Hello hello, nonfiction friends! Can we all just say a big HOORAY that it is finally Friday? For me, it’s been one of those weeks where one day I feel incredibly bored and itching to start a big new project, and the next day I feel completely overwhelmed by everything on my list and want to just flatten everything and start from scratch.
I’m not sure why there’s such an imbalance from day to day (burnout, perhaps?) or how to work through it… so for now I’m just trying to feel the feelings and do my best and see where that leads.
First up this week, news about a few upcoming nonfiction adaptations coming to the small screen:
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HBOMax released a trailer for a new limited series with Brené Brown based on her latest book Atlas of the Heart. In the show, Brown aims to help people learn how to “cultivate meaningful connections with ourselves and each other.” Based on the trailer, I think this is a show that will make me cry – I always cry when big feelings are involved.
A seven episode limited series based on Jon Krakauer’s book Under the Banner of Heaven will premiere on Hulu on April 28. The series will star Andrew Garfield as Detective Jeb Pyre, a devout Mormon charged with investigating the murder of Brenda Wright Lafferty and her baby daughter. I read this book many years ago and still remember how deeply unsettling parts of it were. I am curious to see how it’s adapted!
Netflix has ordered a mystery drama from Shonda Rhimes inspired by Kate Andersen Brower’s book The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House. The show is set to feature “one dead body, one wildly eccentric detective, and one disastrous State Dinner.” This adaptation feels like someone filled in a MadLib of all the things I am interested in to create a show that is PERFECT for me. I have absolutely no idea if it will come together, but I cannot wait!
And next, a few other news items of note:
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Entertainment Weekly has released the cover of actress Constance Wu’s upcoming memoir, Making a Scene. Wu says she wrote the book during the pandemic, calling it her “second pandemic baby” – she also had a baby girl. The book is an essay collection covering much of her life and will come out this fall.
Musician Patti Smith has sold another book! A Book of Days, set to come out in November, is based on her popular Instagram account. This reminds me how much I want to read her previous books, Just Kids, M Train, or Year of the Monkey.
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
One Thing I Like
This week I want to recommend a newspaper article – “The death spiral of an American family” – by journalist Eli Saslow in the Washington Post. Saslow is one of my favorite feature writers, and this piece about a family reckoning with “an inheritance of debt, desperation and a fall from the middle class” is just a stunner. In it, he writes about a family falling out of the middle class, now struggling to get by after seeming to do everything right.
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Saslow is the author of several nonfiction books including Ten Letters: The American People in the Obama Years, Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist, and Voices from the Pandemic: American Tell Their Stories of Crisis, Courage and Resilience. I can highly recommend the first two, and the last one is on my list.
For more nonfiction reads, head over to the podcast service of your choice and download For Real, which I co-host with my dear friend Alice. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @kimthedork. Happy weekend!