Which Writers Could Most Benefit from a Signal Adaptation?
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This is the Book Grab Podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill. I'm Rebecca Shinsky. And today we're kind of in the February doldrums a little bit. We're gin and stuff up. I mean, not gin and stuff up, but like there's not a huge amount of book releases. It's not mid-year. Middle of February, it's the worst time. I don't know what to say. It just is. So this is what we're doing today.

Yeah, it's cold. The industry is a little slow this winter. The first really big release of the season isn't until March 11th for Karen Russell. So we're talking about movies and our desire for books that we wish would be adapted. This kind of also feeds into Oscar season coming up. We're talking about best adapted screenplay shots for next week's episode. So

Yeah, a little crossover, but we know everybody likes to talk about the books they wish would be movies or TV shows. Well, and it's a weird time for adaptations too. So what we're going to do is authors we think could especially benefit from having an adaptation, a signal adaptation, we say in this report. And a couple of, I don't know, caveats, explainers, working assumptions. One is that

What author wouldn't benefit from a Signal adaptation? So, I mean, take us read, like anyone would like this. Like, okay, yes, we get that. And then what that means, it's also no guarantee that you're going to have a different vector to your career necessarily, right? Like sometimes it makes a difference, sometimes it doesn't. There are so many adaptations that...

To a first approximation, may not matter too much for some kind of people. Like some people, it really does. Like I think, for example, Andy Weir, the adaptation of The Martian, made a huge difference in his career. There's going to be another one too. Huge difference. For other kinds of people, I'm not sure. Well, you know, Tom Robbins has been on my mind. So I'm going to use Tom Robbins as a weird example. Okay, sure.

Really popular in the 70s and 80s. Gets a bad adaptation in 1993. And it did... No one cares. No one who didn't care about Tom Robbins before, can't about it after, at least coming off of that movie. So it's no guarantee. But it is a spin of the roulette wheel. And sometimes you can come up aces. So we're going to walk through the authors we think would... I don't know. I guess for me, there's some authors on here that are pretty famous on this podcast and in the book world. But...

You walk down the street or maybe even go walk around Powell's and ask people. And they're like, I'm not sure. Or yeah, maybe I've heard of it. But I'm thinking about what authors have a chance a single adaptation would really make them so that maybe a lot more people know their name that care about this kind of stuff. Yes. Yeah. I think that's exactly what we're looking for here is the authors that have some level of book nerd credibility.

cred, but that we would like to see be broken out into maybe if not even quite like dinner table recognizable names in the household just to be more mainstream that you don't have to be among the Joan Didion tote bag carrying crowd to know or celebrate this author. And a good adaptation can do that. It can both be a source of real excitement for the fans of a property, but also bring a whole bunch of new readers in. Yeah.

And it can work where it doesn't even need to know their name. Like I think with the Leanne Moriarty, there's a lot of people that don't know, but from the author of Big Little Lies, that matters. So like, can you attach yourself to the title at that regard? So we're going to run through them, talk about why they may or may not fit. And then we go. So I, let's take our first sponsor break and then we'll get into it.

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I've got two question marks for you, I guess, to start here. Because I feel like... And I'm not joking about one of these names because I could easily troll you with it. But like Zadie Smith and Barbara Kingsolver. Both on my list. Okay. So...

In the world of books, they're already pretty well known. Like the bestsellers, Demon Copperhead sold like gangbusters. A.D. Smith is an icon as a stylist and as a personality and has been really since White Teeth came out 25 years ago. There's a 25th anniversary edition of White Teeth out. But, but. Yeah, but. That's kind of it.

Yeah, I think with Zadie Smith, her reputation is very literary and highbrow. And for good reasons, you know, she can write like nobody's business. But I think that often is a barrier to entry for folks because Zadie Smith seems highbrow and literary. And the stories are all very readable and engaging and fun. And like, I was the biggest skeptic about what the fraud was going to be like.

And then was converted very quickly, and I will never doubt Zadie Smith ever again. But something like White Teeth or On Beauty being adapted, I think, would make Zadie Smith not just a more recognizable name for more people, but I think it would bring even book people who have been hesitant to be Zadie Smith readers into the universe of like, oh, right, these are engaging, accessible human stories. They're just told very, very skillfully. King Solver, I just think is like...

in that perfect sweet spot. She's incredibly commercially appealing. And there are several of her books like Prodigal Summer would be a hell of a limited run TV show. It could be steamy and fun. The Poisonwood Bible would work the same way. You could see Apple doing all sorts of beautiful, you know, on location shooting for that. And Demon Copperhead has so much appeal and is so timely, but also just a really great title that people are intrigued by.

Yeah, I think King Solver, I would love to see a great Zadie Smith adaptation. The caveat, not a caveat, but one of the games here is like, what if it's awesome? Like, assume it's awesome for a minute. And if King Solver gets an awesome adaptation, I feel like it's a bigger tent than, I don't know, is On Beauty Zadie's most approachable book? I think so, yeah. I mean, White Teeth is pretty strange, The Fraud. I mean, Autograph Man is pretty strange. Like, I think even a really good adaptation of a Zadie Smith novel is,

doesn't have as broad of appeal as a Poisonwood Bible adaptation might. Yeah, that's a great point. And Smith tends to bounce around in what she's doing from book to book. And so if you like On Beauty, you might enjoy the adaptation of that and go pick it up. But that doesn't guarantee or really increase your chances of liking the fraud or liking what she's doing in White Teeth, where I feel like even though King Solver changes

and primary themes for each book. It's more in the Ann Patchett zone where you know what you're going to get. If you've liked one Barbara Kingsolver novel, you're probably going to like the rest of them. Yeah. I guess that reminds me of something else I circled on the list, but the news this morning that the Sarah J. Maas adaptation got canned at Hulu was

Yeah.

But she is as famous amongst the people that like Romantici as you can possibly be. But we've talked about this, but no more. And we had talked about a signal adaptation. I don't know, Game of Thrones or anything like that would make her...

on the left could make could would give her everything you would need to be on to have a chance to be on that level and i don't know if it's not gonna happen if they're gonna kill it what's gonna happen now they've give up the options could take another four years of development did they see the do they see the yaros adaptation in the in the wings like we don't want to compete with that like we've talked about this ad nauseum not multiple times before but like that's really surprising i mean that's tough that's a tough break

I think it also raises questions about the, like, will we actually see the Eros adaptation come to the light of day? Will they come? That's a big, expensive project to undertake. Will it actually come to fruition is a real question there. And,

I mean, it's hard to reach for an analog because there just aren't very many of them. It ends with us. Granted, it was not like a great movie. It was a good enough movie and the Colleen Hoover fans seemed to like it, but I don't think it increased Colleen Hoover's Q rating any. I'm not sure it brought new readers into the Hoover hive, the Hooververse. Yeah.

I don't know. The movie Tying Edition was charting, and people probably said, yeah, I love this book, and they brought their friends to go with them. So it's hard to know, but that was already such a phenomenon. I mean, yeah. I mean, I think it's really interesting to think about the Yarrow situation now.

As long as we've been alive and paying attention, when you've got a phenomenon the size of Yaros, which is at this point, the peaks are higher than Court of Thorn, Akatar, sorry for all the heads out there. I know the lingo. To a phenomenon, they get a big adaptation, whether it's the Da Vinci Code, Fifty Shades, Twilight, Potterverse, Star Wars.

Where the Crawdads sing, it ends with us. Like to a franchise, they get one. So in my lifetime of paying attention to things that sell, if there is no Mass, if there is no Yaros, it would really be the first time that Hollywood was like, you know what? We're good.

We're good. We're good. And I think it's the expense. I think it is not... Oh, yes. ...in the competitive landscape. Though Game of Thrones is not cheap to do. Yeah. But like, would Game of Thrones get greenlit today? No.

for how expensive it is. Why did it get to be originally 10? There's more money sloshed. There was no Netflix or Apple and stuff competing for it then. We're so... Right, and now we're on the other side. Streaming peaked and fell since Game of Thrones first premiered that I really wonder about that. Like if...

ACOTAR stays dead if nobody picks it up. And depending on what happens with the Euros adaptation, like we may be getting some new signals about where we really are in streaming and adaptation and how much money studios are willing to put into these properties that have huge fan bases. But like, I think,

where the crawdad's thing is an interesting sort of counterfactual to it because that's not a huge production. It doesn't require a lot of special effects. Like it was a relatively low budget movie. It didn't do super well, but I think it did like outperform its budget. Yeah. Right.

Yeah, it was profitable.

And I don't know what Iron Flame and Onyx Storm do, but by the time we read Fourth Wing, by the time you get to the end, it's pretty dragon heavy. And I can only imagine it gets more so from there. Yeah. So many special effects. Like dozens of dragons on the wing and fighting and moving around. I wonder if someone on the production line item, the production designer was like, oh my God, I cannot. The amount of... So it's super, I guess it's high risk. How are we going to do this? It's high risk because it's so many dollars. It is high risk.

And if it's bad, like... Oh, if it's bad. That's just... That's so much money just lit on fire. Like, you mentioned Twilight and the adaptation of the first Twilight book. Like, that first Twilight movie is kind of famously pretty bad in terms of production value. Like, Edward steps out into the sunlight and his skin is supposed to be glittering and he just looks kind of sweaty. But it's...

That was lucky to land in the zone of like kind of so bad it's good and people have a lot of affection for that series. And it got better over time. The production value of those got better over time. But what you need for vampires is so much less, at least that flavor of vampire, than what you need for a giant dragon situation. Like this is a real moment for literary fiction to shine in adaptations because you just need people in rooms. Yeah.

Well, I think the literary genres, and I have a lot of names that I was looking at that there's a mystery or something unusual going on. I guess one last note on Game of Thrones. I think your point about the lower production value of the Twilight series that got a bigger budget as there was proof that there was money to be made there. Game of Thrones is very similar. The early seasons and the first season, I believe both experientially and reading about it,

The budget wasn't what it would become later. And thankfully, I don't know if George planned this, but it's pretty dragon light until the end, right? You know, Daenerys is walking around and may or may not have clothes on at any given moment, but she just has dragon eggs for like the... And only like the last shot of season one are there dragons flying around for like five seconds. And that gave... She's like, okay, we've got to hit HBSA. Okay, we'll up the budget, up the budget, up the budget. But even by the end, I mean, those... The longest night and...

Hard Home and some of those classic Game of Thrones battle episodes were fantastically expensive, but it was already a guaranteed crossover hit at that point, those seasons. So it's just a different map. To add one more dragon to the pile, or maybe there are dragons in the Sanderson universe. I don't know. Right.

Right.

available in Hollywood, they are just so expensive. And this is not a time where studios and networks are really willing to splash out on something that they're not sure they can make a big hit. Yeah. And the Lord of the Rings of Power has been okay. They continue to make it. House of Dragons has been okay. None of it's reached the heights of the predecessors. And then Wheel of Time has been okay. So there's fantasy properties out there

Which you wonder if they're learning the right lesson from the modestness of, I mean, enough to keep funding seasons.

But those are giant IP already. I mean, Wheel of Time, I guess people didn't know that as much. But that was launched when money was flowing out. It was getting shot out of Dragon Mouse like fire at that point. Okay, we've done our fantasy. So I got Zadie and King's Oliver. Where do you want to go on your list next that is interesting to talk about? Let's see. I've got Brit Bennett. I have Brit Bennett too. Right, because only a couple novels, but it feels like...

Brit Bennett like lives rent free in my head for those two novels.

The Mothers and then The Vanishing Half. It's been a while since we heard from her. I would love to hear news of a new Brit Bennett book deal. But both... Oh, maybe we have. Who can keep track anymore? But both are so engaging and I think would be relatively affordable to produce. But especially The Vanishing Half. You could do in a... Shoot it on some locations. You don't have a huge cast. And...

And there's so much to talk about. It was a huge book club hit as well. I really loved The Mothers, but I think the collective narration of that book is a challenge. It can be done. You know, like Sofia Coppola adapted The Virgin Suicides, which has that plural narrative voice. So I'd be interested, but I really would love to see The Vanishing Half on screen. I think it would make a great eight-episode Apple situation. Yeah. I mean, I think this was my number one draft pick.

actually the vanishing half specifically with Brett Bennett. I did a little bit of research and there were rights, uh,

For a limited series, I think anything we have heard of, I know we have at least a couple literary scouts that listen. They're like, yeah, that's been optioned. Yeah, that's been optioned. Because generally speaking, for these companies, the rights to option, if I remember this right, it's just the right to do something with it for a while. You're not actually committing to it, especially paying for a reservation at a restaurant more than anything. You've just got it so no one else can get it for a certain time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me figure this out. Well, I don't want to give it up to anybody. I think the Vanishing Half...

It ticks all of the spots. And it already has a song. I mean, it won the Goodreads Choice Award for historical fiction five years ago when it came out. And Brit Bennett worked on an American Girl doll in 2020 and 2023. So I'm sure she's working on other stuff. Maybe she got a development deal to do a TV show. Like she got Flournoid. That's what I'm going to say. That's what you're going to call it. Now she got Angela Flournoid into doing something, which is great and good for them. Grab that bag. Yeah, get your bag.

But we're a book show, so please come back to us at some point. We beg you. Yeah. There was a cover reveal for the new Angela Flournoy novel this week coming out this fall. And come on down, Angela Flournoy. Come back to us. Yeah. The Mothers got adapted with Kerry Washington as a producer. It makes a ton of sense. The thing about Vanishing Half is...

You've got twins, and that can go a couple ways. That's true. It can. It can go a couple ways. Maybe make it a little more difficult for how that works. But yeah, I think Brit Bennett's a really fantastic choice there. Yeah. Since I had that one too, back to you. Back to you. Oh, okay. Okay, the next one, I really want to see S.A. Cosby, but especially Blacktop Wasteland. I have S.A. Cosby as well. Right? Yeah.

Come on, we're getting the gang back together for one last job. He's a getaway driver. There's so much action. That book had me on the edge of my seat. It would be so much fun to watch. And like, this should be a movie. I have strong feelings that this is not a streaming series. Give me this in like 130 minutes.

Let's make it snappy. Yeah. So, I mean, multiple things have been optioned with him. I looked this up too, both Black Tap Wasteland and Razorblade Tears. I think the one that we're actually going to see because it's the Obama's production company options his new one, Kingdom of Ashes or King of Ashes. It comes out in- King of Ashes. It comes out in May or June. Do you have it in front of you? I don't have it in front of me. It's the spring. It's the middle of the year this year. So-

And that got a big advance too, I think. We've been waiting. I think after Blacktop Wasteland, that's one, because that was his first big one with a big five. But especially after Razorblade Tears, like, okay, we have a ball game here. So that could be pretty cool. Yeah, I think this one feels to me just a matter of time that he's going to get a big adaptation. Yeah, I hope so. Whether or not it does the deed...

That's culture, anybody's guess. Yeah. And like, you know, we haven't read Blacktop or not Blacktop. We haven't read King of Ashes. King of Ashes, yeah. Coming out later in the spring. But Blacktop Wasteland is the first big one. And it's also the least political of his novels. So most likely to be a four quadrant hit at the box office because you're not turning anybody off with, you know, like there is a crime.

crime, like it's a gay couple that are murdered in one of the books and the parents are coming together and that flavor might be a little too woke for our current political moment. So I'd like to see all of his books be adapted. I think Blacktop Wasteland has the highest win potential so far. Yeah, great character too in terms of bug.

And that's one, too, for a debut. I guess it wasn't his debut, but his first of the big five. He got a Dennis Lehane blurb. I'm on blurb watch. I'm buying low on blurbs. So I'm really paying attention to blurbs right now. I don't know. Does Dennis Lehane, is he a prolific blurber? I'm not sure. I don't know. Maybe. But if you like hard-boiled crime fiction, you're like, okay, Lehane. That's someone who knows what they're talking about. Good zone. From there. Okay. Some of these...

Almost everything I looked at had a option going to come out maybe, and I don't know. But I do think that the Murderbot series is coming from Apple TV. Apple TV, once they get into a game, tend not to abandon that thing because they literally don't care. I don't even know where the P&L shows up for their streaming stuff when they're talking about trillion dollars a month. They might not know either, Jeff. I know, right? Yeah. Yeah.

It's like my Frosted Mini Wheats budget. I just buy it. I don't really keep track. It's just part of what I do at this point every morning. But I think in terms of... I was really looking for a sci-fi genre thing because Silo has done pretty well. We get more video game adaptations we used to. I mean, Last of Us has kind of become...

It's just, I mean, it is sci-fi near future. I'm not really sure what you want to do with it. I guess it's, it's spec fic, but it's pretty light on the sci-fi, but the murder bot series, again, robots as lead characters, uh,

tough, but they're funny and they're interesting. And if they're done right, they could be really cool and invigorating. Now, crossover appeal, I don't know. But I think the humor plus mystery part has a shot. I think it really does have a shot to be something. So I had Martha Wells down on my list. Yeah. In sci-fi land, I guess to stay there,

I was thinking about Mary Doria Russell for The Sparrow. Wow, you're bringing it way back. I am. Well, yeah, I have Robbins on the brain and you have Russell on the brain. It came up, we guested on the Books with Betsy podcast earlier this week. I don't know when that show will be out. I don't think it's out by the time you're listening to it. Yeah, I had occasion to talk to mention The Sparrow. So I was thinking about that. You could do, yeah, I think you could

Do The Sparrow. I'd love to see that one and see what else. What's a comp for that? Like literally what movie or TV show is a comp for The Sparrow? Like I can't even feel what it would be like. I can't either. And on the lighter sci-fi, like more just futuristic vibe, I would love to see...

somebody take on a visit from the Goon Squad and the Candy House. And if I had to pick one, I would take the Candy House. Yeah, Jennifer Egan, come on. How in the world, Rebecca? I mean, like, that's kind of where I'm with Zadie a little bit. Those things are such creatures of text that I'm like, I don't know. I would love to see it personally, but I'm like, I don't know. The Goon Squad is definitely a creature of text. Like the way that some of those chapters are formatted into, you know, like PowerPoint slide decks. PowerPoint.

But I think Candy House, you could get most of it done. Like some of the book is presented as, you know, like instruction manuals for things, but you can elide that and go after like the bigger story there about technology that lets you upload your consciousness and lets you and other people revisit it and the resistance to that technology. Like it's kind of similar to some of the subplots on Severance right now where like the main...

is happening inside the world of the company where people are severed, but you know that there is a like anti that particular technology resistance happening out in the world.

You're going to have to station 11 it a little bit to like give it a little more of a story as much as a hang or an intellectual exercise or an aesthetic experience on the page. But it could, I mean, I would love to see a bad version of Candy House. That would be amazing even to see what would happen there. Talk about an interesting mess. Yeah. You can, I was, did you see Blitz? The new Steve McQueen? No, not yet. I want to watch that.

But when I was trolling through movies to watch the other night and I ended up watching a music documentary from 2008 instead, but that's just who I am. I looked hard at lists. As one does. I was thinking about Saoirse Ronan. And she can get stuff made, right? It doesn't have to have a huge budget, but she can get Brooklyn made or – well, Blitz. That's the example I was thinking of. Again, Steve McQueen, World War II historical thing got made. Yeah.

And I was like, all right, what could I leverage as Saoirse Ronan's love the book or screenplay? Interesting. And I went with Maggie Shipstead. I had Maggie Shipstead on my list too. Okay, good. I was like, if Saoirse Ronan fell in love with the script for, say, The Great Circle.

That could be a very cool book, like a limited series. It'd be a very good part. Again, it's a lot of historical. I can't imagine planes are super cheap, but buy planes and all that stuff. But I was like, I could actually see that happening. And Shipstead only has a couple of books. She's a wonderful writer. But I mean, she's not at King Solvers levels yet even. So I think a really good adaptation of any kind really could do wonders for people.

People knowing who she is. I agree. And since you've got like that, since Great Circle is the character's whole life, you get an opportunity for a younger actress like Saoirse Ronan and then an opportunity for an older actress. I think the character lives into like her 70s or 80s. We hear from her like pretty late in life. So you could get some interesting casting going. I also really think seating arrangements would be a super fun, like 90 minute summer movie. I'm not even sure I read that. I stared at that and I was like, did I read that?

I don't remember. I don't know if you did. I did. It was super fun. You should remember if I did. People get the gang together over a wedding weekend. I do like that. Like around Cape Cod, disasters happen. Secrets come out. People make bad decisions. Things that happen at a long wedding weekend. It would be a really fun summer watch. I'd love to see that happen for Maggie Shipstead. Let's see. Wakey Wang on my list. I have Wakey Wang too. This is mostly...

Okay, mostly brought to you by how much I loved The Rental House, but I also think Chemistry would be a great limited series. I really would love to see The Rental House brought to life. And you could do it over the course of a movie or a limited run series of like, you know, kind of the three signposts of like the three vacations that take place in the book and really mark those characters' lives.

I don't think there's enough there for a series, honestly. I think a 90-minute feature will do the trick for that one, especially. But I think that'd be a really good indie film that could be made. It would've been a really good COVID movie, frankly. Just need a few people and a house out in the middle of the forest or something like that to shoot it. So I don't know. I think there's not quite enough story. There need to be a murder story.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I love it and I don't want it to be any different than it is. But if I'm trying to green light a $50 million, even an $11 million or whatever. It's a little quiet. It's a little quiet. A big. A little quiet. Things that aren't quiet though. There's no reason that Peter Heller action adventure outdoor books can't be movies.

Great call.

you know, get one of the Coens. I guess they kind of did a simple plan actually, but like just give them the script to a Peter Heller and go crazy. I feel this way about Jane Harper. Like I think there's an adaptation of The Dry out there somewhere. There was one with Eric Bana, which is pretty good. Okay. Okay. Yeah. But like that's since the main character is a thread through several of the books, that gives you an easy like multiple short seasons. It should be short seasons, but multiple short seasons. Yeah.

of an adaptation. I don't need, we don't need 10 episodes for a 250, 300 page mystery novel. Like keep it tight, make it interesting. But I would love to see Jane Harper like be, and just in general, see her be better known among American readers. Yeah.

I don't think, I didn't put this down, but that made me think of Tana French, who I think is so well known among mystery readers that I don't think of her as needing anything other than to learn something about Chicago. Said her cop from Chicago actually seems like maybe he's been to Chicago once in his life. That's my ongoing bit about that. But I love those books. I don't think there's been one. Maybe there's been a BBC something or other, but you know. Oh yeah, I don't believe there has either. Yeah. What's next for you? What's next for me? Okay. Okay.

Vanishing Half, but that's one. But if I'm looking for, like if I'm trying to tap into that sister, is it Bad Sister? Which is the one that the Bad Sister Sisters? Bad Sisters on Apple. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Bad Sisters. Bad Sisters, Gone Girl, Big Little Lies, literary fiction. Okay, feminist revenge thrillers. But it doesn't have to be revenge, but like it's literary mystery fiction.

Give me Katie Kitamura. One of those books would be fan. I mean, a separation would be great. I'm really excited for the new one, but like, I think those work. I think those would work as an Apple. Like that could be a minute. Like the mystery works a little bit better. Like six episodes, you get a great cast of really good, interesting locations. I think those would be dynamite. Dynamite. I love this. I love this for you. Yeah. I totally support that choice. I,

I want to talk about Jesmyn Ward for a minute. Okay. Tough. Okay. Tough. Tough. The only one that I think you could really try is Sing Unburied Sing because it's road trip. Like the subject matter is heavy, but it's a family in a car going to deal with family stuff. All of the others are either big and historical and a lot of production and

Or such a tough hang that building an audience for it and tough hang as in like amazing writing, but very difficult subject matter would just be difficult to build a big audience for. But Sing Unburied Sing, I think there's a possibility there. And I just want Jesmyn Ward to keep getting paid.

I agree. Though I think whatever tenured professorship she surely has somewhere after multiple National Book Awards, but that's not TV money. That's not movie money. Yeah. I mean, I'd like to see it. It's hard to do. I'm worried because I've seen Morrison tried to be adapted and it don't work. Let us, yeah. Beloved should, can we just put the Beloved adaptation like back into the

The vault. Could we memory hole that? Yes. There's part of me that's glad that exists because I'm like, see how hard this is? That's really hard stuff to do. I was also trying to think about, this is coming off my Yaros mask, there will be sometime another giant fantasy franchise and who's waiting in the wings? And I wouldn't bet on this because the odds seem very bad of the book ever coming out

But Patrick Rothfuss, that series is really cool.

And there was a lot of smoke about Lin-Manuel Miranda was going to adapt it and make it a musical. There's so much lute playing in it. But again, I think it fell apart. There's so much lute playing. It's so much about paying your magic school tuitions and playing the lute. It's amazing stuff. Again, the caveat here is I'd need to see the end of the series. I wouldn't sign anything until it's done. But if it ever does get did, that was correct grammar.

Then, you know, I don't know what else is really out there. There's a lot of attention around this. O'Neill's razor is very unhappy with me for even saying this out loud, but if it were ever to come to pass that this thing got completed...

It has a chance to be, you know, an all-timer. It already is amongst the people that read this kind of thing. That's why everyone's so frustrated, including me, who's a sort of armchair fantasy reader at this point. So that's almost too obvious. That's a little... It's been on the shelf a little long, to be honest. But anyway, it's out there. It certainly is. Yeah, I think that's a good one. You know, I'm really surprised. I'm going to do a twofer that we don't have a signal adaptation of either Ann Patchett or Lauren Groff. I know there was a Bel Canto, but it was not...

the size of a signal adaptation. People don't talk about it. And they're both so readable and so consistently good. Like any of Ann Patchett's would be fantastic. Lauren Groff is getting weirder as she goes, which I am deeply here for. Like, please bring it on. The Groff-iz-ons is amazing. But I think Fates and Furies is probably the one. Arcadia would be really fun. Yeah. Yeah.

I think Fates and the Furies is really the only one I could see someone green lighting. Like it'd have to be an art project to take on Matrix or Vast or Wilds, which like Kelly Reichert maybe would. Oh yeah. Yeah. That would be interesting. But I just don't see it. Yeah. But Ann Patchett, like you could do the Dutch house. You could do Tom Lake. Yeah.

You could do Bel Canto. You could do State of Wonder if you wanted to go hang out in the rainforest for a while. But you could do some of them without really spending it. Tom Lake and Dutch House especially would not be expensive productions. No. I feel like those are books that in the 90s absolutely would have been adapted now. It just feels like those kinds of books don't really get it. I mean, it's the king solver of it all. Yeah.

There's not quite enough mystery. There's not quite enough spin on the ball. I mean, they're great, but that's the kind of thing that the Kitamura's in the world are not reacting against, but like not doing. Okay, that's been done. I'm doing other things in the world there. What always does play though is a mystery. And I don't have Frida McFadden on the list because we are going to Florence Pugh in The Housemaid and I think that's going to be a thing and she's a thing already. But I was looking for other mysteries.

Okay. And Brendan Slocum writes these music-based mysteries that are like someone stole a Stradivarius. Oh, I don't know.

And we're in the world of music. They're pretty cool. It's like you can see kind of conclave vibes, not the Vatican, of course, but you're in expensive galleries and you're among the world of the rich and you've got these expensive people. And the first one is this black violinist who has an expensive instrument and it gets stolen. Or does he lose it and then

It's something about the insurance. It's been a while since. And there's been a sequence of them. And I think you could do them all fairly inexpensively, but I think they'd look dynamite on Amazon Prime or something like this. I think they could be pretty cool. There may not be enough. We were talking about what was it? The recruit, the Rami Malek. I was just a hacker, but now I'm going to blow people up. I feel like you need a little more action than this might provide.

And I haven't read them all, so maybe there's big sequences later. But a mystery set in an unusual world, at least one of them could be good for an adaptation. And that would get the ball rolling. And he's getting subsequent deals, so I think they're selling okay. But it could be more of a name to have a series like this. Yeah.

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That's this wasn't on my list, but that's making me think about the Margot Duahi series with the crime solving tattooed nun with a potty mouth. That would be super fun. I do think four years ago that would have been a home run for someone. I just don't know. I know.

Yeah, it's tough. I just, I don't think it's going to happen right now. I know. My high production value dream that's never going to happen, but I'm going to talk about it is I would love to see Northwoods by Daniel Mason get the same kind of treatment that they did with here.

with the Tom Hanks movie at the end of last year. Like, fix the camera in one place and show us the life of this plot of land and then this house over those hundreds of years. And go into the house. It doesn't have to be quite as static as I think here looked. I didn't see it because it also did not look very good. But it's such a wonderful book and it remains impossible to really describe it to someone. I was listening to, I think, Carrie

Kara Swisher's podcast and she was recommending it to someone. She's like, it's about the life of this house over a couple hundred years. And I was like, lady, that's as good as a description as you can get of that book. And it's a terrible description of that book. That's a horrible pitch. Yeah. That would be a high degree of difficulty. That's like a Werner Herzog documentary slash whatever. It's a beautiful dream. Yeah. What if there was a grizzly man, but no grizzly and no man? That's the pitch for it. That's the pitch for Northland.

I guess, let's see, where do I want to go? I don't have a good transition here. I think Linda Holmes has a problem in this regard, which is people watch much worse romantic comedy on streaming services. And so there's no reason to pay for Linda Holmes' books. Yeah. Because they're... Yeah. You don't have to. But Emily Henry's getting that money. Yeah.

Well, but she doesn't sell as well as in, I mean, that's the problem. Like she's in this weird, she's kind of an uncanny Valley where she's not cranking out Hallmark movies, but she's also not Emily Henry or Allie Hazelwood or one of these yet. But I think I would enjoy very much a, again, another movie that gets made in the late nineties, early two thousands. I'm sure one of these gets, um,

Hopefully stalling Lauren Graham, as I always wanted to happen. Yeah, I just read the new one back after this. I'll talk about it on Frontlist Foyer this week. But the main character is a podcast editor. Jeff, there are jokes about dynamic ad insertion.

Well, she does this. She knows of what she speaks. This is the only murders in the building podcasting garbage. It's so great. And we got what was the Kristen Bell rom-com series? Nobody wants nobody last year that that she's a podcaster, but like she's a podcaster and the character in this book is an editor and it's not about like really the content of the show that much. Yeah. Linda Holmes, all the adaptations all the time. Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah, but unfortunately, it's like not a Rolls Royce, but also not a used Toyota in terms of the market. I'm not sure where it is, but I would like to see it. She is in a weird zone, but I would love to see somebody do it. I mean, I've watched every season of the Virgin River Netflix adaptation. Having never read the books, that shit is terrible. And I'm going to keep watching. So you're not only the president, but also a member. Please give me Linda Holmes. You're part of the problem here.

a good rom-com to watch, please. It's like Rapunzel up in the tower. Just, I need someone. I need them to always come save me from watching Virgin River season 11. When those seasons drop, though, my text threads with my girlfriends are hysterical. Because I mean, it's just such a soap opera. It's terrible. So you and I were texting. No, I was texting you and you're like, Jeff, you're out of your mind. When I was asking about...

Do you think Bertino has sold more books than George Saunders? You did have a weird moment there, but I supported your optimism. My family and I are watching the Sherlock BBC show with Cumberbatch, and there's a moment where he doesn't know. He knows everything, but he didn't know that the earth circles the sun. This was my moment of not knowing the earth circling the sun here.

Let me just say it's not close, Bertino. I mean, Beautyland's done okay, but then I just saw the paperback for Beautyland is different than the hardcover, which is not a good sign for sales. And okay, if I'm going to use one of my wish casting adaptation chips...

Put it on Beautyland. Put it on 2AM at the Cat's Pajamas. And maybe people will fall in love with it. And then Bertino can keep writing books and maybe sell one-tenth the number of books that George Sanders' fourth most popular book has sold. But it is a little bit one-two where I don't know how much of a brand you can establish because the brand is do whatever, which is great for me. Right.

But as a cultural enterprise, it's a little more difficult. But I'd love to see one. You could spin the greater universe of the 2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas world into multiple seasons of a show. There are so many characters. It's so charming. Who'd like to pit 3 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas, 4 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas, 5 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas? Brunch at the Cat's Pajamas. 9 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas. Yeah.

But like it has a Stars Hollow quality, that little, the town that the book is set in. And there are a couple tertiary characters in the book, but you could, I think you could build that world out and really ride that for a while. But Parakeet and Beagleland are then so weird. They are. And Exit Zero sounds like it's going to be weird too. So I don't know that like, we're going to establish the Bertino universe with the outlier. You can't do that. I don't think that works very well. I don't know. I'm surprised you haven't talked about Deepti Kapoor yet.

Just one book or a couple books. I mean, these other people have been around in my life for a little bit longer. So I'm not... Speaking of extended universes, you know how like True Detective has multiple seasons and they're sort of maybe related and maybe not, but they're kind of in the same world?

I think a Louise Erdrich expanded universe would be kind of cool. We really need older 90s Hollywood to make grown-up movies for adults that appear in theaters and don't bomb without massive speculative elements. But you could do a roundhouse, Plague of Dut, The Sentence is a cool little show. I mean, like...

Yeah. You could connect some of them in ways that she hasn't connected them on the page. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if the if the res dogs team are looking for something to do. I'm sure they've considered what their next steps is. But I think it would be amazing to see those folks take on an Eric book as a movie or limited series or there's mystery. And, you know, I just think it would be super cool if done. Yeah.

I was thinking about the Res Dogs crew for Tommy Orange. Like, because you can take They're There and Wandering Stars. And like, if Taylor Sheridan can do 900 seasons of Yellowstone and then be like, what about a spinoff set 150 years in the past and it's Harrison Ford instead?

Instead, we can take Tommy Orange and do like present day South L.A. and also go back in time into the 1800s and like move all over the place. It's tough. Only two books and Wandering Stars didn't get nearly as much attention as either of us would like for it.

But I think there's a lot of space there, especially there, there. Like there are so many characters. I think there, there by itself could work. It would be such a great opportunity for a cast. Yeah. Yeah. Once you said Taylor Sheridan, I just realized like, I can't believe it would be an amazing outcome for me or a horrible one if he got a hold of the Peter Heller catalog. Oh. Because he could make them, but I might hate them. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. I've only got one left. Do you have anybody left on your board? I have a couple, but I can pick. I'll pick one. I mean, look, I saved the, it's just sitting there. I don't know what's happening. It might be too expensive or whatever, but what's going on with the night circus?

Why can't we get this thing? Do we need to make it a musical? Great. Let's put it on stage. Let's get Stephen Schwartz or whoever we can wicked this. Let's wicked it. Yeah, wicked. Wicked the crap out of the night circus. I support that. Wicked the crap out of the night circus. Like, we've got to do something about this.

this. This is unacceptable. And it is unacceptable. And the book remains like it has no read-alikes for as much romance and fantasy and romance fantasy mixture as we have in the world right now. And as many attempts as have been made to write something that feels like the night circus, we still get requests for what should I recommend to people who love the night circus. And there really, there is nothing that's a good checker

on a checker there. So can we please get a movie? Help everyone out. And for those of you on book talk out there, does, does, does do any of the romanticist heads talk about, does it have any presence in that world at all? Because what are you doing? What are we doing? Like this is, this is, this is prime cut. We're eating ground chuck out here with Onyx storm. There's filet mignon sitting there that combines elements of romance and fantasy with,

And nothing's happening. It would be more expensive. There's no dragons in it, but there's magic and Cirque du Rav and the knight stuff would be... And magic, but...

That seems like a much easier lift than 40 dragons battering weaverns and then also sex scenes that you've got to cut away from and make everyone mad. But I still don't understand. I still don't understand what the hell. Maybe it's in development hell. Someone's looked at it. Somebody's just sitting on the options forever. It's wicked but a love story with dueling magicians? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Let's go. Come on. Yes. Yeah. That's a great one. I don't have one that's better than that to end on. I did put it in the stinger spot. I was like, I can't start with that. Yeah. Our plea to Hollywood is please do something with The Night Circus. Please. Now that I'm on the Grady Hendrix train, I want to see some Grady Hendrix adaptations. Aren't we getting one of those? Hold on. Oh, are we? I'm going to look up because I feel like this is...

The only one I've read, obviously, is the witchcraft for wayward girls. But I think you can do that at a relatively affordable production. You just need like some witchy effects. But most of it is teenage girls in a house in the sweaty summer in Florida plotting things against people who are being terrible to them. And it would be super fun. So the final girl support group is.

Was optioned by Anna Perna. Is that right? Hold on. Hold on. Let me see real quick. Yeah. Intent to turn the novel into a television series. But again, who knows? He wrote a screenplay for Horror Store. I guess that got optioned. Interesting. Okay. So it feels like, give me the job already, as Vince Vaughn says in Swingers. Like just someone's got to like actually commit to doing one of those things. Make it happen. Because the Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, it was also optioned.

But then it got killed and the streaming service is going to do it. I don't know. Really, until I see a trailer now, I don't believe I just assume it. Like, I don't know what the language is for. For sure, this is happening. That isn't a trailer. Maybe those of you in the rights community can tell me. But until I see a trailer, I'm like, probably not. That's my base case. Yeah. Or like at least still shots of people in costumes on a set.

Yeah, the Damon. Money has been spent. The Damon and the Odyssey. Well, and also Nolan doesn't do that. Like Nolan's saying, I'm going to make the Odyssey. I'm not worried about that Christopher Nolan movies actually just end up in production hell. What do you think of Damon wearing the horse helmet?

I really was enjoying my theory that we were going to get Tom Holland as young Odysseus and Matt Damon as older returning Odysseus, but I'm here for it. I think it'll be Tom Holland as Telemachus. They will be interesting. Damon can do Grizzled. He's good at action. It'll be fine. And the rest of the cast is incredible. My real question is, even in the Christopher Nolan length of a film, how do you do the Odyssey in...

Like, what scenes is he going to pick? And what's going to get cut? And how mad are we going to be about that? Yeah.

If there is no Scylla and Charybdis, I'm taken to the streets. I'm going to tell you right now. Not my Mediterranean. Hashtag not my Mediterranean. Scylla and Charybdis really lends itself well to a chant. Good luck with your protest. I'm sure I'm pronouncing that right. I'm sure all the Greek scholars are like, yep, you nailed it. Got it, Jeff. No notes. We got to work on Catabasis first. Catabasis. Catabasis.

That, to me, is like trying to tie my shoelaces with my left hand. There's just no world that that feels right. Hell of a flex from Rebecca Kwong. Here's a book title that you need to understand Greek to pronounce correctly. Anyway, Aaron Morgan Stern, where is the Night Circus movie, please?

If I could get someone, I wonder who I could pitch for first edition to be like, what the hell is going on? Because there's got to be a story. You know it's been kicked around. You know there's been like all kinds of weird ideas. And like, are they allowed to talk about it? Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. There was probably one like it was going to start Kate Bosworth and she was going to sing. And like, what? But like, who knows all the things that have been attached to that? I'm sure that they've had some interesting meetings for that.

As I was Googling, just like refreshing my memory about things that I might like to see adapted, I learned that there's never been an adaptation of Catcher in the Rye. And I just need to say that's surprising to me. Well, Salinger famously promiscuous with his words and rights. I don't think there's been a Salinger adaptation at all.

Yeah. Not that anyone knows for any of those other kinds of things. Yeah, so canonical texts. Kind of surprising. My hot take about Catching the Rise is actually it's good, but that's a different podcast. I know everyone has turned to like Holden Caulfield as like insufferable sort of thing. You know what? Have you met a teenager?

I mean, you did your defense of David Foster Wallace last year. So we're due for a moment in defensive catcher in the row. Well, I like to buy low. I'm the Warren Buffett of literary takes. When everyone else is soured, I'm buying at a nine price to earnings ratio. I'm getting a cheap baby. Y'all about here buying Onyx Storm and NVIDIA at, you know, 50 times 2026 earnings. You know what? I want to see site traffic the day you write catcher in the row is good, actually. Please do it.

The problem with that take is I need to reread it and there's a chance that it sucks. Either way, you get a fun story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Salinger and Wallace themselves may be undesirable or not who you want to hang out with or have your family members hang out with for sure. But most books like that, there is really something to them else they don't become a thing. So anyway...

Just like the night circus, which should become a giant thing. It should be. Wicked it. Please give it a wicked. Just give it a wicked. All right, Rebecca. What is John M. Chu doing after Wicked? Come on. Rolling around in money.

Well, remember when Rob Marshall wrote Chicago and then he's like, I can do anything. We're getting all the money and has never made another good money again. That's what you have to watch out. That's true. Because it's dangerous. It's dangerous. Cause like, I thought I was the reason this was special sauce, like actually Chicago rules. And that looked amazing. And Catherine Zeta-Jones, let's be careful out there fellas, because she was unbelievable in that movie. And like wicked is like the songs. Like if you got the songs, right. We talked about this recently anyway, so I don't have to do that spiel again. Yeah.

I don't know. All right. Book Riot.com slash listen for show notes. The show notes to this will be nothing. We're not putting these in the list. So if you want to find the Patreon sub stack or the Instagram links, you can do it over there. I am posting a little bit of like breaking news kinds of stuff on the Book Riot podcast. Like, you know, I did the Damon horsehair main thing. I thought it looked pretty good. Yeah. So if you're interested in following along and I'm going to do shorter clips of some of the stuff we do just recently.

voiceovers. We're not going to do our faces on this yet because we haven't figured that out. But I did figure out how to put audio over stills in a way that might make sense. I'm going to play around with that. Rebecca Romney on First Edition is coming out tomorrow once this has gone live. So go check that out over there. Yeah, that's it. Rebecca, thanks. Thank you. It was fun. Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this audiobook excerpt from Nesting by Roy Shane O'Donnell, read by Louisa Harland.

Ciara steps out of the car and a cold sea wind catches her breath, whipping her hair across her face. After some maneuvering, ignoring Tots from the passenger seat, she's managed to squeeze her old silver Micra into a tight parking spot across the road from Scarys Beach. The April afternoon sky stretches bright and clear.

Above the rooftops of the seafront terraces, gulls glide as if manipulated by invisible wires, their taut wings motionless. The passenger door slams. Ryan rounds the car and she hears him open the boot. Ciara turns, pushing her hair from her eyes, struggling against the weight of the wind. She hauls open the back door to a torrent of, "'Me first! Me first! Me first!' Four-year-old Sophie has unbuckled her own seatbelt."

She squeezes under her mum's arm and jumps onto the pavement, dark pigtails flying. Yes, the sea. Can we build a castle, Daddy? Ciara doesn't catch Ryan's reply. She's too busy grappling with the buckle on two-year-old Ella's grimy red car seat. This car needs to be cleaned. Deep cleaned. Christ. That's why they always take her old banger to the beach instead of Ryan's pristine jeep. Finally, the buckle opens. Voila! There we go, missus. Freedom.

"'Up, mammy!' Ella reaches out one of her chubby arms, still so young that she has dimples where her elbows should be. Her other arm is hooked, as always, around Hoppy the blue rabbit with the love heart sewn on his chest. Threadbare in parts, stuffing gone lumpy. He looks somehow both careworn and wise. "'Come on up, then!' She kisses Ella's cheek and nuzzles her neck, inhaling the faint smell of bananas and porridge."

Sophie has skipped ahead into the sand dunes with Ryan. There's something comical about their mismatched figures. Her fluorescent orange cycling shorts, butterfly top and sparkly hair clips, alongside his black t-shirt, pressed jeans, dark grey hair combed neatly in place. Despite her father's grip on her hand, Sophie is still managing to dance. Sharp blonde stems of sand reed scratch Ciara's ankles as she weaves through the dunes with Ella on her hip.

You see the sea? Ella love. The strand curves in a crescent around the bay, striated with bands of crushed shells, driftwood, seaweed. RT forecast 20 degrees for today, an April high, which clearly didn't factor in the bitter gusts sweeping off the Irish Sea. Sunday afternoon, the beach is dotted with clusters of people huddling under coats or sheltering behind windbreakers, determined to make the best of it.

At the end of the boardwalk, her runners sink into the sand. When she's caught up with Ryan, she puts Ella down and stands beside him, looking out to sea. Tides out, she comments for something to say. Ryan turns to her. I'm taking them swimming. His grey eyes study her face, testing her. He was in such good form this morning when he announced they were going to the beach, but already something has changed. What has she done this time? Her heart begins to quicken. Swimming? As in, like, paddling?

Sure, they'll love that. I said swimming. Proper swimming. They're big enough. But they don't know how to swim. She tries to laugh. It's bitter, Ryan. They'll freeze. He folds his arms across his chest, his lips set in a thin, determined line. She hears her mum saying, pick your battles, love. Okay, swimming. Why not? I'll stick the wetsuits on them there. Girls, come here to me, will you? The wetsuits are from last summer.

Ella's is so tight she can't bend her arms. Ryan stands watching as she hauls Sophie's back zip up, lifting her daughter off her feet. Hey, Mammy, stop, you're hurting me. There now, hon. Perfect. Sophie waddles away like a bad-tempered penguin. Imagine if Sinead were here. How she'd laugh at the sight of her nieces. Ryan is pulling off his T-shirt, frowning. Did you not get them new wetsuits? I thought I gave you the money.

She mumbles something about the suits being out of stock and busies herself unlacing her runners and rolling her black leggings up over her knees. Feeling his stare on her, she ties her hair back, zips up her pale pink fleece. Ella toddles up and grabs her hand. "'Mammy, come!'