It's almost May already, and things are starting to look up for post-pandemic activities...I even got a haircut for the first time in nearly 2 years last week, and I went grocery shopping with my son Nick, which was a real pleasure. There has been a lot going on, both with my Crohns, which hasn't been great at all, and with my friends and family getting vaccinated and planning on meeting up in the near future. Meanwhile, here are some tidbits and long overdue book reviews.
I read where the Crawdads Sing, and while I didn't think it was all that great, I look forward to seeing how the plot plays out on the silver screen.
Movies: Where the Crawdads Sing, White Bird: A Wonder Story
Garret Dillahunt (Fear the Walking Dead), Michael Hyatt (Snowfall), Ahna O'Reilly (The Morning Show), Sterling Macer Jr. (Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story) and Jojo Regina have been added to the cast of Where the Crawdads Sing http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48200422, based on Delia Owens's novel, Deadline reported. They join Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, David Strathairn and Harris Dickinson
Olivia Newman is directing the film from a screenplay Lucy Alibar. Reese Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter are producing for Hello Sunshine, and Elizabeth Gabler, Erin Siminoff and Aislinn Dunster are overseeing the project for 3000 Pictures.
Movie: White Bird, A Wonder Story
Participant has joined Lionsgate and Mandeville Films as executive producer and co-financier of White Bird: A Wonder Story http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48200423, the companion film to 2017's hit YA feature Wonder, based on R.J. Palacio's book. The movie stars Gillian Anderson, Helen Mirren, Ariella Glaser, Orlando Schwerdt and, reprising his role from Wonder, Bryce Gheisar.
Marc Forster is directing White Bird, which is currently in production. The screenplay adaptation is by Mark Bomback (The Art of Racing in the Rain, War for the Planet of the Apes). Mandeville Films' David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman, who produced Wonder, are also producing the new film, along with Palacio.
Participant CEO David Linde commented: "Wonder is a shining example of what inspirational storytelling can achieve, and we are thrilled to partner again with our friends at Lionsgate and Mandeville Films, as well as R.J. Palacio and Marc Forster. Compassion for each other is the first step in bridging divides and we look forward to continuing that legacy of kindness and understanding with White Bird: A Wonder Story."
These book to movie/series adaptations sound absolutely fascinating!
TV: The Secret Life of Groceries, The Tower
Benjamin Lorr's nonfiction book The Secret Life of Groceries http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48234533: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket will be turned into a TV docuseries. Deadline reported that producer Truly Original (The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Ink Master) optioned the book and is developing the project.
Through a blend of investigative journalism and travelogue, Lorr "will go even deeper, offering an inside-out perspective of a world he describes as 'Alice in Wonderland-like surreal' and 'claustrophobically secretive,' whose gatekeepers would prefer to keep out of sight at all costs," Deadline wrote.
Lorr said: "I want to upend how we think about buying food. Retail grocery is a reflection, and this is going to be a 'warts and all' look in the mirror. We have a massive industry carefully calibrated to consumer demands, and it's been doing a damn good job. But how? And at what cost? This show will be an entertaining exploration of a system that's way too good to be true, unveiling every hero, villain, beauty and blemish behind it."
Truly Original's co-CEOs and executive producers Steven Weinstock and Glenda Hersh added: "Ben's expertise, wit, deep curiosity and empathic nature make him an ideal tour guide through what he cites as the 'miracle' of the American supermarket. Coming off a year when appreciation for grocery stores is off the charts, and rightly so, we think this project will amaze viewers and really hit home."
The Tower
Gemma Whelan (Game of Thrones, Killing Eve) has been cast as the lead in ITV's drama series The Tower http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48234534, writer Patrick Harbinson's (Homeland) three-part adaptation of Kate London's Metropolitan Police novel Post Mortem, Deadline reported.
With filming scheduled to start this month, The Tower is produced by Harbinson's new production company Windhover Films and Mammoth Screen, the ITV Studios-owned producer behind BBC/Netflix series The Serpent and Poldark. It is made in association with ITV Studios, which distributes internationally.
Though I didn't manage to get out to an independent bookstore on Saturday, I followed many of my favorite indies online, and I love that this Iowa bookstore was flooded with customers! I look forward to going to a bookstore one day soon and just browsing and enjoying the ambiance of my fellow book lovers.
Quotation of the Day
'It Was, Hands Down, Our Best Sales Day Ever! I'm not usually an emotional person but after closing shop last night I was on the verge of tears. You see, running an independent bookstore is a tough business. Maintaining inventory (even in a small space), meeting financial obligations (which at times seem overwhelming), and offering legit customer service (call me out if I ever drop the ball) constantly wears on my mind. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade this life for anything. I'm a small business owner who's living the dream.
"Anyway, the response we received Saturday for Independent Bookstore Day was off the charts. It was, hands down, our best sales day ever. Seriously. I cannot thank everyone enough for showing up and supporting the shop. By the end of the day, I had the wickedest case of 'register finger' I can remember. The shelves are looking a wee bit depleted, but I'll correct that in no time.... Now, excuse me, but I need to get back to work!" --Bart Carithers, owner of Next Page Books http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48303827, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in a Facebook post
The NYPL lost one of it's greatest librarians recently, an amazing woman who was gone too soon. RIP.
Obituary Note: Kathie Coblentz
Kathie Coblentz http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48335670, "a Renaissance woman who read or spoke 13 languages; collaborated on books about the directors Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood and Alfred Hitchcock; and, during her day job, cataloged rare books for more than 50 years at the New York Public Library," died April 3, the New York Times reported. She was 73. Coblentz was the library's third-longest serving employee, working most recently in the 42nd Street research library's special formats processing department of the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs.
Anthony W. Marx, NYPL's president and CEO, said Coblentz was recruited for a library job in 1969 before she graduated from the University of Michigan: "She thought she'd work at the New York Public Library until she figured out what to do next. Well, she never left."
Deirdre Donohue, her supervisor, described her as the "matriarch of our work family," who cataloged hundreds of items "that were the products of detective work, deep research and skepticism about facts."
Coblentz collaborated with her former teacher from the 1990s at the New School, Robert E. Kapsis, on researching (including translating avant-garde European criticism into English), editing and indexing books. She also edited anthologies of interviews with contemporary filmmakers.
Coblentz's 900-square-foot apartment housed 3,600 books, which had served as inspiration for her The New York Public Library Guide to Organizing a Home Library (2003). The Times noted that "her system of classifying her own collection of books at home defied library science and was ripe for parody. Ms. Coblentz had 16 bookcases holding more than 200 feet of shelf space in her one-bedroom apartment. The books were arranged by country of origin, size, sentimentality and personal obsession."
"Your system doesn't have to be logical," she told the Times in 2005. "It just has to work for you."
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates is the May book for my library book group. Let me start by saying that the prose in this novel wow-ed me from the first page onward, and the plot, though a bit serpentine, was a real page turner, and the characters riveting. I think this would qualify as magical realism in many ways, and yet the meat of the story has to do with the limits of the human spirit under slavery, not with the magic of the underground railroad. Here's the blurb: Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away,
Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious
power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power
saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a
daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known.
So
begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur
of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the
wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic
movements in the North. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war
between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family
he left behind endures.
This is the dramatic story of an
atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children—the
violent and capricious separation of families—and the war they waged to
simply make lives with the people they loved. Written by one of today’s
most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen.
“Ta-Nehisi
Coates is the most important essayist in a generation. The Water Dancer .
. . is a work of both staggering imagination and rich historical
significance. . . . What’s most powerful is the way Coates enlists his
notions of the fantastic, as well as his fluid prose, to probe a wound
that never seems to heal. . . . Timeless and instantly canon-worthy.”—Rolling Stone Magazine
This is a timeless classic novel that I believe future generations will read and be amazed by. I laughed, cried and often had to set the book aside because mans inhumanity to man (and to women and children) was so staggering that I felt incapacitated by the horror of slavery, and by the aftershocks that had such a terrible effect on future generations. SPOILER ALERT: I was left with the question at the end of what happened to Hi, Sophia and little Carrie? Did he get her out of Virginia and into the North to freedom? Were they able to then be a family? Yet even with this important question looming at the end, I'd give this magnificent novel an A, and recommend it to everyone.
The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris by Jenny Colgan was a sometimes delicious, sometimes tedious romantic women's lit novel that I had high expectations of. I was destined for disappointment, however, when I discovered that all the cliches were here, especially with the women in the novel, all of whom loathed themselves, were super insecure and cowardly, and always relied on men to shore themselves up, until the end, when the older female protagonist, fulfilling her dying wish, finally goes against her fears and flies to meet the man she's loved for decades in Paris, after discovering that he's just had open heart surgery and nearly died himself. This was mainly due to his weight, which was a theme in this book, full of fatphobia and medical inaccuracies, that thin means you're healthier and more likely to live and fat means you've got a death sentence...except, of course, when you're thin due to cancer and chemotherapy. (but even then, much is made of how chic the older female protagonist is in a gown draped over her emeciated frame). Sad that so many authors still believe the diet industry BS over actual medical science. Anyway, here's the blurb:
Award-winning author Jenny Colgan takes her charming romances to Paris in this heartwarming, bittersweet story of life, love and chocolate.
Anna Trent may be a supervisor in a chocolate factory...but that doesn't necessarily mean she knows how to make chocolate. So when a fateful accident gives her the opportunity to work at the most elite chocolatier in Paris―Le Chapeau Chocolat―Anna expects to be outed as a fraud.
After all, there is a world of difference between chalky, mass-produced English chocolate and the gourmet confections Anna's new boss creates. While she may never match him in the kitchen, Anna thinks she might be able to give him a second chance at love.
And with a bit of luck and a lot of patience, Anna's learning that the sweetest things in life are always worth working for.
Anna's room mate, a flamboyant gay man, is really a more interesting and satisfying character than Anna, who consistently berates and second guesses herself, and of course the son of the famous chocolatier is really the only one who has talent in creating chocolate, because men are better at everything than women, especially French men! (actually this novel made the case that Frenchmen are even more sexist and egotistical than American or British men). But the writing was fairly smooth, as was the plot, which plodded with redundancy only a couple of times. All in all, I'd give this novel a B-, and recommend it to anyone who likes stories of Paris romances with English women abroad and lots of discussions of what makes great chocolate.
Storm Watcher by Lilith Saintcrow is the second book in the Watcher series, this one outlining the story of Mari the water witch and Hanson the watcher. Saintcrow's prose is strong and effective, and her plots zip along like a drone on steroids, but her characters in the Watcher series are a bit too cliched for me. Her witches are all sweet and petite and completely ignorant of danger and self defense, so they of course rely on their watchers to protect them, and get all bent out of shape when these same men want to follow them around and try to keep them from taking stupid risks with their lives. Mari, like all her witch sisters, doesn't like herself at all, and is of course modest and shy, full of blushes and giggles and swoons whenever confronted by bloodthirsty monsters. She doesn't want her watcher to get hurt just for little old her, so she goes out by herself and nearly gets abducted or killed several times before she willingly accepts Hansons help. UGH. Insert eyeroll here. Or, better yet, here's the blurb:
The Witch:
All Mariamne Niege wants is to finish her thesis and
get a job. Unfortunately, she’s a Guardian now, and her visions of the
future have grown so intense she’s blind to the world while in their
grip. Her Watcher, Hanson, is sleeping on her couch and scaring her
roommates when he’s not shepherding her through the visions and calming
her worsening nightmares. Then the earthquakes start, warning of an even
bigger disaster—a cataclysm that could level her beloved city and claim
countless innocent lives. A disaster her visions say are triggered by
Hanson, even though he’s sworn to protect her . . .
The Watcher:
Hanson
joined the Watchers to atone for a life of lies, but the only way he
can stay close enough to Mari to protect her is to use some of his
less-than-honest talents. She is the only witch who can ease the agony
of being a Watcher, and the only woman in the world he wants. Then
Mari’s house is broken into and her roommates slaughtered, and in order
to save his witch, Hanson is going to have to become more vicious than
the Dark—even though it might mean losing her forever.
Of course it all ends nicely, or as nicely as it can, and I have already downloaded book 3, Fire Watcher, to see what happens next. But I really, really wish Saintcrow would allow her witches to have more agency of their own, more spine and guts and less whiny infantilized feminine romance novel protagonist. I know she knows how to do this because I've read all her other series, many of which have kick-butt women in them. So please join us in the 21st century, Ms Saintcrow, where real women don't blush or giggle, and where most are not petite or sweet and innocent at all. How about a larger woman protagonist, pagan loving and full of brio, who kicks monster arse with her witchy magic?! At any rate, I'd give this book a B, and recommend it to anyone who read the first book in the Watcher series.
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