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Book News

Author Michael Lewis, whose book inspired The Blind Side film, speaks out on the root cause of the family’s rift; Deadline has the news.

Meanwhile, NYT examines Michael Oher’s version of the story, via his two memoirs.

Page to Screen

August 18

Birth/Rebirth, based on Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. IFC Films. Reviews | Trailer

Blue Beetle, based on associated titles. Warner Brothers. Reviews | Trailer

Dead Shot, based on The Road to Balcombe Street: The IRA Reign of Terror in London by Steven P. Moysey. Quiver Distribution. Reviews | Trailer

Landscape with Invisible Hand, based on the novel by M.T. Anderson. MGM. Reviews | Trailer

The Monkey King, based on the novel Journey to the West, attributed to Wu Cheng’en. Netflix. Reviews | Trailer

Reviews

Washington Post reviews President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier by C.W. Goodyear (S. & S.): “In the hands of a talented debut biographer like C.W. Goodyear, though, Garfield’s life becomes a fascinating national portrait of an imperfect union struggling across its first century to live up to the promise of its founding”; The Maverick: George Weidenfeld and the Golden Age of Publishing by Thomas Harding (Pegasus): “The Maverick abandons conventional biography. Instead, Harding recounts his subject’s personal and professional life by examining a dozen or so of the more than 6,000 titles Weidenfeld brought out before his death”; three “pandemic-fueled thrillers” and two related theory books; and five utopian—or perhaps dystopian?—SFF novels.

NYT reviews the audio original The Ghost Club by Kate Winkler Dawson (Books on Tape): “Not an overly theatrical narrator, Dawson lets her illustrative prose and an intriguing cast propel the eight-act narrative.”

LA Times reviews Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury by Drew Gilpin Faust (Farrar): “Part memoir, part political and cultural history, Faust’s is a keenly observed recollection of the forces that shaped her, though it may be frustrating to anyone in search of a deeper psychological portrait of this incredibly accomplished person.”

LitHub’s BookMarks identifies the best-reviewed books of the week.

Briefly Noted

NYT selects “9 New Books We Recommend This Week.”

Tor.com identifies “Five Fascinating Twists on the Classic Haunted House Story.”

CrimeReads takes note of novels “where love drives characters to dangerous extremes.”

LitHub shares eight books about intelligent sea creatures.

Vogue rounds up the best LGBTQ+ books of 2023 so far.

Electric Lit recommends “7 Charming Love Stories Set in Bakeries.”

Publishers Weekly talks to Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis (Pantheon).

Kirkus chats with David Shih, author of Chinese Prodigal: A Memoir in Eight Arguments (Atlantic Monthly).

Poets&Writers has a Q&A with Rowan Ricardo Phillips, editor of the Princeton University Press Series of Contemporary Poets.

The Rumpus talks to Janika Oza, author of A History of Burning (Grand Central).

Patrick deWitt, The Librarianist (Ecco), answers NYT’s “By the Book” questionnaire.

Tor.com interviews Samara Breger about her paranormal vampire romance A Long Time Dead (Bywater).

The Guardian explains where to start with Annie Ernaux.

Elle goes in-depth on Sarah Stankorb’s Disobedient Women: How a Small Group of Faithful Women Exposed Abuse, Brought Down Powerful Pastors, and Ignited an Evangelical Reckoning (Worthy: Hachette).

Authors on Air

PBS NewsHour interviews Christopher Miller, author of The War Came to Us: Life and Death in Ukraine (Bloomsbury).

LitHub’s Keen On podcast talks to Quinn Eastman, author of The Woman Who Couldn’t Wake Up: Hypersomnia and the Science of Sleepiness (Columbia Univ.).

Deadline has news about Lily and the Rockets, a movie about the origins of women’s soccer, based on the novel of the same name by Rebecca Stevens.

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