excerpt of the book is on The Rolling Stone Web site.

Ron Fournier is a frequent face on cable news shows. Yesterday, he made the rounds not to talk politics but to discuss his new book Love That Boy: What Two Presidents, Eight Road Trips, and My Son Taught Me About a Parent’s Expectations (PRH/Potter/TenSpeed/Harmony; HighBridge Audio; OverDrive Sample).

In a non-partisan move, he appeared on Fox, Bloomberg and MSNBC. As a result the title, on parenting a child with Asperger’s syndrome, is soaring on Amazon, jumping to #16 from #1,077.

Fournier is also promoting the book in print, with essays in Time and USA TODAY and Frank Bruni wrote about it in his NYT SundayReview Op-Ed, “Building a Better Father.”

Expect more coverage. According to the publisher, he is scheduled for an appearance on NPR’s Weekend Edition this Saturday, an upcoming Meet The Press segment and another on the Today show.

In libraries we checked holds are currently in keeping with orders.

When T.S. Elliot described April as “the cruelest month,” he wasn’t talking about taxes. But for many, doing taxes leads to cruel thoughts about the need to better understand finances, which is probably why the week of April 23 – 30, 2016 was designated “Money Smart Week.” A partnership between the ALA and Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago since 2002, it is aimed at helping libraries create programs that teach people how to better manage their money.

This year, libraries have a new resource for the program, unlimited access for one month to several HarperCollins’ eBooks on finances, for a flat fee of $100, from April 15 through May 15, an outgrowth of meetings the the ALA’s Digital Content Working Group’s meetings with publishers in December.

Carolyn Anthony, co-chair of the group calls the promotion, “is a positive development and a clear indication that the relationship between ALA and publishers is moving in the right direction. We welcome experimentation with terms and pricing that will help libraries develop breadth in their digital collections.”

The books included in the program are listed below. Contact your vendors for further information.

Real Money Answers for Every Woman, Patrice C. Washington, (HarperCollins/Amistad, 2016)

The New Totally Awesome Money Book for Kids, Arthur Bochner and Rose Bochner, (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2007)

The Wall Street Journal Guide to the New Rules of Personal Finance, Dave Kansas, (HarperBusiness, 2010)

The Aspirational Investor, Ashvin B. Chhabra, (HarperBusiness, 2015)

The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money, Ron Lieber, (Harper, 2015)

The Intelligent Investor, Benjamin Graham, (HarperBusiness, 2006)

The Truth About Money, Ric Edelman, (HarperBusiness, 2010)

With its eye on awards season, Disney has set a the release dates for Queen of Katwe, beginning with a limited release on Sept. 23, 2016, expanding to more theaters the next week. IndieWire comments that the “awards-friendly release date suggests that the studio is confident that the Uganda-set drama has strong potential to make its presence felt come awards season.”  Perhaps next year, the Academy Awards will be a bit more diverse.

The film is based on Tim Crothers’s book, The Queen of Katwe: A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl’s Dream of Becoming a Grandmaster (S&S/Scribner, 2012).

The book itself was based on Crothers’s ESPN The Magazine article which tells the true-life story of Phiona Mutesi who grew up in the slums of Kampala, Uganda to became a chess champion.

The film stars Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave), David Oyelowo (Selma), and newcomer Madina Nalwanga. Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) directs.

Tie-ins (in trade, mass market, and audio) are forthcoming from S&S (currently planned for September). The regular paperback edition is still in print (Scribner, 2013, ISBN 9781451657821).

A trailer has not yet been released, but several documentary shorts have been made about Mutesi. Below is an example:

The International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) has announced their awards for 2016 and the big winner is The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, J. Kenji López-Alt (Norton), which took home honors as both Cookbook of the Year and winner in the American category.

The book is already a hitl. It is a NYT Best Seller, entering the list at #4 in October and currently at #10 after 10 weeks.

Familiar names Madhur Jaffrey and Andrew Weil also took home prizes. Jaffrey for Vegetarian India: A Journey Through the Best of Indian Home Cooking (PRH/Knopf), which won the Single Subject category and Weil for Fast Food, Good Food: More Than 150 Quick and Easy Ways to Put Healthy, Delicious Food on the Table (Hachette/Little, Brown), which won the Health & Special Diet category.

Tacos were big winners with Alex Stupak and Jordana Rothman winning the Chefs and Restaurants category for Tacos: Recipes and Provocations (PRH/Clarkson Potter) and Deborah Holtz and Juan Carlos Mena winning the Reference & Technical category for Tacopedia (Phaidon).

The winners in all the book categories are listed with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, IACP 2016 Cookbook Awards.

The upcoming new adaptation of Roots debuted during the MipTV conference in Cannes yesterday, television’s version of the more famous Cannes film festival, where producers make deals, show off their latest projects, and troll for international distribution.

Roots is already set for U.S. release, scheduled to air on the History Chanel, and simulcast on A&E and Lifetime, over four consecutive nights beginning May 30.

The premiere was highly successful and emotional, according to Deadline, with stars from the 1977 original mixing with the new series’ actors in a panel discussion on the meaning of both adaptations.

The new version seeks to make the seminal TV event, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Alex Haley, relevant to a new generation of viewers, many of whom were not alive when the first adaptation aired.

The 70’s version was a sensation, opening the eyes of many white American to the horrors of slavery and encouraging African Americans to research their family histories, but executive producer Mark Wolper, the son of the original’s EP David L Wolper, realized he had to re-imagine his father’s efforts when his own son refused to watch the 1977 series, saying, “like your music, it doesn’t speak to me.”

The series remake stars Malachi Kirby, Forest Whitaker, Anna Paquin, Laurence Fishburne, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

A tie-in edition comes out on May 3: Roots [miniseries tie-in]: The Saga of an American Family, Alex Haley, (Perseus/Da Capo Press).

A biography of the author was published late last year, Alex Haley: And the Books That Changed a Nation by Robert J. Morrell, picked by Essence magazine last month as one of “6 Must-Read Books for Black History Month.”

After years in development, the first trailer for
the movie adaptation of The Lost City of Z (RH/Doubleday;2009; OverDrive Sample) by David Grann has just been released. It stars Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland and Sienna Miller.

No release date has yet been announced, but it is expected to hit screens some time in this fall.

The book (Doubleday, Feb, 2009), grew out of a New Yorker article by David Grann, about British explorer Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in 1935 during an attempt to prove his claim that a highly sophisticated city, which he called the City of Z, was hidden in the Amazon jungle. At the time it was published, the NYT critic Michiko Kakutani gave it a rare rave, “at once a biography, a detective story and a wonderfully vivid piece of travel writing that combines Bruce Chatwinesque powers of observation with a Waugh-like sense of the absurd … it reads with all the pace and excitement of a movie thriller and all the verisimilitude and detail of firsthand reportage.” It topped most of the year’s best books lists.

Grann made Hollywood news recently for his upcoming book Killers Of The Flower Moon: An American Crime And The Birth Of The FBI (PRH/ Doubleday; 4/18/17; 9780385534246) which is currently the subject of a major auction. Grann described the book two years ago in a Reddit AMA:

It’s about the Osage Indians in Oklahoma. In the 1920s they became the richest people in the world after oil was discovered under their reservation. Then they began to be mysteriously murdered off—poisoned, shot, bombed–in one of the most sinister crimes in American history.

There’s a new job title in town, “Granny Nanny” and CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl is hard at work promoting it, via her new book, Becoming Grandma: The Joys and Science of the New Grandparenting, (PRH/Blue Rider Press; Penguin Audio; BOT; OverDrive Sample) and multiple media appearances.

Both Parade magazine and CBS Sunday Morning feature Stahl explaining that today’s job demands and the high cost of child-care leave most parents in need of a trusted, not to also mention, free alternative. so grandparents are stepping in.

Holds are not yet topping orders at most libraries we checked. The book goes on sale today.

What would you do after the above hits?

Underwater Cats?

Don’t be silly. That would just be cruel (not to mention, not pretty).

No, you would have to change it up, featuring what cats do best …

Pounce, Seth Casteel, (Havhette/Little, Brown).

Sorry, it’s not coming until October. Entertainment Weekly claims to have the “exclusive cover reveal” on their site.

The movie based on A. Scott Berg’s National Book Award-winning bio,  Max Perkins: Editor Of Genius, (Dutton, 1978; available in trade pbk. from PRH Berkley) with the title pared down to simply Genius, is set to open on June 10th.

The trailer just debuted online, to an apt comment by the Hollywood trade Deadline, “A movie about the work of a book editor seems on paper as promising as a movie about the drudgery of investigative reporting — until a Spotlight or an All The President’s Men comes along to challenge our preconceptions.”

It boasts a marquee cast, including Colin Firth as Perkins, Jude Law as writer Thomas Wolfe, Nicole Kidman as Wolfe’s lover Aline Bernstein and Laura Linney as Perkins’ wife. Other famous clients are Dominic West as Ernest Hemingway and Guy Pearce as F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The hosts of HTGV’s popular design show Fixer Upper, Chip and Joanna Gaines, have teamed up with New York Times bestselling collaborator Mark Dagostino on a memoir.

The Magnolia Story (Thomas Nelson) is due out on Oct. 18 (Magnolia is the name of their various businesses).

People offered a “first look” at the cover and reports the memoir starts long before the couple became famous for their 360-degree restorations of houses in need of repair.

Casual viewers of Fixer Upper may be surprised that the book is published by Christian publisher Thomas Nelson, not known for design books. Although they don’t talk about it on the show, the Gaines have a strong Christian faith (the Billy Graham web site published a story last fall titled, “How God Used Billy Graham to Influence Fixer Upper Family“) and The Magnolia Story is primarily a memoir.

Joanna Gaines is also working on a design book, as noted in a press release, to be published by Thomas Nelson Gift Books in early 2017.

Expect an extensive media campaign for the memoir closer to pub. date.

Librarian Nancy Pearl knows a thing or two about reviewing which adds extra interest to her interview with A. O. Scott, chief film critic for The New York Times. In the latest episode of her Book Lust Author Interview show, Nancy weighs what Scott says about films against what she knows about books.

His book, Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth (PRH/Penguin; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample), addresses criticism itself as well as the process of being a critic.

In the interview, Scott and Nancy talk about the importance of criticism and contrast movie and book reviewing (he’s done both). He maintains the fundamental difference has to do with scale.

With the huge number of titles released in a year, book critics tend to focus on a narrow segment, literary novels and serious nonfiction. There are far fewer movies, so film critics can see a great many in the course of a year. As a result, they can cover a wider range of genres and have a broader perspective on what is interesting and valuable.

He also notes that book reviewing, since so much of it is done by other authors with vested interests, can be incestuous.

His own book is getting of attention. How could it not,  as a comment on criticism for other critics to take on?

In what could be called an incestuous action of its own, Scott’s own publication, the NYT runs a strong review by Michael Wood. The Atlantic does not agree, saying the book “says nothing.” The New Yorker, LA Times, Slate, and The Millions have all weighed in as well.

The hip hop musical Hamilton is sweeping the box office and every award it encounters. Yesterday, the Broadway sensation headed off-Broadway, all the way to the White House.

It was actually a return performance. Seven years ago, rapper and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda gave the president a taste of a “concept album based on the life of I someone I think embodies hip hop: Treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton.” Yesterday, the full cast performed songs from the resulting musical.

In this first clip, the President talks about the musical and then the cast performs the opening number, “Alexander Hamilton.”

Here the cast performs “My Shot.”

There was a even a Rose Garden rap session, which, fulfilling POTUS’s prediction, immediately went viral.

Miranda’s preview of the work in progress seven years ago brought the President to his feet.

How does literature change and shape lives? What are the best ways to share the empowerment of reading with teens? Those questions are dear to librarians, and also to a staff writer for The New Yorker.

David Denby wondered if kids were still reading books in an age of Twitter and Snapchat. To find out he spent a year embedded in a 10th grade English class and then another year in several other schools researching how teachers teach kids to appreciate literature. The result is Lit Up: One Reporter. Three Schools. Twenty-four Books That Can Change Lives (Macmillan/Henry Holt; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample).

The book has received the glowing attention of USA Today, The Washington Post. Somewhat less enthusiastic, the New York Times calls it a “a lively account” but fears that “it isn’t clear whether the students are getting as much out of the books as [Denby] believes they are.” 

NPR just posted a web-only interview with Denby, who says of reading literature:

“It’s an enormously powerful critical tool … It’s not simple lessons, of course. And it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s incremental. It happens over your entire life.”

We couldn’t agree more.