It's the last day of April, and here I am squeaking in under the wire with my final post of the month. It's been a sad day, too, as today we learned of the death of Naomi Judd, who toured and sang many a country hit with her daughter Wynonna Judd through the 70s, 80s and 90s. I was lucky enough to see them in concert in Florida, when I was living there, with my good friend Debbie, and we had a fine time marveling at their glorious harmonies. RIP Naomi, may you sing with the angels in heaven.
While I'm not much of a fashion hound, I would LOVE to wear clothing with words or phrases or books imprinted on them, as that would be a style that really speaks to me as a bibliophile. I'm not sure that this trend will inspire more people to read, but if even one model decides to pick up a copy of a Steinbeck or Steinem classic, it will have been worth the trendy clothing fad.
Fashion’s novel trend |
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In recent years, the worlds of literature and fashion have become more entwined. Dior featured models walking down a runway printed with Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” while Valentino tapped authors like Brit Bennett and David Sedaris to contribute to ad campaigns. Books have become “coveted signifiers of taste and self-expression,” Nick Haramis writes in T Magazine, and it’s an open secret in Hollywood that book stylists suggest reading material for celebrities and influencers to carry — and be photographed with — in public. |
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Critics wonder if the books are simply being used as props. But stores like the Strand in New York have long provided services in which they’ll fill shelves for clients, celebrity or otherwise, by color, style or subject. |
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“It could be art and architecture monographs in shades of peach, blue and green, or all leather-bound books for a room with a goth feel,” said Jenna Hipp, who puts together libraries for corporate clients and celebrities. “Clients will say to us, ‘I want people to think I’m about this. I want people to think I’m about that.’” |
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For authors, if books have become a version of the latest It Bag, it’s good for business. “If you ask any writer, they want to be read, but they also want to keep writing,” said Karah Preiss, who runs Belletrist, an online reading community, with the actress Emma Roberts. “The bottom line for publishers is not, ‘Did your book get read?’ It’s, ‘Did your book sell?’ And famous readers sell books.” — Sanam Yar, a Morning writer |
I am a big fan of Ridley and Tom Scott, who between them have directed some of my all time favorite movies. Hence I will be keeping an eye out for this movie, which is sure to be interesting and well-directed, if nothing else.
Movies: The Infinite Machine
Scott Free Productions will produce a film adaptation of The Infinite Machine https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscACNkL8I6aphdxh1HQ~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jHX5H3poMLg-gVdw: How an Army of Crypto-hackers Is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum by Camila Russo, Deadline reported.
The film will be written for the screen and directed by Shyam Madiraju, with Ridley Scott, Tom Moran and Vera Meyer of Scott Free producing alongside Alejandro Miranda of Versus Entertainment.
"It's incredibly exciting to have Ridley Scott and the crew at Scott Free produce the movie of The Infinite Machine alongside us," Russo said. "I can't imagine a better team to turn the riveting story about the people behind the most revolutionary technology since the internet into a feature film that will capture the hearts of our generation."
Though I didn't like the book Wicked, I am a big fan of the score of the Broadway musical, and I am sure the movie version will be just as thrilling.
Movies: Wicked
Universal will release Wicked https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscACPl-QI6apgJ0h2HA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jHXZaspoMLg-gVdw, its film adaptation of the Broadway musical, in two parts, on December 25, 2024 and December 25, 2025. Deadline reported that the strategy was "a bold swing for a musical, which of late have been risky onscreen. However, this one is based on a legacy crowd-pleaser."
Jon M. Chu is directing the movie, based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, which was adapted for the screen by the stage production's book writer Winne Holzman and Oscar-winning composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz. Deadline noted that "working to Wicked's advantage is that it's a near $3 billion-grossing Broadway musical seen by more than 30 million people worldwide."
I actually met Greg Iles at a writers conference back in the late 90s, and he has become quite a big deal in the world of publishing. I'm also a fan of the Pillars of the Earth and of Wolf Hall and the Mitford sisters books. I hope that people are intrigued by these forays into backlists, because there are plenty of worthy reads there.
Read and Get Happy: Highlighting Backlist Reading
Literature has always been the answer for me. Whenever things go wrong, I turn to books. It's also where I go when I am especially happy. And of course it's where I go when I need to learn something. Last month two of those things were true. The world had become destabilizing again as we all braced for what looked like might become an actual world war. My grasp of war history is shaky so it seemed like I should turn to books to learn about the lead up to other wars and how people, my people, the book people, faced things.
I started on some war backlist reading, and there are piles of it to be sure. But it wasn't long until I realized that what I was really craving was another kind of historical reading. Character-driven novels where people found love and made art, cooked and gardened, built big things and wrote interesting stories--in general, they lived their lives in spite of the world around them. Sometimes I feel like that is indeed the calling. There have always been wars and there has always been joy right alongside. So this month's backlist brings you some bits of history, joyfully told, which will hopefully calm and cheer.
"The small boys came early to the hanging." What a magnificent first sentence, and it only gets better from there. Do you remember the first time you read The Pillars of the Earth? Sure, it's a novel about the building of a cathedral set in the 12th century. But that doesn't begin to cover it. It's a novel about power and family. It's a story about a monk and a mason. It's a generational saga. Ken Follett is one of the greatest storytellers of all time. The Pillars of the Earth is thrilling and utterly diverting, and there are probably a couple of generations of readers nobody has told. We must hurry up and tell them right now. Happily, after The Pillars of the Earth there are two more in the trilogy to keep new readers coming back.
I am ever glad that Hilary Mantel was born. Wolf Hall is reason enough. In the first of her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, Mantel gives us the notorious Henry VIII, Cromwell, Anne Boleyn and Katherine of Aragon as they navigate the politics of the day tangled up in scandal where potential threats are tucked behind every royal door. History is never boring in Mantel's hands. Instead, it's riveting and the best kind of storytelling that will shore you up for whatever's coming IRL.
Greg Iles is yet another of the multitude of brilliant writers hailing from Mississippi. Natchez Burning is also the first book in a trilogy about the American South. Old romantic secrets amid small town corruption and the racial sins of our ancestors make for a common enough story. But in Iles's deft hands we are transported. It's small-town Mississippi over a sticky hot 1960s summer. It's also a legal puzzle.
The heat and the pace left me thirsty and both panting to finish and longing to make it last. Only a Southerner could have told this story. It isn't preachy or apologetic. It...smolders. Natchez Burning is a reminder that as bleak as things can get, they will seldom stay fixed that way forever. I like that lesson right about now.
Jessica Fellowes is the new kid in the Fellowes family. Her famous uncle gave the world Downton Abbey and now she has given us the Mitford sisters books, starting with The Mitford Murders. These breezy, glitzy novels center on the true-life Mitford sisters who were glamming around London in the 1920s. The first novel was based on a real unsolved crime, and fans of Downton Abbey or Nancy Drew will love it. Think glitzy and witty, and you will just about have it. There is nothing much wrong that one of Fellowes's five Mitford novels won't make better. They make for a chic, clever afternoon anyway. And isn't that exactly what we're craving? --Ellen Stimson
Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco (presented by James Patterson) was a two dollar ebook that sounded like it was right up my alley, with a Victorian heroine, a romantic subplot and the pacing of a mystery-thriller. Unfortunately, the author, instead of having her female protagonist become a strong force against patriarchal control and ridiculous societal mores, ends up having Audrey Rose Wadsworth become a sniveling, vomiting, "frozen in fear" bawling emotional train wreck in most of the important scenes. This makes her seem all the more unrealistic when she appears to be obsessed with "forensic science" and the autopsy of cadavers under the instruction of the local medical examiner, her uncle. Her father, who is a Lord, is a creepy mean opium addict who seems to have little love or care for her, beyond wanting to control her every waking moment and marry her off to some dreary old noble as soon as possible. Her brother, who initially seems to want to help her become educated, also comes across as creepy and controlling, until the easily spotted plot twist at the end. She has no decent or caring female relatives, and her mother is dead. So Audrey Rose's infatuation with the first boy she's able to go out with unchaperoned is no surprise. Here's the blurb:
SPOILERS ahead! I really felt that it didn't make sense for Audrey to be so weak (vomiting and crying, and nearly fainting) when seeing corpses of women murdered by the Ripper, and then being able to cut open cadavers during autopsy and not have even a whiff of weakness or fear. I also found it hard to believe she'd find out that Jack the Ripper is her brother, and be perfectly fine with letting him go, or trying to "get him help" when there's no real psychiatric help at that time for psychopaths who murder women and eat their organs. But she's all "frozen" and unable to move throughout her confrontation with her evil brother, allowing herself to be tied up and used in his insane Frankenstein scheme. Pathetic. Anyway, the prose was clean and clear, but the plot had some holes and moments that were dead, if you'll excuse the pun. I'd give this book a C+ and only recommend it to those who like petite and wimpy Victorian heroines with insane male relatives.
The Good Left Undone by Adriana Trigiani is her latest book in a series of historical romance literature, based on stories of her ancestors and relatives in Italy (Trigiani grew up in America and now lives in New York). I've read everything the glorious Adriana has written, as has my mother Roma. We love her engrossing stories of Italian immigrants who work hard to make it in America. I even pre-ordered this hardback book, in hopes that I'd get it delivered on the publication date, I was so anxious to delve into another Trigiani story. That's why I was so disappointed that this novel was rife with the Catholic religion, as well as the women who lived their lives around the church and were oppressed by its outdated and misogynistic strictures. I hate it when authors try weaving religion throughout the text, like a lame character or a miasma of brainwashing and fear. The priests in this novel treat some of the main female characters horribly, and the characters allow themselves to be punished in these terrible ways just because the Catholic church had a stranglehold over the lives of people in pre-war and war-torn Italy. Even though there's all this suffering attributed to the priests and the church, the author portrays them as great men who were only trying to help...something I don't agree with at all, though I can honestly say that there are some good nuns and priests out there, after having attended a Catholic college myself for four years. Still Trigiani's prose is impeccable, and her plot manages to keep all the characters moving forward at a somewhat measured pace. So, while I had some major problems with the novel, it was still a strong story of four generations of women growing up in a small Italian town, and I felt some love for this interesting book.
Here is the blurb:
From “a master of visual and palpable detail” (The Washington Post),
comes a lush, immersive novel about three generations of Tuscan
artisans with one remarkable secret. Epic in scope and resplendent with
the glorious themes of identity and belonging, The Good Left Undone unfolds in breathtaking turns.
Matelda,
the Cabrelli family’s matriarch, has always been brusque and
opinionated. Now, as she faces the end of her life, she is determined to
share a long-held secret with her family about her own mother’s great
love story: with her childhood friend, Silvio, and with dashing Scottish
sea captain John Lawrie McVicars, the father Matelda never knew.
In the halcyon past, Domenica Cabrelli thrives in the coastal town of
Viareggio until her beloved home becomes unsafe when Italy teeters on
the brink of World War II. Her journey takes her from the rocky shores
of Marseille to the mystical beauty of Scotland to the dangers of
wartime Liverpool—where Italian Scots are imprisoned without cause—as
Domenica experiences love, loss, and grief while she longs for home. A
hundred years later, her daughter, Matelda, and her granddaughter,
Anina, face the same big questions about life and their family’s legacy,
while Matelda contemplates what is worth fighting for. But Matelda is
running out of time, and the two timelines intersect and weave together
in unexpected and heartbreaking ways that lead the family to shocking
revelations and, ultimately, redemption.
This is my other big problem with the book, there are too many characters to keep track of, and Trigiani introduces more of them throughout the book. You'd need a family tree or an index of some kind to keep track of who's who, with all the hidden relatives, remarriages and secret marriages from the past. If the focus would have stayed on Matelda and her mother, that would have made the book that much better, instead of adding the dunderhead granddaughter Anina who doesn't do much until the end, and we really don't get a sense of who she is during the novel at all. I also found it horrific that women were told to stay with their husbands no matter what (even if they were abused or being forced to have too many children, even if it meant their own death!) and men who strayed/had affairs were supposed to be forgiven and allowed to have their wives slave over them for the rest of their lives, even if they were repeat offenders and constantly betraying their marital vows. Women were told they needed to do things to make themselves more attractive to these louts, when they should have tossed them out on their ears and gotten a divorce. Men in this book are always given forgiveness and a clean slate, while women are punished or banished for much lighter offenses and not offered forgiveness or even the benefit of the doubt. This shameless double standard and misogyny turned my stomach, and I found myself not enjoying Matelda's journey, knowing how badly her mother had been treated by the church. I don't buy the whole "That's just the way it was back then" trope, either, especially in a fiction novel. If it's fiction, you can do whatever you want, and strong Italian women don't have to be sheep who just do whatever the priest or their husband says. So, heartbreaking as it is, I can only give this book a B- (and I'm being generous because I adore Adriana) and recommend it to those who don't mind reading about the stranglehold the Catholic Church had over Italy before and during WWII.
Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics is a huge tome (in every sense of the word...the book must weigh at least 15 pounds) that chronicles the life of one of Country music's greatest leading ladies. This is the May book for my book group, so I got not only a hardback copy from the library, I got the CD version so I could hear snippets of the many songs that Parton wrote throughout the past 60 plus years of her career. Here's the blurb:
Though I'm far from a big country music fan, there are some artists (like the Judds, mentioned above) and Dolly Parton who transcend the Country genre because their songs have crossed over into pop music history, and in Dolly's case, film history as well. I was a huge fan of the film she starred in with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda called 9 to 5, and the theme song was so catchy that I had it memorized after the second time I'd heard it. Parton has written thousands of songs that have had success with other singers, including the glorious cover of "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston (RIP) for the movie The Bodyguard, which was also a huge favorite of mine. These behind the scenes photos and textual memories are fascinating enough that even weak people who can't lift the book will want a copy to find out what really happened with Dolly and Porter Wagoner, and to see photos of Dolly's husband, who is so camera shy it's been thought that he wasn't real. I don't generally like long winded memoirs, but I couldn't put down this book, and though I'm also not a fan of the "humble-brag" (ie I came from nothing and built a multi-million dollar empire, aw-shucks), Dolly manages to be real and smart and funny without it becoming smarmy or overly sentimental. She also is courageous enough to never apologize for who she is and how she dresses and presents herself, which is very disarming and charming. I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who'd like a peek backstage at the songs and stories of the life of a Country music legend.
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