A new hello from your NPR Books team!

New movie adaptations, why John Grisham hasn't seen 'The Firm' in 30 years, and more.

View this email online October 21, 2023 by Andrew Limbong Heyo! Andrew here, host of NPR's Book of the Day Podcast. We're sort of re-jiggering this newsletter, using it as a platform to just talk about books stuff, highlight any recent news, point you towards interesting takes. Lmk what you think – we try to reply to emails that aren't just pitches for books to cover, so please hit us up! bookoftheday@npr.org :) Read it before you see it! Or, maybe, hear it before you see it? I spent the summer jealously watching all of you partake in the corporate-sponsored cultural moment that was Barbenheimer. I couldn’t go to either movie! I had a new kid at home! Wah wah wah!!! (that’s me crying about it, not the relatively chill kid). But!! I’ve gotten the OK from my partner to go all in for what will be MY cinema experience event of the year: spending 3+ hours in a theater watching Killers of the Flower Moon. It’s gonna be sick. Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio in Killers of the Flower Moon. AppleTV+ In preparation, I listened to the David Grann book it’s based on. The story traces the murders of prominent rich members of the Osage Nation by white men looking to take over their fortunes. Tbh, I didn’t love the book? My main sticking point is essentially – too much Tom (the federal agent sent to investigate the murders), not enough Mollie (the woman whose family is being murdered). But, you know what? I’m still stoked! From all the reviews so far it looks like Lily Gladstone, who plays Mollie, is fantastic. The dude who played Landry Clarke in Friday Night Lights is in it, and he’s great. And this Martin Scorcese guy? I hear he’s got a pretty good track record! Book adaptations are funny. They can get a classic book in front of a whole new audience (I finally got around to watching Greta Gerwig’s loving adaptation of Little Women, which I’d never read before. So cozy!) They can also bungle the job (I made it about 8 minutes into James Franco’s As I Lay Dying). But imo the most interesting thing A/B’ing the source material to the adaptation is looking at what changed the most in the process. All of which to say – it’s Adaptation Week on the Book of the Day podcast! We went into the archive and dug up some interviews with authors who’ve had their books adapted into movies this year – Alice Walker, the aforementioned David Grann, Isabel Wilkerson, and more. On deck is also an extended cut of my recent interview with the incredibly prolific John Grisham. Fun fact: He hasn’t seen The Firm since it first came out. It’s the movie that kicked off the big Grisham adaptation craze in the 90s, but apparently when it comes on cable he just breezes past it. “I’m really tired of the story,” he told me. So he wrote a sequel to the book. The funny thing about The Firm movie is that the third act is completely different from the book. In the book, our hero Mitch McDeere is getting into fights in the Cayman Islands. In the movie he’s doing parkour (???) around Memphis. Both decisions work in their own ways but I’m curious what big changes across adaptations stick out to you? Characters scrubbed, structures altered, whatever! Hit us up at bookoftheday@npr.org and we’ll gab about it in future newsletters. Newsletter continues after sponsor message TBR Pile Our colleague Rachel Tresiman has this great piece on what's going on with the Scholastic Book Fair. In short: they're grouping certain books in a nicely named subsection, and letting schools opt-out of that selection entirely. From Rachel's piece: "According to a list shared with NPR, out of the more than 100 titles in this year's book fair, most of the books dealing with issues of race, gender and sexuality are in the 'Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice' collection." Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images The Nation has this interesting piece on the roots of "literary fiction" by English professor Dan Sinykin. He's got a new book out called Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature, that I'm still making my way through. But as someone who wanted to be a "literary person" in college (ugh), the piece kind of has me question certain parts of my identity, ha. Britney Spears' memoir The Woman in Me is out this week and People has the advance excerpts. You've surely seen the big headlines, and the book is already #1 on Amazon's bestsellers list before it's even out! – But I haven't seen a lot of folks talk about this now-confirmed bombshell: "The Notebook casting came down to me and Rachel McAdams, and even though it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on the Mickey Mouse Club, I'm glad I didn't do it." What a world we could've lived in! From the Editor's Desk: Hey there! It’s Meghan – the editor of NPR Books. We’re so glad to have you here, talking books with us on this fall Saturday. At NPR Books, we’re always looking out for what’s coming over the hill. As Andrew mentioned, Britney Spears’ memoir doesn’t even hit shelves until Tuesday – but it’s such a talker already. There are a couple other books coming out next week, too, that we are loving. One is Let Us Descend by MacArthur Genius and two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. Our reviewer Gabino Iglesias says, “Let Us Descend is a harrowing read. Ward's mix of historical fiction, supernatural elements, and gorgeous prose is as brutal as it is gorgeous and necessary. Readers will walk with Annis and see the world through her eyes, feel the pain of everything she survives, and that suffering will give them clarity, will help them develop a deeper understanding of love, grief, and the open wound that was slavery." We’re also looking forward to your thoughts on Roz Chast’s latest graphic novel I Must Be Dreaming. Book critic Heller McAlpin says: “Talk about a dream, kill a conversation.” But she says that “even though cartoonist Roz Chast acknowledges that ‘Only shrinks are interested, and maybe not even them,’ she has written an entire book about dreams. And -- no surprise -- it's delightful. She pulls it off because she's Roz Chast.” We hope you’ll come read their full reviews this week here. https://www.npr.org/books/ And, like Andrew said, we’d love to hear from you. This week we are especially wondering: What big changes have you seen in book-to-movie adaptations? Was it a good move? Tell us here. bookoftheday@npr.org And happy reading! Listen to your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to hear live radio from WMFE (edit station). What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: books@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! 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