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Page to Screen

April 2:

Concrete Cowboy, based on the book Ghetto Cowboy by Greg Neri. Netflix. Reviews | Trailer

Doug Unplugs, based on the book series Doug Unplugged by Dan Yaccarino. Apple TV+. No reviews | Trailer

French Exit, based on the book by Patrick deWitt. Sony Pictures Classics. Reviews | Trailer

The Unholy, based on the book Shrine by James Herbert. Sony Screen Gems. No reviews | Trailer

April 6:

The Last Kids on Earth: Happy Apocalypse to You, based on the book series by Max Brallier. Netflix. No reviews | Trailer

April 7:

Snabba Cash, based on a book by Jens Lapidus. Netflix. No reviews | Trailer

Reviews

The Washington Post reviews Eternal by Lisa Scottoline (Putnam; LJ Starred Review): “Scottoline is a master at ramping up the suspense, and in “Eternal” she delivers a slow-build of hate and violence culminating in a nail-biting scene at the transit camp where Jews are being held before they are shipped to Auschwitz.” Also, Who is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews (Little, Brown: Hachette): "Andrews’s novel is sharp, unpredictable and enormously entertaining. To say anything more would ruin the fun of reading — and being lightly appalled — by it.”  Speak, Okinawa A Memoir by Elizabeth Miki Brina (Knopf; LJ Starred Review): “the story of her discovery of Okinawa as an adult — and discoveries about her mother and herself. Brina also explores Okinawa as an overlooked piece of the American story in need of hard scrutiny.” When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present by Nick Bryant (Bloomsbury Continuum): “The great strength of Bryant’s book is his ability to make large structural changes vivid through outsized personalities and his own personal experiences.” This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends about Racism by Don Lemon (Little, Brown): “Ultimately, Lemon leaves me wondering who he’s speaking to — who his friends are in his subtitle. They seem to be mainly White people. That’s not shade, but it was something that sat with me.”

USA Today reviews The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade (Norton; LJ Starred Review), giving it 3 1/2 stars out of 4: “true to the religious themes that run through the book, she leaves room for a minor miracle to creep in. Dumb luck is part of precarious living too, and in this big-hearted novel, Quade knows how to make use of it.”

The LA Times reviews First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami (Knopf): “Each story is like the greenery filler in a grocery store bouquet: stiff and charmless, background fodder, indistinct organic matter. They’re like copies of copies of copies of Murakami’s older work; all the specificity and vivacity is blurred out.”

Entertainment Weekly reviews Beautiful Things: A Memoir by Hunter Biden (Gallery: S. & S.), giving it a grade B: “The result is, purposeful or not, a portrait of our current President as the ultimate Patriarch. The family, and Joe specifically, seems to command a loyalty and a devotion that feels extreme.”

The NYT reviews A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib (Random; LJ Starred Review): “this poet, cultural critic, essayist and music buff uses the tales of Black performers to make poignant observations about race in America while using Black performance as a metaphor for the transcendent imagination, gliding through television, music, film, minstrel shows, vaudeville and even space.” Also, Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old by Andrew Steele (Doubleday): “The question of what it means to age — and what it would mean not to — goes entirely unaddressed in “Ageless,” a book that is technically impressive but morally and emotionally shallow.”

Book Marks picks "The Best Reviewed Books of the Week."

Briefly Noted

Ebony magazine writes “From ‘Sula’ to ‘Luster’: Fiction’s New School of Black Woman Heroines.”

Diana Gabaldon announces she has completed her ninth Outlander book, Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone.

Shondaland has a list for April reading.

Town & Country picks April books.

Time also gathers a list for April.

Oprah Daily offers “29 of the Best Poetry Books, As Recommended by Acclaimed Writers.”

Entertainment Weekly picks the best romance novels of March.

The NYT has 11 books for the week.

Elle has an early look at Matrix by Lauren Groff (Riverhead).

The LA Times profiles Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company (Ecco).

People highlights The Great Peace: A Memoir by Mena Suvari (Hachette). Also, there is a story on Jenny Lawson, Broken (in the best possible way) (Holt: Macmillan).

The NYT reports that Andrew Cuomo, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic (Crown: Random House), got paid over four million for his book.

The Guardian interviews Tracey Thorn, My Rock 'n' Roll Friend (Canongate Books).

Authors on Air

Vanity Fair writes about “The Failure of American Gods and the Trouble With Neil Gaiman.”

Deadline reports HBO Max’s Station Eleven, based on the book by Emily St. John Mandel, casts up. The Disney sequel to Stargirl, based on the book by Jerry Spinelli, gains new cast members as well. Magnolia Table With Joanna Gaines’ is renewed. The Good Nurse, based on the book by Charles Graeber, has casting news too. As does season two of Bridgerton. Moving in the other direction, Deadline also reports that “DC Films no longer is developing the properties New Gods, which had Ava DuVernay attached to direct, and Aquaman spinoff The Trench, which Noah Gardner and Aidan Fitzgerald were penning for James Wan possibly to helm.”

Walter Isaacson, The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race (S. & S.) explores “Should We Edit Our Children’s Genes?” on The Ezra Klein Show.

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