EarlyWord

Over twenty years after Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt stared in the film adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (PRH/Ballantine Books; BOT; OverDrive Sample) the author has regained the rights and is planning a TV show.

Rice took to Facebook to announce “television is where the vampires belong.”

Apparently impressed with the opportunities HBO’s Game of Thrones has demonstrated, she continues, “A television series of the highest quality is now my dream for Lestat, Louis, Armand, Marius and the entire tribe. In this the new Golden Age of television, such a series is THE way to let the entire story of the vampires unfold … Over the years you all have told me how much you want to see a Game of Thrones style faithful rendering of this material … What you want is what I want.”

Vanity Fair reports that Rice and her son Christopher “are working together on a pilot script and an outline for an ‘open-ended series’ beginning with the events of The Vampire Lestat, the second book in the series that’s actually a prequel to the first.”

The magazine points out that there is “plenty of room for vampires on TV now that True Blood has ended and the zenith of the vampire fiction heyday has come and gone. The Vampire Diaries and FX’s The Strain will air their final seasons in 2017, so now is just the right time for a new vampire show to come pick up the slack.”

No word yet on air dates or actors.

Slate critics Jamelle Bouie, Laura Miller, and Katy Waldman return with the newest Audio Book Club. They “discuss two novels that reimagine our racist past and present,” The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (PRH/Doubleday; RH Audio; BOT; OverDrive Sample) and Underground Airlines by Ben Winters (Hachette/Mulholland Books; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample).

The panel discuses each book on its own and then compares them in a wide ranging conversation that dips into the roots of hard-boiled genre fiction, the history of slavery, and segments of the history of the abolitionist movement.

Whitehead recently won the National Book Award for his novel, which is also on most of the year-end best of books of the year lists. PW picked Underground Airlines as one of the best Mystery/Thriller books of 2016.

The next discussion will be about the winner of the Nobel Prize, Bob Dylan, focusing on The Lyrics: 1961-2012 (S&S).

William Trevor, the author the NYT describes as writing, “mournful, sometimes darkly funny short stories and novels about the small struggles of unremarkable people [that] placed him in the company of masters like V. S. Pritchett, W. Somerset Maugham and Chekhov,” has died at the age of 88.

Born in Ireland and a long time resident of Britain, his characters were often “hanging on to the bottom rung of the lower middle class, [waging] unequal battle with capricious fate,” the NYT‘s continues.

“I’m very interested in the sadness of fate, the things that just happen to people,” Trevor told Publishers Weekly in 1983.

While he wrote novels, Trevor saw himself as a short story author. The NYT‘s reports his saying “I’m a short-story writer who writes novels when he can’t get them into short stories … [my] novels are “a lot of linked-up short stories.” He told the Paris Review that a short story was “the art of the glimpse.”

The LA Times lists his honors: “He won one of Britain’s top literary prizes, the Whitbread, three times; was short-listed four times for the Booker Prize, most recently in 2002 for “The Story of Lucy Gault”; and was a perennial object of speculation as a potential Nobel literature laureate.”

He also earned praise from fellow authors. The LA Times further reports, “Graham Greene praised Trevor’s 1973 collection Angels at the Ritz as the best set of short stories since Dubliners, James Joyce’s 1914 collection.”

His last collection of short stories was selected as one of the NYT’s 10 Best Books of 2010. In their glowing review, the paper says the book:

“assembles the stories from William Trevor’s last four collections, so that in effect it’s a sequel to the huge edition of his collected stories that came out in 1992. Together the two books add up to almost 2,000 pages of short fiction … and they are more than ample proof that Trevor is one of the two greatest short-story writers working in English right now. The other is Alice Munro, and no one else is even close.”

One of his last works, a short story for The New Yorker, is still available online.

Below is a reading by Trevor held in NYC’s 92nd Street Y:

Director Martin Scorsese has adapted a book he has “reread countless times,” one that has given him “a kind of sustenance” that he has “found in only a very few works of art.”

The novel is Shusaku Endo’s Silence: With an Introduction by Martin Scorsese (Peter Owen Publishers, Dec. 1; trade paperback, Macmillan/Picador Modern Classics), first published in 1966 and winner of the Tanizaki Prize, one of Japan’s highest literary honors.

Entertainment Weekly writes that the film is about “a Portuguese Jesuit priest who is persecuted along with other Christians in 17th-century Japan … the hardship inflicted upon them [the priest and two others], and especially on their fellow Christians, puts their faith to the test.” It stars Andrew Garfield, Liam Neeson, and Adam Driver.

In  addition to the quotes above, Scorsese also writes in his introduction to the tie-in, that the priest in the novel, played by Neeson, “begins on the path of Christ and … ends replaying the role of Christianity’s greatest villain, Judas.” Endo “looks at the problem of Judas more directly than any other artist I know. He understood that, in order for Christianity to live, to adapt itself to other cultures and historical moments, it needs not just the figure of Christ but the figure of Judas as well.”

This is not Scorsese’s first film about religious subjects. He directed The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988 and Kundun in 1997 (about the Dalai Lama).

At a press conference in May, held to promote the first look at the film, Scorsese told reporters that he’d been trying to adapt the book for over 25 years and that “The subject matter presented by Shusaku Endo was in my life since I was very, very young … I was very much involved in religion, I was raised in a strong Catholic family. … Further reflection is how [we] want to lead our life in the Christian faith … so ultimately this book drew my attention when it was given to me in 1988.”

Silence will open Dec. 23 in a limited Oscar-qualifying run before opening in wide release in January.

School Library Journal has posted their editors’ selections of the best Picture Books, Chapter Books, Middle Grade and YA books of the year in an online slide show.

The list includes 66 titles.

Coincidentally (the editors SWEAR it’s a coincidence), SLJ published its first best books list 66 years ago.

A 1935 satirical novel by Sinclair Lewis is selling out online and racking up holds in libraries, It Can’t Happen Here (PRH/Signet; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Money reports “voters—shell-shocked by the results of the 2016 presidential election—are rushing to buy the book that Donald Trump’s critics say may have predicted his rise 80 years ago.” The novel is sold out, they continue, on Amazon and Books-a-Million.

Salon began writing about the book back in September, saying “Amid the 80th anniversary of Sinclair Lewis’s anti-fascist tome, Trump’s campaign makes Lewis look prophetic.”

The publisher describes the novel as “A cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy.”

Holds lists are active at every library we checked some within a 3:1 ratio and others well over, even triggering re-ordering.

This is not the first time a somewhat forgotten work by a highly regarded author has found new readers. After 9/11, E.B. White’s Here is New York, written in 1948, became so popular the publisher issued a reprint.

As expected, the Harry Potter prequel/spinoff, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, ruled at the box office over the weekend, but some wonder if the $75 million it took in is enough to justify the other four movies planned in the series. Variety notes that, unlike the HP series, audiences for Fantastic Beasts are comprised mostly of adults, indicating that the fan base is aging. That may change, however, when kids get out of school for the Thanksgiving holiday.

To keep kids at home on Thanksgiving, PBS is premiering a new version of Anne of Green Gables at 8 p.m. EST. The film, entitled Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, adapts the beloved childhood novel, also the subject of a forthcoming 2017 Netflix series.

Martin Sheen stars as Matthew Cuthbert, part of the family who cares for the central character Anne Shirley, played by Ella Ballentine.

Shot in Canada, the Canadian Global News says this rendition is “a more modern take on the story, with darker, edgier moments that take it out of the past and into the present … [even as] Montgomery’s own granddaughter, Kate MacDonald Butler, serves as an executive producer on the project, and has given the remake her blessing.”

Variety is not charmed, writing “Though the characters are somewhat recognizable and the adventures faintly ring a bell, the 90-minute made-for-TV movie truncates the plot, flattens the characters, and fumbles through the small-town sentiment that the book’s author, Lucy Maud Montgomery, excelled at … a dull film and a mediocre adaptation.”

Opening on Nov. 25th is Lion starring Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, Nicole Kidman, and David Wenham. They join a cast of actors well-known in India, including Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Priyanka Bose, and Tannishtha Chatterjee. The inspirational story is directed by Garth Davis (Top of the Lake).

As we have previously written, it is based on a memoir of an amazing journey of loss and recovery originally titled A Long Way Home, Saroo Brierley (PRH/Viking, 2014, trade paperback, 2015). In the book, Brierley recounts how he was separated from his family in rural India at age 4, when he climbed aboard a train and was carried over a thousand miles away to a city he did not know. He wound up in an orphanage and was adopted and relocated to Tasmania. As an adult, using Google maps, he searches for his lost family.

The film debuts in the Friday after Thanksgiving time slot, not just prime time to attract families looking for entertainment but also good timing for awards. Vanity Fair reports the film is “Already on Awards-Season Short Lists.”

The Guardian offers praise, writing “a strong cast, international themes and an emotional true story. From the outset, it’s a film that’s impossible not to find hugely involving.”

The Hollywood Reporter says it “should find a very warm embrace from discerning audiences. It’s that relatively rare breed — a classy crowdpleaser.”

Variety is not sold, writing “Lion seems awfully brazen advertising its deux ex machina right there in its logline, and though the human story is what makes it so compelling, “advertising” remains the operative word. Next up: How Siri helped you find your car keys.”

A new tie-in version is out as well, Lion (Movie Tie-In) (PRH/NAL; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample).

UPDATE: The release date has been shifted to May 19,2017

The film adaptation of Nicola Yoon’s debut novel now has a premiere date, August 18, 2017, reports Deadline Hollywood.

Everything, Everything (PRH/Delacorte; Listening Library; OverDrive Sample) received high praise and found many readers when it hit shelves last year and debuted at No. 1 on the NYT YA best-seller list. It earned a glowing NYT review (“gorgeous and lyrical”) and an A- review from Entertainment Weekly (a “complex,” “fresh, moving debut”).

The Hollywood Reporter writes that “rising actors” Amandla Stenberg (The Hunger Games) and Nick Robinson (Jurassic World) will star in the adaptation.

Stella Meghie (Jean of the Joneses) directs while J. Mills Goodloe (Age of Adaline) writes the script.

Sternberg was one of  Time magazine’s Most Influential Teens 2016, described as:

“one of her generation’s leading social activists, especially regarding race, representation and gender identity. As a result, she’s earned some high-profile admirers. Among them: Gloria Steinem, who sat for a one-on-one interview with Stenberg for Teen Vogue, and Beyoncé …

She is also set to star in another YA novel adaptation, Alexandra Bracken’s Darkest Minds trilogy.

Yoon’s second novel, The Sun Is Also a Star, was a finalist this year for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

The adaptation of Lauren Oliver’s debut YA novel, Before I Fall, (HarperCollins, 2010) is scheduled for released on March 3, 2017. The first trailer has just been released.

Directed by Ry Russo-Young (Nobody Walks), the film stars Zoey Deutch (Vampire Academy), Halston Sage (Goosebumps), Logan Miller (Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse) and Jennifer Beals (Flashdance, The L Word).

About a girl who dies in a car crash, but then gets to relive the last day of her life seven times, the book was a best seller.

A tie-in will be published in February.

Just two weeks after Netflix released a trailer for the series adaptation of Lemony Snicket’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events, they’ve unleashed a new, more extensive trailer.

The full 8-episode series debuts on Netflix on Friday, January 13, 2017.

The Washington Post has released their list of the 100 best books of 2016, as well as the top 10 that they find “exceptionally rewarding,” accompanied by a tasty illustration (above).

The National Book Award winner for fiction, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, is among the top ten, as well as one of the finalists for the award, Paulette Jiles’s News of the World.

However, it’s the titles that have not yet appeared on other lists that are the most interesting, such as Hisham Matar’s The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between. (PRH/Random House; OverDrive Sample). About the author’s father, a Libyan dissident who was kidnapped and imprisioned when Matar was 19, it is described as “an elegy by a son who, through his eloquence, defies the men who wanted to erase his father and gifts him with a kind of immortality.”

Leading up to the traditional Black Friday, James Patterson publishes the next in his biggest-selling series, Cross the Line (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print; OverDrive Sample). Under his kids imprint, he’s publishing a book in collaboration with Bill O’Reilly, Give Please a Chance (Hachette/jimmy patterson), a title that seems out of synch with the Fox News host’s general demeanor.

In nonfiction, holds are growing for Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations by the popular NYT columnist Thomas L Friedman (Macmillan/FSG; Macmillan Audio). The book offers solutions to those who feel the pace of technology is just too damned fast. His columns since the election indicate that his optimism is being put to the test.

Media Attention

The Daily Show (the Book): An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests, Chris Smith, Jon Stewart, (Hachette/Grand Central; Hachette Large Type; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Stewart has already begun the media rounds, with an appearance yesterday on CBS This Morning, where he was easily lead away from talking about the book to talking about the election.

Janet Maslin reviews it today in the New York Times. The less-than-glowing review suggests the book only works for Stewart fans. There’s obviously plenty of them, the book is already at #33 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher, (PRH/Blue Rider Press; Penguin/BOT Audio).

The long-suspected story of the affair Carrie Fisher had with the then-married Harrison Ford during the filming of Star Wars is now out. Promoting an excerpt from the book, the new issue of People magazine blares on the cover, “Carrie Fisher Exclusive My Secret Fling with Harrison Ford.” The Washington Post advises, “Move quickly over the bad jokes and the awkward writing, and you have a readable and eye-opening account of a sad but strong princess who has always been her own woman.” The title refers to the fact that Fisher wrote the book based on a diary she kept at the time.

Kathy Griffin’s Celebrity Run-Ins: My A-Z Index, Kathy Griffin, (Macmillan/Flatiron Books; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Not allergic to media attention, Griffin began promoting this book two weeks ago on Jimmy Kimmel Live.  This week, the NY Post’s “Page Six” ran a story about a run-in with Britney Spears. Let’s hope the other stories in the book have more bite.

The titles covered here, and several more notable titles arriving next week, are listed with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of Nov. 21, 2016.

Peer Picks

Three Library Reads publish this week:

Moonglow, Michael Chabon (HC/Harper; Harper Audio).

“A grandson sits by his dying grandfather’s bedside as his grandfather slowly reveals the light and shadows of a marriage and of a family that kept secrets as a way of life. He learns of his grandmother’s life growing up during World War II; her coming to America and living with a man who kept to himself, even lying to her about his short time in prison. Chabon’s signature style includes carefully observed characters that are both new and familiar and shimmering prose that reflects and refracts light much as moonlight does.” — Jennifer Winberry, Hunterdon County Library, Flemington, NJ

Additional Buzz: It is also the #1 Indie Next pick for December. Michiko Kakutani reviews it for the NYT, saying Chabon “writes with both lovely lyricism and highly caffeinated fervor.” BuzzFeed offers an in-depth profile. As we noted earlier, it is also on the Carnegie Medal shortlist and is a Fall reading pick by a number of list makers. Holds are heavy in several libraries.

I’ll Take You There, Wally Lamb (HC/Harper; Harper Audio).

“I’ll Take You There is delightfully entertaining, funny and a bit mystical with wonderful connections to old movies and movie stars. Felix Funicello runs a Monday night film club which meets in an old theater. One evening, he is visited by the ghost of a female director from the silent film era. She takes him on a journey to his past where Felix sees scenes on the screen which help him gain an understanding of women who have been important to him throughout his life. This novel is insightful and inspirational in connecting scenes from the past with our present day society.” — Marilyn Sieb, L.D. Fargo Library, Lake Mills, WI

Additional Buzz: It is an Indie Next pick for December. PopSugar picks it as one of “The 25 Books You’re Going to Want to Curl Up With This Fall.” Variety reports Elizabeth Banks will star and executive produce a short film for the digital app version of the book, which is getting attention as well.

Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire, Julia Baird (PRH/Random House

“When Victoria inherited the throne at the age of eighteen, she was still sleeping in the same bedroom as her mother. Her first act as queen was to move her bed into a different room. This headstrong deed foreshadowed the determination with which she ruled an empire. Her fierce devotion to her country and family shines in the pages of Baird’s compulsively readable biography. She becomes a warm and relatable figure through Baird’s research. Her reign saw unimaginable changes in society, science, and technology, but through it all, Victoria remained.” — Ann Cox, Beaufort County Library, Hilton Head, SC

Additional Buzz: It is an Indie Next selection for December and is one of the WSJ’s Fall Reading picks.

Tie-ins

Victoria: A Novel of a Young Queen, Daisy Goodwin, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Thorndike Large Print; Macmillan Audio).

In addition to the peer pick title above, Queen Victoria is getting attention in the form of a PBS series, to air next year. The series is created by Daisy Goodwin (The American Heiress), who wrote this novel simultaneously with the screenplay. Although it is not billed as a tie-in, the cover notes that the author is “the Creator/Writer of the Masterpiece Presentation on PBS.”

Marvel’s Doctor Strange: The Art of the Movie, Jacob Johnson (Hachette/Marvel) offers a look at the visual landscape of the superhero movie, with concept artwork and commentary. A fitting book for a film New York Magazine calls “freaking gorgeous.”

For our full list of upcoming adaptations, download our Books to Movies and TV and link to our listing of tie-ins.

Winning the National Book Award has sent the March trilogy, by Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell (Top Shelf) zooming on Amazon, jumping from #1,321 to #17.

The individual volumes are all soaring up the sales ranks as well, each leapfrogging over a thousand other titles.

It has also resulted in a glowing NYT book review: “The three volumes of March … aren’t just a record of Lewis’s activism but one of its brilliant examples, designed to help new generations of readers visualize the possibilities of political engagement.”

The review continues, saying the comics are a:

“galvanizing account of [Lewis’s] coming-of-age in the movement, it’s a capsule lesson in courage of conscience, a story that inspires without moralizing or simplifying in hindsight … Emphasizing disruption, decentralization and cooperation over the mythic ascent of heroic leaders, this graphic novel’s presentation of civil rights is startlingly contemporary. Lewis may be one of the “great men” of the movement, but his memoir is humble and generous.”

Collectively the trilogy has received a number of groundbreaking honors:

March: Book One is a Coretta Scott King honor book, a Margaret A. Edwards honor book, an ALA Notable Children’s Book, and is the first graphic novel to win a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. It was also nominated for three Eisner awards.

March: Book Two won the Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work.

March: Book Three won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. This is the first time a graphic novel has been so honored (there have been graphic novel finalists. Raina Telgemeier’s Ghosts, Scholastic/GRAPHIX, was also a finalist this year).

For just a taste of the power of the comics, see our post on the Congressman’s recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

The film adaptation of The Zookeeper’s Wife the true story of the valiant couple who rescued 300 Jews from the Nazis by hiding them in the bombed Warsaw Zoo (see the NYT review of the book here), is set for release on March 31, 2017.

The first trailer was released today.

It stars Jessica Chastain who wrote in an essay in The Hollywood Reporter‘s special “Women in Entertainment” issue, that although women make up only 20% of the crew of The Zookeeper’s Wife, that’s “way more” than any film she’s ever worked on. As a result, she said, “You don’t feel a hierarchy; you don’t have anyone feeling like they are being left out or bullied or humiliated.”

A trade paperback tie-in will be released in February

The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story
Diane Ackerman
(Norton;  February 7, 2017)

Stephenie Meyer’s first thriller for adults, The Chemist (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample) debuts on USA Today‘s Best-Selling Books list at #13.

With only six hardcover fiction titles ahead of it, the high placement suggests it will be within the top ten on the upcoming NYT‘s Fiction list (UPDATE: It hit that list at #5).

It is getting media attention that is helping fuel sales.

The NYT‘s offers a profile, while USA Today gives it 3.5 stars out of 4, saying the novel is “engrossing” and while “it’s full of the same daffy blitheness toward blood and pain that always made the Twilight books unsettling … Meyer is also just a really good storyteller. The Chemist is consistently fast-paced fun.”

The Guardian writes “Meyer, clearly a major fan of the genre, has dreamed up a fast-paced thriller, and a tough, mysterious heroine with a penchant for decking herself out in dangerous jewellery, concealing syringes of poison in her belt and switchblades in her shoes.”

The LA Times says, “Spy fans can be assured that in most respects, The Chemist functions in much the same way as a Bourne or Bond story, complete with mounting body count, cool explosions, stakeouts and betrayals. But changing the proportion of gender in the genre gives the concoction a renewed, and welcome, rush.”

The coverage is not universally warm. Entertainment Weekly gives it a B-, writing, “The Chemist’s 518-pages fly by quickly and easily. But perhaps it would have taken a sprinkle of something supernatural — or a smattering of heartbreak — to feel like Meyer’s characters were really in danger.”

The Washington Post reviewer is even more doubtful, writing, “Meyer’s legion of addicted fans will lap up this chemical romance. As for me, I’m off to the library to detox.”

Libraries are showing divergent holds ratios, with some libraries topping 5:1 and others steady at 2:1.