If a woman eats garlic while she is pregnant, her child will be predisposed to enjoying garlic as an adult.

That is just one of the fascinating facts about how we develop taste revealed in Bee Wilson’s
First Bite: How We Learn to Eat  (Perseus/Basic Books) and in her interview today with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air.

After becoming a long-running word-of-mouth best seller in 2008, The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein (Harper) was acquired for adaptation as a movie by Universal in 2009,
Then things slowed down. In 2011, a star was announced (Patrick Dempsey, then in the hot show Grey’s Anatomy). In 2014, Dempsey
moved to a producing role and a director was named.

All of that has changed. Late last month, Disney picked up the rights and the script is in rewrite. The Hollywood Reporter notes, “The good news for Stein fans is that the material may be better suited at Disney, which has a long history of canine pics, ranging from Old Yeller to Beverly Hills Chihuahua.”

Actually, the book’s fans are probably hoping the movie will be unlike either Old Yeller or Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

In other canine movie news, Universal hasn’t given up on dogs. It was also announced that they have hired Lasse Hallström to direct A Dog’s Purpose, based on the bestselling book by W. Bruce Cameron, and have set a release date of Jan, 27, 2017.

Sending the book it’s based on to number one on Amazon’s sales rankings, the trailer for Me Before You just debuted online.

The novel’s author, JoJo Moyes, who wrote the screenplay and, according to USA Today, was
“a constant fixture on the movie set” introduces it.

Directed by Thea Sharrock, it is her first feature film, after directing the BBC miniseries Call The Midwife.and The Hollow Crown.

Starring  Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) and Sam Clafin (Hunger Games), it is set for release on June 3rd (briefly, it was rescheduled for March, but then switched back to the original date).

A movie-tie in edition will be released soon:

Squeezed in among the celebrities, sports figures and musicians on yesterday’s late night talk shows were two authors.

Stephen Colbert mixed it up with Michael Eric Dyson, author of The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; OverDrive Sample), stirring up the audience as well.

Seth Meyers featured novelist Alexander Chee, but the exchange didn’t give much of a feel for his new book The Queen of the Night (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Blackstone Audio). It is getting wide review coverage, however, as we noted earlier.

In the second part of the interview, he talked about how he inadvertently started Amtrak’s “Writers in Residence” program:

At number one on the just-released March Indie Next List is Joshilyn Jackson’s The Opposite of Everyone, (Harper/William Morrow; OverDrive Sample), a novel that stars a minor character from Jackson’s previous novel, Someone Else’s Love Story.

In her recommendation, Annell Gerson, of Bookmiser, Roswell, GA, says:

“Paula Vauss, née Kali Jai, is complicated, with every right to be so. When she was a young girl, her mother landed in prison and Paula spent time in foster care. Kai, Paula’s Southern, bohemian, Hindu story-telling, boyfriend-hopping mother, loves her, but circumstances surrounding the separation permanently alter their unique love and each spends time trying to make life work again. This is a poignant story of hurt and forgiveness, of secrets and courage, and ultimately of allowing love and family to make one whole again. Jackson’s The Opposite of Everyone will remain in readers’ hearts long after the last line is read.”

Also making the list is 13 Ways of Looking
at a Fat Girl, Mona Awad (PRH/Penguin Books; OverDrive Sample).

It was a LibraryReads pick in February and PW featured it in “Top Early 2016 Books.” In our online chat with Awad in December, she talked with librarians about the making of this literary debut (see also her video to librarians).

In her summary, bookseller Susan Hans O’Connor, of Penguin Bookshop, Sewickley, PA, says:

“For anyone who has ever, at any moment of her life, felt inadequate, insecure, inferior, or inept, and turned to the LifeCycle for a bit of solace only to find herself feeling even worse, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl will resonate, rattle, and inspire. Mona Awad is an exciting new voice, both honest and hilarious, with the ability to face, with head held high, all of the obstacles we throw at ourselves that often stand in the way of our own happiness.”

Also among the booksellers picks is another title being compared to The Girl on the Train, The Widow, Fiona Barton (PRH/NAL; OverDrive Sample).

Annie B. Jones, of The Bookshelf, Thomasville, GA, offers:

“Readers on the hunt for the newest, hottest thriller can take heart: Barton’s debut novel is impeccably paced and quietly terrifying, sure to fill any void left after reading The Girl on the Train. Jean Taylor is reeling over the loss of her husband, but the man she knows and the man the police know are two very different people. Told in alternating voices, The Widow is perfect for fans of Paula Hawkins and Tana French and will have readers on the edge of their seats.”

The full list is available online now. The March LibraryReads list comes out next week, on the 10th.

February’s chat has now ended.

Please join us for the next GalleyChat, Tuesday, March 1, 4 to 5 p.m., Eastern (3:30 for virtual cocktails!)

More info on how to join here.

Seth Meyers continues his Late Night literary salon on Wednesday, featuring Alexander Chee.

The Queen of the Night (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Blackstone Audio) is Chee’s second novel (coming out over a decade after the Whiting Award–winning Edinburgh). It is set during the Second Empire and Belle Epoque Paris and features historic and fictional characters.

As Slate summarizes it, the novel’s main character is:

“Lilliet Berne, a clever, glamorous opera superstar … she sweeps into balls singing show-stopping arias to thunderous applause, yet never speaks a word in public. Lilliet is offered a role written specifically for her by an anonymous composer—an enormous compliment, until she realizes that the opera is based on her own shadowy past … Only four people know her true story, and it must have been one of them who betrayed her. As she hunts for each of the four in turn, she recounts the picaresque sequence of transformations that brought her to the pinnacle of Paris.”

Chee’s appearance follows a round of advance publicity. As we reported earlier, it is an IndieNext pick this month. It has also been selected as one of the year’s “most anticipated” novels by Bustle, Entertainment Weekly, FlavorWire, HuffPost, and The Millions.

NPR calls it “sprawling, soaring, bawdy and plotted like a fine embroidery,” and featured Chee on a recent Weekend Edition Saturday show.

Even Vogue has gotten in on the praise and featured Chee in an interview that highlights, in part, the novel’s lavish detail to the fashion of the era.

All the attention aside, in libraries we checked holds developing but few locales are topping a 3:1 ratio. Meyers may give the book the nudge it seems it still needs to break through.

Vanity Fair columnist Nancy Jo Sales set off a tweet storm over the summer with her story, “Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse’.” In a new book, Sales looks further in to how social media is affecting the lives of girls coming of age today (more specifically, as the publisher puts it, “how it is influencing their experience of adolescence and sexuality, and wrecking their self-esteem”), titled American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers, (PRH/Knopf; BOT and RH Audio)

Set for publication on February 23, it’s a last-minute addition drop-in title has not yet received reviews from the pre-pub media.

Below are highlights of confirmed upcoming media coverage:

· ABC-TV, Good Morning America (scheduled for 2/23)
· ABC-TV, Nightline (week of publication)
· Megyn Kelly, Fox News
· NPR, including Fresh Air (airs 2/29)

Stephen Colbert continues to sneak authors on to The Late Show.

First up is Harvard professor and TED Talk hit, Amy Cuddy, set to appear tonight. She is the author of the bestselling Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges (Hachette/Little, Brown; OverDrive Sample). Her book has been featured on the cover of the NYT Book Review and was a People magazine “Book of the Week.” Skeptics will enjoy a recent Slate article that calls Cuddy’s work an “example of scientific overreach.”

Currently t at #3 on the NYT Advice Best Sellers list after five weeks, it has strong holds at many libraries we checked.

On Wednesday night Michael Eric Dyson has his turn with Colbert. His newest book (out tomorrow) is The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; OverDrive Sample), in which he explores how President Obama has navigated and responded to issues of race over the last eight years, taking a largely critical stance.

Also on the schedule are several actors promoting FX’s upcoming American Crime Story series on O.J. Simpson, including John Travolta and Courtney B. Vance tonight and David Schwimmer tomorrow. The show debuts tomorrow night and is based onJ effrey Toobin’s 1996 book The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson. A tie-in edition (Random House) was released in September..

Paul Krugman’s cover review for this week’s New York Times Sunday Book Review, available online since Monday, is fueling demand for a university press title about how America has changed, and failed to change, since the last age of great invention. The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon (Princeton University Press) is racking up holds and causing some libraries to add more copies to shore up initial low buys.

Krugman says the book is “a magisterial combination of deep technological history, vivid portraits of daily life over the past six generations and careful economic analysis” and goes on to say it “will challenge your views about the future; it will definitely transform how you see the past.”

On the strength of an article in Saturday’s New York Times, a book on forests and trees soared up the Amazon sales rankings to #22.

The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries From a Secret World, Peter Wohlleben (PGW/Perseus/Greystone Books; ISBN: 9781771642484;09/13/2016) explores the wonders of trees and the ways they communicate with, and care for, each other – through their own version of a social network.

Already a surprise best seller in Germany where it remains atop the German news magazine Spiegel’s nonfiction list sixth months after publication, it has the potential to become a hit here as well, caught not only in the wake of interest in wild spaces in general, but also in books that present personal views of nature such as H Is for Hawk and The Shepherd’s Life and nature/science books such as The Soul of an Octopus.

The NYT’s feature reports how Wohlleben’s book has enchanted and intrigued readers in Germany:

“The matter-of-fact Mr. Wohlleben has delighted readers and talk-show audiences alike with the news — long known to biologists — that trees in the forest are social beings. They can count, learn and remember; nurse sick neighbors; warn each other of danger by sending electrical signals across a fungal network known as the “Wood Wide Web”; and, for reasons unknown, keep the ancient stumps of long-felled companions alive for centuries by feeding them a sugar solution through their roots.”

Canada’s Greystone Books (distributed in the US by Publishers Group West/Perseus) will publish an English version in September. It is listed on wholesaler catalogs.