UPDATE: The two-episode debut did well last night, both in terms of ratings and response (“2015’s Best New Sitcom,” Flavorwire;  “Does Asian American Kids Right,” Jezebel):”the latest reason to be grateful for TV’s diversity push,” Slate). The show moves to Tuesday nights beginning next week.

Eddie Huang may sound ambivalent in a profile in the NYT Magazine about the ABC TV series based on his memoir,  Fresh Off the Boat, (RH/Spiegel & Grau; RH Audio; BOT), but reviewers are not. Premiering with 2 episodes tonight (recently rescheduled from next week), the L.A. Times calls it “a satire that works.” and New York magazine’s “Vulture” column calls, “One of TV’s Most Promising New Comedies.”

The trailer for the show’s pilot, below:

The movie that went through so many changes that many wondered if it would ever become a reality, Steve Jobs, based on Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of the same title (S&S, 2011), is now set for release on Oct 9, a date that, as Variety notes, is “just in time for awards season.”

Currently shooting in the San Francisco area, it stars Michael Fassbender as  Jobs, in a role originally intended for Leonardo DiCaprio and then for Christian Bale. Seth Rogen plays Steve Wozniak, Kate Winslet, former Macintosh marketing head Joanna Hoffman, and Jeff Daniels, Apple CEO John Sculley.

We envy this headline from New York magazine’s Vulture blog, “Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs Movie Begins Filming With Cast Full of People Who Haven’t Dropped Out Yet.”

Yes, the movie based on Walter Isaacson’s biography has suffered through many changes. Both Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale were breathlessly announced as stars, only to drop out. It has also changed studios (from Sony to Universal) and directors (from David Fincher to Danny Boyle) and had to endure another film being released with a similar title, Jobs starring Ashton Kutcher.

Universal’s announcement this week that production has begun in San Francisco may raise skepticism, but the company insists that Michael Fassbender is set to play Jobs, with Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak, Kate Winslet as former Macintosh marketing head Joanna Hoffman, Jeff Daniels as Apple CEO John Sculley. Boyle is still directing.

The film adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand’s long-running best seller Unbroken has served to keep that book on the NYT Best Seller List in hardcover for 189 weeks. In addition, the tie-in is #1 on the paperback list after 23 weeks and YA version is #8 on that list after 8 weeks.

Now a new title joins the pack, Zamperini’s own, which he finished just before his death at 97 last year. Don’t Give Up, Don’t Give In: Lessons from an Extraordinary Life by Louis Zamperini, David Rensin, (HarperCollins/Dey Street Books; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample) debuts on the new hardcover nonfiction list at #9.

Reviewing it when it came out in November, USA Today warned that other than shedding “more light on the reality of post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), which afflicted Zamperini,” it doesn’t go much beyond Hillenbrand’s book. It does, however, exude “the nothing-to-lose honesty of a nonagenarian whose to-hell-and-back history results in a spiritual self-satisfaction.”

Holds are light in most libraries.

Actor John Cleese (of Monty Python fame) appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air this Tuesday, which may have sparked demand for his new memoir, So, Anyway (Random House/Crown Archetype; OverDrive Sample). The interview includes several  clips of Cleese’s performances (Cleese judges an early one as “distinctly uninspired”). Unfortunately, the planned audio version of the book is now listed as “postponed indefinitely.”

Holds are up across the country with some libraries showing hold ratios over 10 to 1.

Advance attention to Cleese’s memoir might have been buried under the recent flurry of celebrity comedian accounts including:

Yes, Please by Amy Poehler (Harper Collins/Dey Street Books; Harper Audio, Oct. 28)

Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography (Random House/Crown; RH Audio, Oct 14)

I Must Say by Martin Short (Harper Collins, Nov 4)

Even This I Get to Experience by Norman Lear (Penguin; Penguin Audio, Oct 14)

Brief Encounters by Dick Cavett (Macmillan/Holt; Macmillan Audio, Oct. 28)

The new biography of Bob Hope, Hope: Entertainer of the Century by Richard Zoglin (Simon & Schuster; Brilliance Audio, Nov. 4th)

Despite the  popularity of the Little House on the Prairie novels, their source material, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s actual autobiography, has never been published. That was corrected last month by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press, with the release of Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography.

Although the cover of the book paints a romantic picture, the real story is much grittier and is written for adults.

It was featured on the PBS Newshour last night:

The Wall Street Journal also featured the book this week.

Holds are heavy in most libraries. According to the official web site, PioneerGirlProject.org the book is now temporarily out of stock, and is expected to resume shipping in mid-January.

For fans who cannot get their hands on the book, the project’s blog offers a fascinating look at the extensive research behind it, such as the effort to verify the story of a teacher who improvised an igloo out of an overturned sleigh to protect his children during a freak blizzard.

Given how famously insecure Lena Dunham is, we can’t help but think she was nervous when she learned that her forthcoming book, Not That Kind of Girl, (Random House; RH/BOT Audio; 9/30) was going to be reviewed in advance of publication, by the daily NYT‘s famously stringent Pulitzer Prize winning reviewer, Michiko Kakutani.

She may have even made the following video, one of a series, to address such reviewers.

She need not have worried. Michiko likes it, a LOT.

Dunham, of course, narrates the audiobook (RH/BOT). A short sample here.

It could be the Mark Twain autobiography of this fall.

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s autobiography, which was the basis for her Little House on the Prairie books, will be published by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press this fall. Titled Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, distributors are showing a Nov. 20 release date.

According to a story by the Associated Press, its “not-safe-for-children tales include stark scenes of domestic abuse, love triangles gone awry and a man who lit himself on fire while drunk off whiskey.”

See PioneerGirlProject.org for more on the project.

Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography
Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by Pamela Smith Hill
ISBN 978-0-984504176, hardcover, $39.95

A bio cum memoir about Harper Lee and her sister,  Marja Mills’ The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee, (Penguin Press; Thorndike), published today, is piling up some great reviews. The Washington Post calls is “engrossing” and Maureen Corrigan on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, said it gives a “rich sense of the daily texture of the Lee sisters’ lives.” She goes on to say that, “Fortunately, in Mills, the sisters found a genteel family chronicler knocking at their door at the eleventh hour.”

But the famously reclusive and litigious 88-year-old Harper Lee is not a genteel subject. She has written a letter, reprinted in Entertainment Weekly‘s online column, “Shelf Life,” saying that the book was written on false pretenses, “Miss Mills befriended my elderly sister, Alice. It did not take long to discover Marja’s true mission; another book about Harper Lee. I was hurt, angry and saddened, but not surprised. I immediately cut off all contact with Miss Mills, leaving town whenever she headed this way.”

After many delays, the movie Black Mass, starring Johnny Depp and Benedict Cumberbatch, began shooting two weeks ago in Boston (for those in the area, On Location Vacations has scouted out the filming locations). It is now scheduled for release some time in October, 2015.

The film is based on the life of legendary Boston crime boss, Whitey Bulger. Now in his eighties, he was finally found guilty of multiple murders and other crimes last year. The Hollywood press greeted the verdict as providing an ending for the inevitable biopic.

As his nickname implies, Bulger was called that because of his white blonde hair, which was also balding. As a result, Depp has had to change his look.

There have been many books about Bulger, but this movie credit goes to Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal, by former Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill (PublicAffairs, 2000; paperback, 2012) .

Published last year, Whitey Bulger: America’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice by Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy (Norton, 2/11/13) was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air and described as not only a fascinating story, but “just a great read.”

A documentary film about Bulger, Whitey: United States of America V. James J. Bulger  is also on its way, set for a limited theatrical release on June 27, to be broadcast later this year on CNN.

Before he became a household name for the HBO series True Detective, director Cary Fukunaga directed the 2011 version of Jane Eyre.

His upcoming projects are also book adaptations. His next for Sony, reports Deadline, will be a feature film based on 2013 Biography Pulitzer Prize Winner, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, And The Real Count of Monte Cristo  by Tom Reiss (RH/Crown; 2012)

Next month, he begins shooting a film in Ghana based on Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala, (HarperCollins, 2005), with Idris Elba in the lead. A debut novel  about a child soldier in West Africa, it won several awards, including the 2006 New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award.

This leaves in question what is happening with the planned two-film version of Stephen King’s massive novel It for Warner Bros., which was announced over two years ago.

The 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination is bringing dozens of books, as we have been noting. In the upcoming Oct. 27th  New York Times Sunday Book Review, Jill Abramson, the newspaper’s Executive Editor, assesses the many books that have been published over the years, saying,

The true mystery in Kennedy’s case is why, 50 years after his death, highly accomplished writers seem unable to fix him on the page … Other presidents, good and bad, have been served well by biographers and historians … Kennedy, the odd man out, still seeks his true biographer.

Abramson celebrates one of the earliest, now back in print:

… the Kennedy family, which controlled publication rights to [William Manchester’s] The Death of a President, allowed it to go out of print, and for a number of years copies could be found only online or at rummage sales. The good news, maybe the best, of the 50th anniversary is that Little, Brown has now reissued paperback and e-book editions. [Note: HarperPerennial brought an edition back into print in 2009, the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s election].

She also provides a sidebar sampler of her favorites, few of them newer titles (in the longer piece, she is unimpressed with the recent crop of books and is particularly scornful of Bill O’Reilly, who she says “has milked the Kennedy assassination with unique efficiency”). She calls An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, by Robert Dallek. (Hachette/Little, Brown, 2003; Hachette Audio), “one of the best of the full biographies.”

In a separate piece, Jacob Heilbrunn is kinder to several of the newer titles (he doesn’t mention any of O’Reilly’s).

The release of the second volume of a book that was an unexpected best seller in 2010, the autobiography of Mark Twain, was celebrated on the PBS Newshour.

Examinations of the lives of rock star entrepreneurs are in the news this week.

On the heels of  stories about a bio of Jeff Bezos, The New York Post runs an excerpt today of an embargoed  book about another legendary leader, The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life With Steve Jobs by Chrisann Brennan, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Tantor Audio), to be published on Oct. 29 (front covers on the left; back on the right).

The author first met Jobs in 1972. They split up after  Brennan became pregnant with Jobs’ daughter in 1977.

Media attention is focused on Brad Stone’s embargoed title, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, Brad Stone, (Hachette/ Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print), which arrives today.

The business press, including The Wall Street Journal, is focused on what the book says about Bezos’s management style, while more general magazines are fascinated by the fact that Stone managed to track down Bezos’s biological father.

Stone, senior editor at Bloomsberg Businessweek appeared on NPR yesterday and on CBS This Morning. Opinions of Bezos are divided, and Stone is one of his fans. As a review in The Seattle Times notes, “There clearly are Amazon critics who would love the definitive chronicle of Bezos and the company he built to knock both down a few pegs. This isn’t that book,” and goes on to say, “It’s a deeply reported and deftly written book revealing how Amazon is a reflection of the drive of its founder.”

Reuters headline, portrays it differently, “Why It Pays to Be a Jerk Like Jeff Bezos.”

Below is the video from CBS This Morning: