This Week In Books
June 29, 2024 Edition
It is summer (much heat, many mosquitoes) and there is obviously nothing to do but read by the pool. So we’ve got you covered this week with genteel vampire slayers, a John le Carré reprise, a new Emily Henry romcom, a number of book-to-film adaptations, a brain doctor on the bestseller lists, and more!
Bless Your Heart: Deadline reported that Bless Your Heart, a novel by Lindy Ryan, which released in April of this year will now be made into a tv show. The novel is about a family of women funeral directors whose job is to keep the dead in their graves. It sounds like the delightful, cozy, southern, vampire-hunting mystery we never knew we needed! We’ll get the popcorn ready. And maybe a few wooden stakes as well.
The Night Manager: The 2016 BBC tv series, The Night Manager, based on the book by John le Carré is renewed for a second season. The Night Manager was a standalone novel, and le Carré passed away in 2020, so the BBC is going off script by expanding the franchise. But our faves Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Coleman are returning so we will ignore this creative license and call it a win for everyone!
Collaborative Apocalypse: Let’s pause here to appreciate this cartoon from the Guardian about a novelist and an AI chatbot ushering in the apocalypse. This seems plausible. And not creepy. Or the kind of thing that keeps us up at night. Nope. Not at all.
It’s An EmHen Summer: It’s summer! That means everyone is reading the latest Emily Henry. And we are here for it. Henry’s newest novel Funny Story released in April and became the fifth consecutive bestseller from the author. Henry is an outlier in publishing in that she does not go on tour and has never been on TikTok. Her debut adult novel came out smack dab in the middle of 2020 (the longest decade of all of our lives) and no one was going on book tour. Beach Read, a happy rom com with sparkly dialogue and surprising depth, became a hit on TikTok and a New York Times bestseller. Each of her subsequent books has also reached that coveted accolade without Henry ever going on tour. Instead she works with her publicity team to throw book release parties around the country with fun themes and giveaways. She also appears on a few national shows to promote her books and then retreats back into her writing cave to make more books. All we can say is #lifegoals. In other EmHen news, it was just announced that Jennifer Lopez’s production company has signed on to adapt Happy Place for tv. This makes four of her five novels that will be coming to a screen near you. We’ll bet you fifty bucks Funny Story will be optioned within the month.
Children Of Blood And Bone Movie: The groundbreaking series Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi, will be made into a movie soon and casting has begun. We could not be more thrilled for Adeyemi!
Frieda’s McFans: The New York Times profiled Freida McFadden this week. McFadden’s newest book, The Housemaid Is Watching, the third in her Housemaid series, released earlier this month and became an instant bestseller which is not surprising. She currently holds seven slots on Amazon’s top 100 list and two on the NYT bestseller list.We’ve talked previously about the sensation that is Frieda McFadden, an author that started out in self publishing and has systematically become one of the biggest thriller writers today. And she accomplished all of this while simultaneously holding down her day job as a brain doctor. While the rest of us writers whine about our jobs, McFadden is over there saying “Come on guys, it’s not brain surgery.” Count us as some of her many McFans.
Beautiful Useless Words: If the illaudible times have you feeling the effects of crapulence, we have the solution for you. Dictionary.com has released their great big list of beautiful and useless words. Now, you can use blatherskite language to describe the spinous retrogradation of the state of the world. Hey, we may be fantod and innumerate but you can’t say we don’t have fun!
Catch Up with Ariel over at I’m So Glad You Asked where she is talking about finding your voice.
Marybeth is chronicling the path to her newest novel over at I Will Tell You This.
I look forward each week to This Week in Books and it never disappoints! Thanks for keeping me updated on the latest news in the book world!
This week’s Beautiful Useless Words paragraph is gold! Thanks for a Monday morning smile!