On to the Next Stage
Former child star Jennette McCurdy has the #5 book in the country with the memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died. Known for her role as Sam in iCarly, McCurdy “recounts a harrowing childhood directed by her emotionally abusive stage mother,” per our starred review. “Insightful and incisive, heartbreaking and raw, McCurdy’s narrative reveals a strong woman who triumphs over unimaginable pressure to emerge whole on the other side.” On August 9, Brooklyn’s Books Are Magic hosted a sold-out launch event at the Bell House with McCurdy in conversation with journalist Susan Burton.
Hot Spot
Debuting at #1 on our hardcover fiction list, Heat 2 is director, screenwriter, and producer Michael Mann’s crime thriller debut, written with Edgar winner Meg Gardiner. Our review said it “falls short as a sequel” to Mann’s 1995 Al Pacino–Robert DeNiro vehicle, Heat, citing characters that aren’t “meaningfully fleshed out” and prose that’s “often stilted and baroque.” But there’s good news for those who think more of Mann’s directing chops—he’s just started shooting his next film, Ferrari, a biography of the eponymous race car driver and luxury sports car manufacturer, with Adam Driver in the title role.
Media Watch
The Netflix adaption of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics, centered on Morpheus, the personification of dreams, dropped August 5. The 10-episode arc, which covers issues #1–#16 of the 75-issue series, shot to the top of the streaming channel’s most-watched list. In spring, DC released four new collected editions of the comics, and this week, The Sandman, Book 1 (issues #1–#20) debuts at #14 on our trade paperback list with its best weekly sales to date.
NEW & NOTABLE
PATH LIT BY LIGHTNING
David Maraniss
#3 Hardcover Nonfiction
Maraniss “trains his keen eye on the remarkable career of Jim Thorpe,” our review said of this biography of the athlete who, in 1912, was the first Native American to win Olympic gold for the U.S. “This essential work restores a legendary figure to his rightful place in history.”
LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI
Rinker Buck
#7 Hardcover Nonfiction
“Journalist Buck, who documented his travels by covered wagon in The Oregon Trail,” per our review, “returns with a captivating and occasionally cantankerous account of the 2,000-mile, four-month flatboat journey he made in 2016 down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from Pittsburgh to New Orleans.”
