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Book News

Hachette’s parent company, Vivendi, will put the publisher on the stock market, The Bookseller reports.

Tieshena Davis is elected board chair of the Independent Book Publishers Association; she will be the first person of color to lead the board, Publishers Weekly reports.

“In Germany: A Nationwide Reading Competition Offers New Advice,” Publishing Perspectives writes, namely that parents will read more if their children ask to read together.

“European Publishers Call on EU Committee To Approve AI Act”; Publishing Perspectives has the news.

National Book Foundation Announces its spring events, and Kirkus has coverage.

Lawrence Langer, “Unblinking Scholar of Holocaust Literature,” dies at 94; NYT has an obituary.

Page to Screen

February 1

Argylle, based on the novel by Elly Conway. Apple Original Films. Reviews | Trailer

Bosco, based on the book Chasin’ Freedum: Memoirs of a Modern Escapist Chasing Freedom the Wrong Way by Quawntay Adams. Peacock. Reviews | Trailer

The Promised Land, based on the Danish novel The Captain and Ann Barbara by Ida Jessen (not yet published in English). Magnolia Pictures. Reviews | Trailer

The Tiger’s Apprentice, based on the novel by Laurence Yep. Paramount. Reviews | Trailer

Reviews

Washington Post reviews Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj (HarperVia): “Its characters come to life, transcending politics, breaking through preconceptions and stereotypes, speaking clearly and lucidly about their uniquely human experiences”; Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan (Little, Brown): “Like Zadie Smith in NW, Nolan tells a story with broad social implications through the unraveling of a handful of small lives”; The Road from Belhaven by Margot Livesey (Knopf): “The prose is radiant and descriptive, rich with Scottish imagery—dreich (gloomy) days, the tradition of first-footing (being the first to enter a house in the new year, for luck), jackdaws and curlews, bluebells and blackthorn”; Safeguarding History: Trailblazing Adventures Inside the Worlds of Collecting and Forging History by Kenneth W. Rendell (Whitman Publishing): “While mainly a chatty, easygoing autobiography, it’s also a business history, a family memoir and a highly anecdotal introduction to an arcane field. Above all, though, it’s what we in the reviewing trade call ‘a fun read’”; and two new books about the Ukraine war: Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence by Yaroslav Trofimov (Penguin Pr.) and The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky by Simon Shuster (Morrow; LJ starred review).

The Millions reviews Brutalities: A Love Story by Margo Steines (Norton): “The memoir lays bare her brutal past, dissects it with the detached curiosity and cold precision of a surgeon’s scalpel.”

NYT reviews four crime and mystery novels and audiobook of the week Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post by Martin Baron, narr. by Liev Schreiber (Macmillan Audio).

Briefly Noted

Rick Bass, With Every Great Breath: New and Selected Essays, 1995–2023 (Counterpoint), answers NYT’s “By the Book” questionnaire, while poet John Burnside takes The Guardian’s “The Books of My Life” survey.

Kirkus profiles “13 Romance Authors Making Space in the Genre.”

Washington Post has a feature on Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum by Antonia Hylton (Legacy Lit)

With the Washington Post, Daniel Klaidman and Michael Isikoff discuss Find Me the Votes (Twelve: Grand Central), their book about the case against Donald Trump in Georgia.

NYT has an essay about the late Chester Himes, “The Crime Novelist Who Was Also a Great American Novelist,” whose novels are being re-released by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. Meanwhile, CrimeReads hosts a discussion about Himes’s A Rage in Harlem.

EW argues, “Smut is not a dirty word: Author Sarah J. Maas (and romantasy at large) deserves more respect.”

In Poets&Writers, Eileen Pollack explains “Why ChatGPT Will Never Write a Literary Masterpiece.”

Publishers Weekly lists “5 New Books to Read for Black History Month.”

NYT highlights “6 New Paperbacks to Read This Week” and “9 New Books We Recommend This Week.”

Washington Post recommends “10 noteworthy books for February.”

Reactor enumerates “Five Ways Authors Motivate Characters to Leave Earth Behind.”

Authors on Air

Cannes prize-winning Mexican filmmaker Alonso Alvarez-Barreda has optioned Kaira Rouda’s thriller Beneath the Surface (Thomas & Mercer: Amazon), Deadline reports.

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