Posts tagged with nonfiction
Breaking off a piece of the historical drama action
According to the Christian Science Monitor, Robert K. Massie's biography Catherine the Great is being adapted into a "limited series" for ABC. The book was well-received by critics, so I'm assuming ABC is hoping for something a little more high-brow than the CW's Reign...
Salt Sugar Fat, by Michael Moss
Journalist Michael Moss has made a career out of terrible food: his 2009 reporting about the safety of ground beef earned him a Pulitzer Prize, and he has recently published a book about the activities of processed food companies, aptly titled Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us...
How To Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate, by Wendy Moore
Most of the critical coverage of Wendy Moore's How To Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and his Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate, a stranger-than-fiction account of the life of the 18th century radical Thomas Day, has focused on the biggest scandal of Day's life: his attempt to transform a 12-year-old orphan into his ideal of the perfect woman. This is totally understandable—that element of the story is pretty juicy...
Evil Pygmalion
There have been several articles released recently about Wendy Moore’s new nonfiction title How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain’s Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate, which sounds absolutely mind-blowing...
Another show I will be skipping
I can't see any way for this to avoid being absolutely horrible, but maybe that's what makes for must-see TV: according to The Hollywood Reporter, FX is developing an "event series" based on Kim MacQuarrie's book The Last Days of the Incas, which focuses on...
A three-million-dollar book deal seems like the least the world can do
Pakistani education activist, youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize nominee, shooting victim, and fifteen-year-old girl Malala Yousafzai has closed a book deal, according to The Guardian. The nonfiction title I Am Malala will be published by Little, Brown and Company this fall, and describe Yousafzai's life to date...
The evil trio
I'm thinking of requesting a review copy of Michael Moss's Salt Sugar Fat, which was recently the subject of an in-depth NPR story. I'm always interested in books about food or money, and this one's about both...
Bad teachers
I read this article about Tennessee preacher Michael Pearl's book To Train Up a Child with horrified fascination. Pearl apparently believes that children should be treated like "stubborn mules", and argues with the right (read: abusive) persuasion, parents can have the little whippersnappers potty-trained by the time they're two weeks old...
NBC takes to the high seas
Hugh Laurie (best known as the star of House, but he'll always be Bertie Wooster to me) has signed on to play Edward Teach—a.k.a. the famous pirate Blackbeard—in NBC's Crossbones, an upcoming 10-episode drama based on Colin Woodard's nonfiction book The Republic of Pirates...
Alfred and Alma
The trailer is out for Hitchcock (the other Alfred Hitchcock-related project, which is not to be confused with the TV show about a young Norman Bates or The Girl, the HBO film about his treatment of Tippi Hedren). This is the film adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho...
Cognitive skills vs. character
There's been a lot of online buzz recently about Paul Tough's new nonfiction book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. You can listen to a NPR interview here...
Black Gold: The Story of Oil in Our Lives, by Albert Marrin
The vast majority of the books we receive here at Wordcandy are fiction, but every few weeks the odd nonfiction title turns up. I usually choose to review the ones on subjects I enjoy reading about (read: food preparation and money management, both of which I love... in theory, anyway, if not in practice), but Albert Marrin's informative-yet-totally-readable Black Gold: The Story of Oil In Our Lives is the kind of thing everyone should read...
Self-help on the big screen (again)
According to Vulture, Reese Witherspoon is going to star in a fictionalized movie adaptation of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. I'm frankly amazed that What To Expect When You're Expecting made enough money to encourage still more self-help-book-inspired movies, but I guess things could be worse...
Another one I'll be skipping
Rupert Everett is planning to make his directorial debut with a movie about Oscar Wilde's final days. According to Variety, the biopic The Happy Prince will be a "comedy with tragic undertones", but if it's really a nonfiction account, I'm not sure where the comedy's going to come from...
Stranger than fiction
There's casting news trickling out about the upcoming movie adaption of Sheila Weller's nonfiction book Girls Like Us, which we reviewed (quite enthusiastically) several years ago...
A classic British mystery
Man, I don't understand the English. Apparently, two of England's biggest newspapers (the left-wing Guardian and the right-wing Daily Mail) are all up in arms over Pippa Middleton's plans to publ...
Just over $4.50 per page
If money is no object when it comes to books for your coffee table, check out The Impossible Collection of Fashion. This 144-page-long book is priced at a jaw-dropping $650, and features one hund...
Parenting in a digital age
NPR's "All Tech Considered" blog has an article up featuring a handful of parenting tips about girls and social media from Rachel Simmons, author of the best-selling nonfiction title Odd Girl Out:...
A mystery solved
When publisher Little, Brown & Company e-mailed booksellers a list of their upcoming books last week, there was a November 14th release that excited quite a bit of curiosity: Untitled, by Anonymou...
Moneyball on the big screen
The trailer's out for the film adaptation of Michael Lewis's 2003 book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. Behold:I have zero interest in baseball, but I support anything that requires ...
An insider's look
My mother was absolutely fascinated by the Bernie Madoff scandal, but she's determined to wait until she is 100% certain she's found the most informative and in-depth book about his situation befo...
Congratulations, Dr. Lacks.
NPR aired a news story yesterday about an honorary doctorate of public service from Morgan State University posthumously awarded to Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whose cancer cells ha...
A would-be Jane Bond?
According to the Times, former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson has signed a book deal with Penguin to co-write (with mystery author Sarah Lovett) a series of "international suspense" novels. T...
Knit Your Own Royal Wedding
I don't care about knitting or England's royal family, but Fiona Goble's new how-to book Knit Your Own Royal Wedding is undeniably adorable:How's that for a wedding souvenir? She even got the pri...
Encyclopedias for the people
In the ten years of its existence, Wikipedia has posted more than 3.5 million articles in English, but a recent New York Times article pointed out that barely 13 percent of its hundreds of thousan...
Kiss that diet goodbye
The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Anthony Hopkins is in talks to star in a film adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, Stephen Rebello's 1998 non-fiction book. I'm havin...
One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, by Rebecca Mead
Do not give Rebecca Mead's 2007 book One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding to anyone who has recently had a wedding*. Trust me, it will only depress them, and who wants to embark o...
Creepy real estate doesn't bring in the cash that it used to, apparently.
The house that inspired Jay Anson's "nonfiction" book The Amityville Horror: A True Story has once again been sold, this time for $200,000 less than its asking price of 1.15 million dollars. I'm ...
Chatting about the common cold
Salon.com has a fascinating interview up with science journalist Jennifer Ackerman, author of Ah-Choo! The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold. I had no idea I'd find the subject so interesting, bu...