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Adaptations on the Rise

If you've noticed a lot more adaptation news recently, there's a reason. The L.A. Times investigates how "the streaming-driven proliferation of content has led to an explosion of book-to-screen deals," particularly during the pandemic. Plus, a look at some of the agents, scouts, and others who are responsible for big deals.

One of those big deals: A series adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Overstory by Richard Powers, which is in the works at Netflix, with Hugh Jackman and Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss serving as executive producers. Also, Gail Mancuso will direct the feature adaptation of The Happy Ever After Playlist by Abby Jimenez. HBO Max is developing the series The Players Table, based on They Wish They Were Us by Jessica Goodman, which will star singer and poet Halsey and Sydney Sweeney. Deadline reports on all.

A feature film adaptation of The Seventh Function of Language by Laurent Binet is in the works. Variety has details.

The Luminaries debuts this weekend, and the L.A. Times speaks with Eleanor Catton about how she adapted her own 800-page book into a limited series.

Page to Screen

Feb. 12:

To All the Boys: Always and Forever, based on Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han. Netflix. Reviews | Trailer

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, based on the story by Lev Grossman. Amazon Prime. Reviews | Trailer

French Exit, based on the book by Patrick deWitt. Theatrical Release. Reviews | Trailer

The World to Come, based on the story by Jim Shepard. Theatrical Release. Reviews | Trailer

Feb 13:

Playing Cupid, based on the book by Jenny Meyerhoff. Hallmark. No reviews | Trailer

Feb. 14:

The Luminaries, based on the book by Eleanor Catton. Starz. Reviews | Trailer

Feb. 17:

Behind Her Eyes, based on the book by Sarah Pinborough. Netflix. No reviews | Trailer

Hello, Me!, based on Fantastic Girl by Kim Hye-jung. Netflix. No reviews | Trailer

Reviews

The Washington Post reviews Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness by Roy Richard Grinker (W. W. Norton): "He is an engaging writer, and an able and authoritative guide to the social history of mental illness." Also, Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City by Rosa Brooks (Penguin): "A wonderfully insightful book that provides a lens to critically analyze urban policing." Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob by Russell Shorto (W. W. Norton): "Shorto’s story is not just about his family. It’s also a social history of a place and time…"War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis From the Middle East by Gershom Gorenberg (PublicAffairs: Hachette): "...a masterpiece of scholarship and synthesis that also reads like a thriller." The Spirit of Music: The Lesson Continues by Victor L. Wooten (Vintage: Random House): "Mostly (but not entirely) directed toward musicians, it’s a book that stands happily against traditional music pedagogy and canned notions of achievement."

The NYT reviews The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood, and Transformation in an American Boomtown by Michael Patrick F. Smith (Viking: Penguin): "It brings instead perspective, on how people, including Smith, can sometimes rise above their worst selves through unglamorous, demanding, difficult work." Also, brief reviews of new crime novels.

The New Yorker reviews Bina: A Novel in Warnings by Anakana Schofield (New York Review Books): "While Schofield’s themes are transcendently bleak—so bleak that the bleakness must be the point—her style feels almost decadently addictive."

The Guardian has brief reviews of five new science fiction and fantasy books.

Book Marks offers the "Best Reviewed Books of the Week."

Briefly Noted

Audiobook producer RBmedia has acquired the audiobook publishing business and catalog of the Spanish company Booka.

The NYT offers "11 New Books We Recommend This Week."

Tor.com looks at recent SFF books that feature royals.

Amazon lists its favorite memoirs that spotlight Black lives.

BookPage recommends new mystery and suspense novels.

Refinery29 preps for Valentine's Day with romance suggestions.

The Seattle Times suggests "9 audiobook love stories for Valentine’s Day."

The CBC lists "54 works of Canadian nonfiction coming out in spring 2021."

Poet Peace Akintade shares four books she loves with CBC Books.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's next book, a memoir about her father's death called Notes on Grief (Knopf: Random House), will be out May 11. The Guardian has details.

Rebekah Weatherspoon shares details of her forthcoming YA romance, Her Good Side (Razorbill: Penguin), with Entertainment Weekly. It's due out in fall 2022.

The Millions interviews Maggie Shipstead, whose book Great Circle (Knopf: Random House) is due out May 4.

Dylan Farrow discusses her debut novel Hush (Wednesday: Macmillan), as well as the scandals that have surrounded her for so much of her life, with Elle.

The Guardian profiles Maria Stepanova, In Memory of Memory (New Directions: W. W. Norton).

Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need (Knopf: Random House), discusses his reading habits in the NYT's "By the Book" column.

Electric Lit has a Q&A with R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell, Kink: Stories (S. & S.).

Bustle interviews Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Unfinished: A Memoir (Ballantine: Random House).

Lambda Literary speaks with three narrators of gay fiction about their work.

The Shelf Awareness "Reading with…" column features Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear (Berkley: Penguin).

Who owns the rights to the Tom Clancy character Jack Ryan? Deadline explains why a U.S. District judge can't quite decide.

Author Robin Sloan created an interactive visualization to examine how books on NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list stack up against the number of copies of ebooks held by public libraries, and how many holds those ebooks have.

Julia Rothman and Shaina Feinberg provide illustrated accounts of the books that turn people on for the NYT.

A large collection of papers, photographs, and other materials that belonged to Frederick Douglass and his family is being digitized at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and should be publicly accessible by the end of this month. The Yale Daily News has details.

Book Riot provides an overview of the role that archives and archivists play in preserving records of the Trump presidency.

Screenwriter, author, and playwright Jean-Claude Carrière has died. The NYT has an obituary.

The NYT also has a remembrance of sci-fi writer and editor James E. Gunn, who died late last year.

Authors on Air

"The masculine aesthetics of minimalism have always been lucrative and embraced," says Dr. Jillian Hernandez discusses Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment (Duke Univ.) on the Keen On podcast.

The Emergence Magazine podcast speaks with Alexis Wright, The Swan Book (Atria: S. & S.), about "how to bear witness to the creation of a post-apocalyptic world."

The Today Show features The Princess Spy: The True Story of World War II Spy Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones by Larry Loftis (Atria: S. & S.).

Glennon Doyle, Untamed (The Dial Press: Random House), will be on The View today.

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