Two upcoming films are each based on best selling memoirs about hiking, but their settings and tone are miles apart.

Robert Redford notes, in this week’s The Hollywood Reporter cover story, that shooting will begin in March on the long-gestating adaptation of Bill Bryson’s memoir, A Walk in the Woods, (RH/Broadway; RH Audio, 1998). About the author’s quixotic attempts to hike the Appalachian Trail with his old pal Katz, a man even more ill-prepared for the adventure than he is, it stars Redford as Bryson and Nick Nolte as Katz (in a role originally planned for Redford’s late friend Paul Newman). Larry Charles. who wrote for Seinfeld and directed Borat as well as episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, is set to direct.

Different Coast, Different Tone

Shooting has just wrapped on Wild, based on Cheryl Strayed’s memoir (RH/Knopf; RH Audio; Thorndike; 2012) about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in an effort to resolve some deep personal issues, including drug use. Set to arrive in theaters later this year, Reese Witherspoon is both star and producer.The film is directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, whose Dallas Buyers Club received multiple Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

In prep for tomorrow night’s debut of the Lifetime adaptation of the 1979 novel, Flowers in the Attic, on track to become a camp classic, you must read the New Yorker‘s TV critic Emily Nussbaum’s analysis that the original, “isn’t really a book about incest after all, or even bad moms. It’s the written analogue of an after-school special about the dangers of reading.”

Called “the next great read for those who loved The Hunger Games,”  Pierce Brown’s debut Red Rising, (RH/Del Rey; Jan. 28) tops the February LibraryReads list. Cindy Stevens of the Pioneer [OK] Library System adds, “This story has so much action, intrigue, social commentary and character development that the reader who never reads science fiction will happily overlook the fact that the story takes place on Mars far in the future. The characters are perfectly flawed, causing the reader to feel compassion and revulsion for both sides. Can’t wait for the next installment!” Happily, you can tell readers that it is the first in a planned trilogy. Published as an adult title, it also has strong crossover YA appeal.

Mars is played for laughs in another debut on the list, The Martian by Andy Weir (RH/Crown, Feb. 11). Originally published as an ebook, it caught the eye of Fox Studios which hired  Drew Goddard, to direct it. Goddard, a sought-after screenwriter (Cloverfield and Robopocalypse) made a big splash in his first outing as a director with the low budget hit, Cabin in the Woods. Since the book has already been released as in audio by Audilble, you can listen to a sample here.

We’re pleased to see Wiley Cash’s second book, This Dark Road to Mercy (HarperCollins/Morrow; Jan. 28) is also picked. We were early fans of his 2012 debut, A Land More Kind Than Home. Robin Nesbitt, Columbus [OH] Metropolitan Library says Cash’s new book is “as good as his first,” which says a lot. If you’re going to Midwinter, look for him at the HarperCollins booth #731. You’ll get a warm reception; he’s a major fan of librarians (ask him about his cat).

The list includes a nonfiction pick, E.E. Cummings: A Life by Susan Cheever (RH/Pantheon, Feb. 11). It is excerpted in the current issue of Vanity Fair (unfortunately, it’s one of the articles only available by subscription). Says Linda Jeffries-Summers, Howard County [MD] Library,

Cummings is a pivotal figure in the creation of modern verse, and Cheever conveys his journey with color, warmth, and understanding, especially his imprisonment in France during the First World War, his father’s death and his final reunion with his daughter. She leaves the reader with only one wish: to be a fly on the wall while the poet held forth to his friends.

You can read many of these books now as eGalleys from Edelweiss and NetGalley. If you are going to midwinter, look for print galleys at publishers booths (check the interactive floor plan for booth locations).

To see if you’ve ordered these titles, check our downloadable spreadsheet, LibraryReads, which also lists alternate formats.

Remember to nominate your favorite forthcoming titles for LibraryReads!

To learn more, come to the LibraryReads program at Midwinter:

LibraryReads:
Collaborative Discovery for Librarians & Patrons
Saturday, Jan. 25, 11:30 – 12:30
PCC 114 Lecture Hall
[PLEASE NOTE: time & location were changed; check your schedule to make sure you have the correct one]

Help your readers discover librarians favorite titles for the month. Incorporate LibraryReads marketing materials in your newsletters, on your Web sites and in print, downloadable here.

The Oscar nominees have been announced. You can make your picks on ballots from several sources, including the NYT ballot.

Book adaptations made a strong showing in the major categories (we’re including August: Osage County, which is adapted from a play).

Oscar Nominees Based on Books — Major Categories

Best Picture — 5 of 9
Director — 3 of 5
Actor in a Leading Role — 3 of 5
Actress in a Leading Role — 2 of 5
Actor in a Supporting Role — 4 of 5
Actress in a Supporting Role — 3 of 5

Total — 20 of 34

The Leaders

The leading adaptations  are American Hustle (10 nominations, based on The Sting Man), 12 Years a Slave (9), Captain Phillips (6), The Wolf of Wall Street (5) and Philomena (4). For more on the books, see our list of Books to Movies and TV — Released in 2013.

Trailing Behind

Meanwhile, several other adaptations came up short, only getting nominations in the more technical categories, despite early predictions:

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug — Sound Editing, Visual Effects, Sounding Mixing

Lone Survivor —  Sound Editing, Sound Mixing

The Great Gatsby — Production Design, Costume Design

Inside Llewyn Davis — Cinematography, Sound Mixing

The Book Thief — Original Score

Saving Mr. Banks  — Original Score

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom — Original Song

Invisible Woman  — Costume Design

To help you stay on top of the lists of highly anticipated titles coming from various consumer media, (see links at right, under “Season Previews”), we’ve compiled a downloadable spreadsheet of all the titles to date, with alternative formats, for your use in checking orders and looking for galleys; Winter/Spring, 2014 — Previews

By their nature, previews tend to be cautious, focusing on authors who are already well known, whether for previous surprise hits (Matthew Quick, Emma Donoghue, Maggie Shipstead, Peter Heller, Amy Chua), long track records (Stephen King, Laura Lippman, Ruth Reichl, Colson Whitehead) or for celebrity status (Rob Lowe’s Love Life and Robin Roberts’s Everybody’s Got Something rival Hillary Rodham Clinton’s untitled June release for attention).

Among these lists of the predictable, it’s notable that Entertainment Weekly singles out one title as their lead, You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz, (Hachette/Grand Central), calling it, “The thriller we’re already obsessed with.” The author’s 2009 novel Admission, about a Princeton admissions officer dealing overwrought parents trying to get their kids her school, was a critical success that was rendered unrecognizable as a rom-com movie starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd.

This new title is described as a “potential blockbuster about a Manhattan therapist who discovers her husband of 20 years is a sociopath.” Remind you of anything (the accompanying interview makes the connection, asking the author, “Do you think your novel, like Gone Girl, is part of a fiction trend of not sensing the truth about those we’re closest to?”)

Prepub reviews don’t exactly paint it that way. Kirkus calls it a “smart, leisurely study of midlife angst,” while PW praises it as an “excellent literary mystery.”

The film adaptation of Gayle Forman’s 2009 best selling YA title, If I Stay, (Penguin), is now set for release on August 22.

Actress Chole Moretz stars as Mia, a 17 year-old who, while in a coma after a car accident, must choose whether to live or die; Jamie Blackley (Snow White And The Huntsman, The Fifth Estate) as her boyfriend Adam; Mirella Enos and Denny Hall,  as her parents and Stacy Keach as Gramps. Director R. J Cutler is known for his documentaries, including the Emmy-award-winning American High.

Below is a virtual book display. What ties these books together and what title would you give the display? Email us with your answer (please also tell us how you came up with it) — put NAME THAT DISPLAY in the subject line (deadline, midnight, Eastern, Monday, Jan. 20).

The first to answer correctly wins a coveted print galley of Rainbow Rowell’s forthcoming book, Landline (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press).

Note: if you don’t win, you can comfort yourself by downloading the egalley.

Titles (links are to WorldCat)

Life Itself, Roger Ebert, Hachette/Grand Central, 2011

One for Sorrow, Christopher Barzak, Bantam Books, 2007

Low Down: Junk, Jazz, and Other Fairy Tales From Childhood, A.J. Albany, Bloomsbury/Tin House, 2003

A Most Wanted Man, John le Carré, S&S/Scribner, 2008

White Bird in a Blizzard, Laura Kasischke, Hyperion, 1999

The first trailer for the STARZ adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series is now available, with the tagline: “What if Your Future Was Your Past?”

There’s no specific release date yet, beyond “Summer 2014.”

Entertainment Weekly interviewed the director Ron Moore recently, asking a crucial question; “how much sex will the show have?” Moore responded, “There is a fair amount. We don’t really have to add very much; there’s a lot of sex in the book.”

Asked if the success of Game of Thrones has influenced him, Moore said, “It’s definitely opened that door and showed that fantasy and genre material has a strong audience on premium cable. They also showed you can take an existing readership and turn it into an audience and then broaden that audience.”

No tie-ins have been announced yet.

The release of the trailer for the new season of HBO’s Game of Thrones has been watched on YouTube nearly 10 million times since it was released on Sunday (it will probably break that number by the time we finish this post). Time magazine offers a handy run down of the new characters glimpsed in the footage.

This season, which begins on April 5, is based on the fourth in George R.R. Martin’s series of books, titled A Feast for Crows. [Note; Thanks to an alert from a reader’s comment, we have learned that season 4 is actually based on the second half of book 3. ScreenRant.com delves in to how the TV series differs from the books).

Tie-ins are listed below (covers have not yet been released; the one above is for the 2005 first edition):

A Feast for Crows (HBO Tie-in Edition): A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Four
George R.R. Martin
RH/Bantam; On Sale Date: April 1, 2014
9780553390568, 0553390562
Mass market (rack) paperback
$9.99 US / $11.99 Can.

A Feast for Crows (HBO Tie-in Edition): A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Four
George R.R. Martin
RH/Bantam; On Sale Date: April 1, 2014
9780553390575, 0553390570
Trade paperback
$18.00 US / $21.00 Can.

Dominating the media today is the unauthorized bio. of Fox News boss, Roger Ailes, The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News—and Divided a Country by Gabriel Sherman, (Random House), an embargoed title releasing today.

Venues from USA Today (in which Michael Wolff accuses the publisher of withholding the book from reviewers who might be critical) to The New Yorker‘s Jill Lapore (who doesn’t explain how she got her advance copy), offer their takes. The Daily Beast‘s “speed read” comes up with “25 Extraordinary Roger Ailes Revelations.”

Sherman, a New York magazine writer, appears on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report tomorrow night.

Library holds are light so far.

Don’t bother searching for it. The new IFC series, The Spoils of Babylon is supposedly “based on the epic best seller by Eric Jonrosh.” Once you realize that this six–episode series was created by Will Ferrell,  you’ll realize that your leg has been pulled.

Those scenery-chewing book-based series from the 1970’s seem ripe for parody and the cast should be up for it (in addition to Ferrell, it features Kristen Wiig, Tobey Maguire and Tim Robbins). Reactions, range from positive to ho-hum and “too retro for its own good.”

In the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, director David Fincher reveals that he has changed the ending of Gone Girl for his film adaptation, which releases on Oct. 3 (the cover shot, left, is not a still from the movie; Fincher himself took the eerie photo of stars Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in a variation of the famous Yoko Ono/John Lennon pose).

Smart move; this will add the intrigue for the legions of fans of the book. It may also benefit the book; those who see the movie first may be enticed to read the book to compare the endings.

Author Gillian Flynn embraced the complicated job of rewriting her book as the screenplay. She tells Entertainment Weekly, “There was something thrilling about taking this piece of work that I’d spent about two years painstakingly putting together with all its eight million LEGO pieces and take a hammer to it and bash it apart and reassemble it into a movie.”

Here’s a fun game to play with book clubs — “How would you change the ending?” (the web site Bookish offers five spoiler-filled ideas).

We hear that Buzzfeed‘s list of “16 Books To Read Before They Hit Theaters This Year” is having an effect on holds in libraries. Also see our list of upcoming books to movies, with tie-ins (Note: BuzzFeed includes A Long Way Down, Wild,  Serena, none of which have U.S.release dates yet, so we have them listed as In Production).

Janus has officially turned his head. USA Today switches from picking the “10 Best Books Of 2013” to asking”What 10 Books Should You Read This Winter?” Among the books by celebrities and established authors, are two by writers whose earlier books were surprise hits.

Emma Donoghue moves from a the contemporary setting of  her hit The Room (2010) to 1870s San Francisco in Frog Music, (Hachette/Little,Brown; Hachette Audio; April). The common thread is crimes against women; this one is about a grizzly unsolved murder.

Nancy Horan explored the “sandulous” (for the time) relationship between Frank Lloyd Wright and a convention-defying woman who became his mistress, in her best selling debut novel, Loving Frank, (2007). She  stays on familiar territory in her new book, Under the Wide and Starry Sky, (RH/Ballantine;RH Audio; RH Large Print; BOT; Jan. 21), based on the relationship between Robert Louis Stevenson and an aspiring American artist, who had moved to France with her three children to escape her husband.

It seems to always happen this way. Just as you begin to face the list of the things you put off until after the holidays, you suddenly realize that you haven’t put together your Midwinter schedule.

No worries; check the stories below for some tips on what to look for:

Midwinter ’14: Author Events

Midwinter ’14: Get Those Galleys

Midwinter ’14: LibraryReads Program

I hear a some of you grumbling (with a strong hint of envy) that you’re not going to Philly. Don’t let that get you down; do your own private walk through the aisles and avoid the crowds. Check out the authors featured on programs and in the booths (such as Penguin’s listing and the list of titles publishers will highlight during the “Spotlight on Adult Literature“). Look for egalleys of those books on Edelweiss or Netgalley (for the print inclined, email requests for copies to the library marketers; check our links on the right, under “Publisher Contacts”).

Whether you’re heading to Philly or not, you’ll get a great preview of the upcoming publishing season.