The Book Review

Every season brings its share of books to look forward to, and this spring is no different. Host Gilbert Cruz is joined by Book Review editor Joumana Khatib to talk about a dozen or so titles that sound interesting in the months ahead.

Books discussed on this episode:

"Dream Count," by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"Sunrise on the Reaping," by Suzanne Collins

"The Buffalo Hunter Hunter," by Stephen Graham Jones

"Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools," by Mary Annette Pember

"Great Big Beautiful Life," by Emily Henry

"John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs," by Ian Leslie

"Yoko: A Biography," by David Sheff

"Searches," by Vauhini Vara

"Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America," by Michael Luo

"Rabbit Moon," by Jennifer Haigh

"Mark Twain," by Ron Chernow

"Authority," by Andrea Long Chu

"Spent," by Alison Bechdel

"Fish Tales," by Nettie Jones

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Samantha Harvey’s novel “Orbital,” which won the Booker Prize last year, has a tight, poetic frame: We follow one day in the lives of six people working on a space station above Earth, orbiting the planet 16 times every 24 hours. But this is not a saga of adventure or exploration. It’s a quiet meditation on what it means to be human, prompted by a series of personal reckonings each character faces while floating 250 miles above home.

This week on the Book Review Book Club, MJ Franklin talks about “Orbital” with fellow Book Review editors Joumana Khatib and Jennifer Harlan.

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You’re familiar with Edward Gorey, whether you know it or not. The prolific author and illustrator, who was born 100 years ago this week, was ubiquitous for a time in the 1970s and 1980s, and his elaborate black-and-white line drawings — often depicting delightfully grim neo-Victorian themes and settings — graced everything from book jackets to the opening credits of the PBS show “Mystery!” to his own eccentric storybooks like “The Gashlycrumb Tinies,” in which young children come to unfortunate but spectacular ends.

On this week’s episode, the Book Review’s Sadie Stein joins Gilbert Cruz for a celebration of all things Gorey.

“He was so incredibly prolific,” Stein says. “He was Joyce Carol Oates-like in his output. And it’s amazing when you look at the work because the line drawings, as you mentioned, are so intricate. It looks almost like pointillism sometimes, like it would have taken hundreds of hours. But he was either preternaturally disciplined or incredibly fast, and each one that I’ve ever seen at least is beautiful. And complete in a way.”

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One day, several decades ago, the writer Winnie Holzman was shopping in a Manhattan bookstore where a particular cover caught her eye. It showed a woman with a green face, a black hat pulled down over her eyes. The book was “Wicked” by Gregory Maguire, a retelling of L. Frank Baum’s “Oz” stories from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West. “When I turned it over and read the little précis on the back, it blew my mind,” Holzman said. “I thought it was such a brilliant premise.” The book ended up on Holzman’s bookshelf, with its enigmatic cover facing out.

Years later, the composer Stephen Schwartz contacted Holzman to ask if she’d be interested in adapting Maguire’s book for the stage. The musical they wrote together opened in 2003, and it is now one of the most successful shows in Broadway history. The producers started talking about a movie adaptation, but Holzman was cautious: “We had to really kind of clear our minds and kind of reconceive the whole story.”

The film version of “Wicked” opened in 2024, starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, and with a screenplay by Holzman and Dana Fox. It is one of the highest-grossing movies of the year and is nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Winnie Holzman joins Gilbert Cruz, the editor of the Book Review, to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of adapting your own adaptation.

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The screenwriter Peter Straughan has become adept at taking well known — and beloved — books and adapting them for the big and small screens. He was first nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay of the 2011 film “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” based on the classic John le Carré spy novel, and then adapted Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall” trilogy into an award-winning season of television, with an adaptation of the third novel coming out soon. Now he has been nominated for a second Oscar: for his screenplay for “Conclave,” based on Robert Harris’s political thriller set in the secret world of a papal election.“It’s almost like mosaic work,” Straughan tells Gilbert Cruz, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, about adapting books. “You have all these pieces; sometimes they’re going to be laid out in a very similar order to the book, sometimes a completely different order. Sometimes you’re going to deconstruct and rebuild completely.”In the third episode of our special series devoted to Oscar-nominated films adapted from books, Cruz talks with Straughan about his process of translating a book to the screen, and about the moments in ‘‘Conclave” that he found most exciting to adapt.

Produced by Tina Antolini and Alex Barron
Edited by Wendy Dorr
Engineered by Daniel Ramirez
Original Music by Elisheba Ittoop
Hosted by Gilbert Cruz

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