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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Football Player’s In-Game Reading Sends Book to Top of the Charts
Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver flipped open a paperback last weekend during his teams playoff game against the Green Bay Packers and touched off something of mini-storm, both in the world of football and in the world of books. Brown has previously been vocal when he was dissatisfied with his role on the team, and initially this unusual move was seen as some sort of sign of discontent. Turns out, Brown just finds Inner Excellence by Jim Murphy a useful, centering book and when else is that kind of reading more valuable than in high-pressure situations. In a testament to the NFL’s enormous reach (and follow on stories and social media posts), Inner Excellence hit #1 on Amazon’s best-seller list pretty quickly after the game, and it remains in the top spot as of this writing.
Elizabeth Gilbert Announces Next Book
I have been waiting to see what Gilbert’s next move was going to be. Last year, she cancelled the publication her novel, The Snow Forest, because of…well it’s hard now to explain exactly why she pulled it. It was supposedly set in Siberia in the mid-20th Century, featuring a group of characters who “remove themselves from society in order to resist the Soviet Union.” The announcement of that book sparked backlash from Ukrainians, who of course were not in the mood to stomach anything that might even vaguely seem like support of Russia. At any rate, Gilbert either a) agreed with them or b) didn’t want the heat. At any rate, that books seems to be lost to the wilderness, and the book she announced last week is nothing related to it. It’s a memoir, and her description of it makes it sound like quite the ride:
“In 2000, a friend sent me to see a new hairdresser named Rayya Elias. You all know my Rayya. Oh my goodness, it’s so easy for some of us to get lost in each other, isn’t it? Over the years, we became friends, then best friends, then inseparable. Then tragedy entered our lives, and we were forced to admit a deeper truth: we were in love. What we didn’t admit was that we were also a pair of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe.”
Greta Gerwig Strong-arms Netflix into Giving Her Narnia Adaptation a Real Run in Theaters
In a show of just how much of a hammer she can swing post-Barbie, Gerwig negotiated an unprecedented (and possibly precedent-setting) deal with Netflix for the first installment of her mega-scale Narnia adaptation: a four-week, 1000 Imax screen theatrical window before the movie hits Netflix. So on Thanksgiving weekend next year (2026. I definitely know that 2026 is next year), the movie, which I assume will be called The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, will play in one thousand Imax theaters through Christmas day, when it will premier on Netflix. Perhaps as important, Netflix has agreed to “market the snot out of it.” That’s a paraphrase, but this isn’t going to be a token marketing campaign for the in-theater window. I’m not sure another filmmaker could get Netflix to do this. Nolan maybe? Though after his experience with Tenent going right to streaming, I’m not sure he would even get it the ring to test his strength.
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