The graduates of Hogwarts may be on to new chapters in their careers, but they are sticking to book adaptations.

After appearing in a supporting role in My Week with Marilyn, Emma Watson’s next role is in the adaptation of the coming-of-age novel, The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (S&S/MTV Books). She plays Sam, who guides wallflower Charlie (Logan Lerman) through the pitfalls of trying to fit in. Chbosky wrote the screenplay and directs. Summit has just released the first images from the film. There’s no opening date yet, but it is expected some time this year.

Watson’s Harry Potter co-star, Daniel Radcliffe, next stars in The Woman in Black, based on the book by Susan Hill. It opens on February 3rd.

The Woman in Black (Movie Tie-in Edition): A Ghost Story Susan Hill Retail Price: $14.00 Paperback: 176 pages Publisher: Vintage – (2012-01-03) ISBN / EAN: 0307745317 / 9780307745316

Meanwhile, J.K. Rowling seems to be having trouble with the launch of Pottermore.com. After opening in Beta for a select group of 1 million users this summer, with plans to open to the rest of the world in October, it was put on indefinite hold in November. The Pottermore Insider blog gives no clues; it’s focused on posting art by the Beta users.

According to several news sources, including CBS News, Washington is buzzing over a new book that portrays Michelle Obama as a powerful behind-the-scenes White House force (yes, that’s Charlie Rose, below, in his new position as the anchor for the CBS Early Show now revamped as CBS This Morning).

Actually, the buzz is coming from an excerpt published in the NYT (the author is by the Times Washington correspondent); the book releases tomorrow.

The Obamas Jodi Kantor Retail Price: $29.99 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2012-01-10) ISBN / EAN: 0316098752 / 9780316098755

Thorndike Large Print

George Clooney has starred in many movies based on books (The Descendants, The American, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Up in the Air and even The Fantastic Mr. Fox). He hits the books again with his next project, a big budget film based on The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. According to the movie news site, The Wrap. Clooney is writing the script with producing partner Grant Heslov. The pair also collaborated on Good Night, and Good Luck, and The Ides of March. Clooney plans to direct and star in the movie.

The book is by Robert M. Edsel who, after selling his oil and gas exploration company, began researching the international efforts to rescue art from the hands of the Nazis (the group who did this were called “The Monuments Men,” although at least one woman was part of the group), and created a foundation for art preservation.

The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History Robert M. Edsel Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 513 pages Publisher: Center Street – (2009-09-03) ISBN 9781599951492

Edsel co-produced a documentary on the subject, The Rape of Europa, based on the book by Lynn Nicholas. The film is included in The Greatest Theft in History, an educational program for schools and libraries.

The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War Lynn H. Nicholas Retail Price: $17.00 Paperback: 512 pages Publisher: Vintage – (1995-04-25) ISBN / EAN: 0679756868 / 9780679756866

Edsel published an earlier book, Rescuing Da Vinci, which was published in 2006.

Rescuing Da Vinci: Hitler and the Nazis Stole Europe’s Great Art – America and Her Allies Recovered It Robert M. Edsel Retail Price: $39.95 Hardcover: 302 pages Publisher: Laurel Publishing, LLC – (2006-12-15) ISBN / EAN: 0977434907 / 9780977434909

Another book on the subject is Ilaria Dagnini Brey’s The Venus Fixers.

The Venus Fixers: The Remarkable Story of the Allied Soldiers Who Saved Italy’s Art During World War II Ilaria Dagnini Brey Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Macmillan/FSG – (2009-08-04) ISBN / EAN: 0374283095 / 9780374283094

Asian politics animate two key titles this week, one by American author Adam Johnson about North Korea, and the other a translation of a novel by Chan Koonchung about China in the near-future that has been banned in that country. Usual suspects include Elizabeth George, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and John Burdett – plus young adult authors John Green and Beth Revis. In nonfiction, there are biographies of the Obamas by New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor and of Queen Elizabeth by Sally Bedell Smith.

Watch List

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson (Random House; RH Audio) follows a young man’s journey from a North Korean orphanage into a life of spying, kidnapping, and torture, followed by a new identity as the husband of the Dear Leader’s favorite actress. Library Journal says, “evidently a blend of personal story and political revelation, with thriller overtones thrown in for fun, this work is being positioned as a breakout for Johnson. The first two serials go to Granta in August 2011 and Playboy in January 2012, which certainly suggests broad appeal.”

The Fat Years by Chan Koonchung (Nan A. Talese) was an underground sensation in China before being banned. Set in Beijing in the near future, it’s about a group of friends who decide to find out more about the “lost month” during the country’s political transition that has been erased from the nation’s memory.  PW says, “this first English translation… feels flat, a quality exacerbated by the novel’s uneven pace and lengthy digressions into historical and political minutiae. However, Koonchung (founder of Hong Kong’s City Magazine) reveals the moral and political perils of contemporary Chinese life.”

Usual Suspects

Believing the Lie (Inspector Lynley Series #16) by Elizabeth George (Dutton; Penguin Audiobooks; Thorndike Large Print) finds Scotland Yard policeman Thomas Lynley to delving into the accidental death of the gay nephew of a wealthy industrialist. Kirkus says, “pared-down George, weighing in at a svelte 600 pages, but still strewn with subplots, melodrama, melancholy, a wretchedly unhappy Havers and the impossibly heroic, impossibly nice Thomas Lynley.”

Gideon’s Corpse by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (Grand Central Publishing; Hachette Audio; Thorndike Large Print) finds Gideon Crew in his second outing, tracking a terrorist cell ten days before a planned attack on a major American city. PW says, the “lead could be cut-and-pasted into any number of books by less gifted genre writers.”

Vulture Peak: A Bangkok Novel by John Burdett (Knopf) is the latest to feature Royal Thai Police Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, who is in charge of the highest-profile case in Thailand — an attempt to bring an end to trafficking in human organs. Kirkus says, “Burdett’s strengths are tilted toward characterization rather than plotting, for Buddhist Sonchai remains a fascinating cross between Buddhist monk and hard-boiled detective.”

Lothaire by Kresley Cole (Gallery Books; S&S Audio) continues the Immortals After Dark series, with the story of how Lothaire the Enemy of Old rose to power a millenia ago, becoming the most feared and evil vampire in the immortal world.

Young Adult

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Dutton; Brilliance Audio). The uber-popular author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns, applies his trade-marked humor to a serious subject. A young girl facing terminal illness encounters an unexpected friend who turns her life around.  Every time Green mentions the book on his popular vlog, it rises on Amazon, as we’ve been noting for several months, so it’s no surprise that the announced first printing is 150,000 copies. Entertaiment Weekly is giving it a push, with an author interview, an “exclusive” (but rather unrevealing) trailer and a strong review.

A Million Suns: An Across the Universe Novel by Beth Revis (Razorbill) is the second installment in the Across the Universe trilogy about the 2,763 people trapped aboard a spaceship. Kirkus says, “Revis’ shining brilliance is the fierce tension about survival (is Godspeed deteriorating? can people survive terrorism inside an enclosed spaceship?) and the desperate core question of whether any generation will ever reach a planet. Setting and plot are the heart and soul of this ripping space thriller, and they’re unforgettable.”

Nonfiction

The Obamas by Jodi Kantor (Little, Brown; Thorndike Large Print) peers inside the White House as the Obamas try to grapple with their new roles, change the country, raise children, maintain friendships, and figure out what it means to be the first black President and First Lady. Kantor is the Washington correspondent for the New York Times, as well as its “Arts & Leisure” editor.

Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch by Sally Bedell Smith (Random House; Random House Audio; Thorndike Large Print) is “comparable to Ben Pimlott’s excellent The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II (1998),” says Library Journal. “But with information on nearly 15 more years, this will appeal to readers of biographies, British history, and all followers of the British royal family. The Queen’s 2012 Diamond Jubilee should increase demand.”

Sometimes, but rarely, a review leaps off the page, grabs you by the throat and demands that you begin reading a certain book right now.

Entertainment Weekly‘s review of The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman (Penguin/Riverhead, Jan 5) begins with a tribute,

In the best kind of books, there is always that moment when the words on the page swallow the world outside — subway stations fly by, errands go un-run, rational bedtimes are abandoned — and the only goal is to gobble up the next paragraph, and the next, and the next.

And goes on to explain why The Street Sweeper is one of those books.

A quite different source, the New York Post, lists it as one of five books that they consider “required reading.”

The Street Sweeper Elliot Perlman Retail Price: $28.95 Hardcover: 640 pages Publisher: Penguin/Riverhead – (2012-01-05) ISBN / EAN: 1594488479 / 9781594488474

We’ve missed Jon Stewart’s attention to books while his show has been on hiatus. But he came back last night, interviewing Elizabeth Dowling Taylor about her book, A Slave in the White House, (Macmillan/Palgrave). As a result, the book rose on Amazon sales rankings, to #220 (from #29,478).

Tonight, Stewart features Craig Shirley, author of the forthcoming authorized bio of Newt Gingrich. UPDATE: the book that Stewart and Shirley discussed was the  author’s earlier title, December, 1941. The following title appears to have been delayed.

Citizen Newt: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Speaker Gingrich Craig Shirley Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Thomas Nelson – (2012-01-31) ISBN / EAN: 9781595554482/1595554483

If, like me, you’ve had trouble grasping why Tea Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife is such a literary sensation (on at least 19 Best Books lists, finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Orange Prize), the Huffington Post is here to help, kicking off their book club with a month-long look at the novel, the first of ten books that will be featured in the club.

HuffPo is utilizing multiple online communication tools for the club — readers can comment on the Book Club page, via Twitter  and Facebook. They can even upload images of themselves reading the book via Flickr and sign up for weekly reading assignments. Huffington Post‘s Book Editor, Andrew Losowsky says they also “want to join your real-world community, teaming up with local book clubs and independent bookstores, hosting both online discussion and real-world events,” (we assume he meant to include libraries, since the Books section recently launched a series on the importance of libraries).

The first session of the club ends on Feb. 7th, with a live event in New York.

Season two of the BBC series, Downton Abbey, debuts on PBS this Sunday. In addition to the companion book, The World of Downton Abbey, by Jessica Fellowes, (Macmillan/ St. Martin’s,12/06; more on it here), fans can read about Highclere Castle, the setting for the series in Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey (more about it in the Daily Beast).

Take a tour of the castle, below (if this whets your appetite, more videos are available on YouTube).

Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle The Countess of Carnarvon Retail Price: $15.99 Paperback: 320 pages Publisher: Broadway – (2011-12-27) ISBN / EAN: 0770435629 / 9780770435622

For a look at how the other half lived, there’s a reissue of Below Stairs by Margaret Powell. James Fellows, the creator of Downton Abbey blurbs the new edition, saying,

Margaret Powell was the first person outside my family to introduce me to that world, so near and yet seemingly so far away, where servants and their employers would live their vividly different lives under one roof.  Her memories, funny and poignant, angry and charming, haunted me until, many years later, I made my own attempts to capture those people for the camera.  I certainly owe her a great debt.

Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid’s Memoir That Inspired “Upstairs, Downstairs” and “Downton Abbey” Margaret Powell Retail Price: $22.99 Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Macmillan/St. Martin’s – (2012-01) ISBN / EAN: 1250005442 / 9781250005441

As Katherine Paterson hands the baton over to the new Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Walter Dean Myers, she reflects on her own term in the Huffington Post.

A highlight? Hearing a veteran tell an audience of kids that reading Bridge to Terabithia (HarperCollins, 1977) allowed him to find beauty in the midst of the ugliness of the war in Afghanistan.

Tamora Pierce describes to “huge fan” Nancy Pearl how she created the fantasy world of Tortall in her most recent teen series, the Beka Cooper trilogy (Random House) and the folly of trying to impose categories on books.

The film version of Pete Dexter’s The Paperboy, (Random House, 1995), starring Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey and John Cusack, directed by Lee Daniels (Precious) wrapped shooting this September in New Orleans (even though the movie, like the book, is set in Florida).

As yet, there’s no release date, trailer, or tie-in edition, but we do have this retro poster. It doesn’t offer many clues about the movie, but nevertheless, much is being made of it — and Efron’s biceps — on  fan sites.

The New York Times today profiles Walter Dean Myers, who will be named the new national ambassador for young people’s literature by the Center for the Book, a position described as “a sort of poet laureate of the children’s book world.”

The man who, as a child, hid the books he borrowed from the library so he wouldn’t be teased, will tour the country for the next two years, promoting reading a literacy.

Among the films that will premiere at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival (January 19-29) are several based on books. The most well-known is Lay the Favorite, based on the 2010 gambling memoir by Beth Raymer (RH/Spiegel & Grau, 2010). Directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen, High Fidelity), it is produced by Random House Films, a joint venture between Random House, Inc. and Focus Features. The company has released two other films, this summer’s hit starring Anne Hathaway, One Day and 2007’s Reservation Road.

Starring in Lay the Favorite are Bruce Willis, Vince Vaughn, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Rebecca Hall as the author. A look at several stills from the movie is available on Film Stage. No general release date has been announced.

The other movies based on books include:

(more…)

How interested are readers in graphic novel adaptations of prose titles?

To consider this question, I looked at recent adaptations to see how well they circulate against my general graphic novel collections.

In my library’s adult collection of over 1,600 titles, none of the top 100 in terms of circulations are adaptations. At number 101, is Nancy Butler’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice.  Equally popular is The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born, a series related to but not directly adapted from Stephen King’s popular prose series.  Next up is Darwyn Cooke’s adaptation of Richard Parker’s Hunter.  The Exile, Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander spin-off graphic novel, R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis and Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series rank in the middle range of popularity.

Adaptations of classics, including JinSeok Jeon’s One Thousand and One Nights and Gareth Hind’s The Odyssey stand on the list just after the far better known Anita Blake, showing that quality and appeal can compete admirably with name recognition.

The losers among adaptations?  NBM’s Treasury of Murder series, which is a shame considering the high quality of their adaptations. Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunters series is also a low performer. Interestingly, this is a series I continued to purchase because a reader specifically requested them. In my library, it has a small, but dedicated audience.  The Dresden Files adaptations have also sat on the shelf, which is surprising considering how popular the novels are and how open many speculative readers are to trying out the graphic novel format.

On the teen side, there are a few that stand out. Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider, James Patterson’s Maximum Ride, Orson Scott Card’s Ender, and Ian Colfer’s Artemis Fowl adaptations all do tremendously well for the genre.  Point Blank, from the Alex Rider series, is right near the top with original works Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball and Raina Telgemeier’s Smile.

The losers for younger readers include NBM’s often lovely adaptations of classic fairy tales including P. Craig Russell’s Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, the Anne Frank House authorized biography of Anne Frank, Ellen Schreiber’s Vampire Kisses, D. J. MacHale’s Merchant of Death, and Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas adaptations.  That New York Times multi-week best-selling adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight?  The first volume ranks at #300 while the second volume has yet to be checked out.

What conclusions should we draw from all of this number crunching?

My thoughts:

1. Just because a series is popular in prose does not mean you can slap together an adaptation into the graphic novel format with rushed art and lackluster attention to adapting dialog and have it succeed.  I think many of those adaptations of popular series that have failed are simply poorly made graphic novels.  Sometimes it’s the fault of a publisher pushing an adaptation too fast into production, and sometimes it just doesn’t gell in the graphic format.
2. Readers do not easily jump from one format to another.  Some titles will be popular by sheer name recognition, and some will be as an engaging way to comprehend a difficult text (i.e. The Odyssey), but many popular prose titles aren’t going to attract graphic novel readers nor are they going to bring that title’s readers to the format.  Unless both writing and art are really solid, any adaptation will never be as popular as original material in the medium.
3. Original material always circulates better, so I only collect adaptations if they are requested specifically by readers or if they are lauded in many a review from multiple sources.  Adaptations make up around 3% of my adult collection, and thus far I see no great reason to change that percentage.

What have your experiences been?  How much of your budget do you devote to collecting adaptations of prose in the graphic format?