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Fantastic fiction
There are so many wonderful new books to look forward to this spring! I’ve rounded up 43 of the most notable ones, including a few out in the next week or so. Among them is best-selling author Lisa Scottoline’s Loyalty (March 28), an epic tale set in Sicily in the 1800s during the rise of the Mafia. There’s also The House is on Fire by Rachel Beanland (April 4), an engrossing story that begins with the 1911 burning of a Richmond, Virginia, theater (based on a real-life tragedy in which 72 people died) and tracks the drama that follows different characters in attendance.
And I loved Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld (April 4), a super-entertaining, yes, rom-com about a smart, wry and rather cynical writer for an SNL-style show who falls for a handsome pop star guest host, from the author of Prep and Rodham.
Like Water for Chocolate reimagined (again!)
Penguin Random House ©Roberto Melo / Segerstrom Center for the Arts
Laura Esquivel’s beloved 1989 novel Like Water for Chocolate, about a young woman in 19th century Mexico who expresses her frustrated passions through cooking, was the basis for a hit 1992 film. Less conventionally, it inspired a ballet. First performed by the Royal Ballet in London last year, it premieres in the United States on March 29 at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Los Angeles and opens at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City on June 22.
Esquivel, 72, is thrilled by choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s interpretation of her story. “I have never seen anything like it,” she told AARP during a recent interview. “There are moments in which the choreography transmits very deep and intimate emotions with just one movement. He tells the story in a very passionate, sensitive way.”
Esquivel said there’s also been talk of transforming the book into a TV show, as well as a Broadway musical adaptation, and maybe even an opera. Read more from our interview with the author here.
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Eat your words — literally — at an edible book festival
Photos from past Austin Edible Book Festivals
How about a Like Water for Chocolate-themed cake? Feel free to steal this idea for Books2Eat day, a holiday, of sorts, started by two American women about 20 years ago, in which bibliophiles around the world hold edible book festivals every April 1.
The fests — sometimes hosted in private homes but often sponsored by libraries or bookstores — usually involve participants bringing in creations that either look like books (some are pretty spectacular) or represent puns on book titles. Think sweet rolls baked in the shape of a sun (“The Bun Also Rises”) or purple crullers (“The Cruller Purple”), both of which have been entries in the Austin Edible Book Festival. The dishes might be judged for wit and execution — though it’s all in good fun.
“It’s very silly,” says Mary Baughman, 67, a retired book conservationist who’s organizing Austin’s 20th festival this year. Baughman, who once made a Superman comic book out of crepes she decorated with edible markers, explains that attendees will judge the creations in four categories: most appetizing, least appetizing, most book-like and funniest. Then? It’s time to eat.
In case you missed it: Nora Ephron’s ‘classic of literary revenge’ turns 40
Scott McDermott/USA/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images / Vintage Books
One of the beloved writer Nora Ephron’s most well-known creations — along with iconic films such as When Harry Met Sally… and Sleepless in Seattle — is her 1983 comic novel, Heartburn. Book publisher Vintage is celebrating its 40th birthday this month by releasing an anniversary edition featuring a new, very brief foreword by actor and foodie Stanley Tucci, who compares the book to Ephron herself: “smart, witty, sensitive, dark and hopeful.”
Famously inspired by the late author’s own disastrous marriage to Washington Post journalist Carl Bernstein, the story is about Washington, D.C.-based food writer Rachel Samstat, who’s heavily pregnant when she learns that her political journalist husband is cheating on her (Bernstein had an affair when Ephron was pregnant with their second child). The Washington Post has described it as “a classic of literary revenge.”
Ephron also included recipes throughout the book — among them a simple salad dressing that actress Olivia Wilde recently made famous on social media (Vanity Fair explains the backstory). Meryl Streep, who played Rachel in the 1986 movie version with Jack Nicholson, narrates the audiobook.
Page to screen
Spring brings some notable TV series inspired by books, including Lucky Hank, which premiered March 19 on AMC. Loosely based on Richard Russo’s 1997 novel Straight Man, it stars Bob Odenkirk as the head of an unimpressive Pennsylvania university’s English Department who’s wrestling with a midlife crisis.
Odenkirk’s always a treat to watch, but I’m particularly interested in checking out Tiny Beautiful Things on Hulu (all eight episodes will be released on April 7). The series is adapted from the memoir/self-help book of the same name by Cheryl Strayed, an advice columnist known as Dear Sugar and author of the best-selling 2012 memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (made into a film starring Reese Witherspoon). The new show stars Kathryn Hahn as a writer with loads of personal problems who nonetheless tries her darndest to offer wisdom and compassion to others.
Pick of the Week (March 21): 'Benjamin Banneker and Us'
Henry Holt and Co. / Adele Fammeree
Rachel Jamison Webster, who is white and works as a creative writing professor at Northwestern University, discovered at a family reunion in 2016 that she’s related to Benjamin Banneker, the esteemed African American mathematician, almanac author and astronomer who was hired to help survey the District of Columbia (and famously wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson imploring him to apply his ideas of liberty to enslaved peoples).
Webster’s new book, Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family (March 21), explores that ancestral story, including Banneker’s fascinating life.
When I emailed the author to ask how it felt to discover that she had a connection to this remarkable man, she wrote, “I was extraordinarily proud and humbled.” She added that she didn’t feel surprised to learn that she had African American roots, but rather “relieved, the way you feel when something that’s been denied is finally acknowledged and put into alignment.”
