Adaptations, Season 5 Book List, and Current Reads

What makes a good adaptation? Plus what we are covering in Season 5, and what we are currently reading in our last week of being on hiatus from the podcast

Current Reads

Shruti and I are enjoying our last week of being on hiatus from the podcast The Novel Tea. It is the perfect time for listeners to catch up on our previous seasons (we just finished wrapping up Season 4—Beyond Borders), but if you’re already caught up, here’s what we are currently reading.

I was inspired by our 2024 in Books episode and started reading Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad.

After years away from her family's homeland, actress Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her older sister Haneen. This is her first trip back since the second intifada and while Haneen made a life here commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia remained in London to focus on her acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new.

I am also listening to The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion on audio.

Several days before Christmas, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. Days later, the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. This book reveals much about life and death, marriage and children, agony and hope.

Shruti is currently reading The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif.

The Map of Love is two parallel stories about love connected by generations - Amal is learning about her great-grandmother by uncovering her diaries and letters.

Shruti is also listening to The Long Answer by Anna Hogeland on audio.

This is a series of connected vignettes about pregnancy, childbirth, and miscarriage through the eyes of different women. The book touches on themes of motherhood, sisterhood, female friendship, and grief.

Season 5: Adaptations

Last week, we announced our Season 5 theme. This season, we are going to tackle adaptations! We will be using the term “adaptation” a little loosely and covering many types of media including plays, spin-offs, texts inspired by other texts, and, of course, movies.

There are a number of things that can make or break an adaptation, it is an art form in itself and is therefore subjective in its interpretation to its audience. For me, a good adaptation stays faithful to its source text, creates depth and symbolism through its imagery and color theory, and is powerful enough to stand up on its own.

Since this topic is so subjective, I also reached out to friends and family to ask them what makes a good adaptation. Here are some of the opinions I received:

• Staying true to the source text while also elevating it to another dimension

• Inserting comedy only where it makes sense, avoid trying to crowd please by making characters funny just to introduce some laughs

• Avoid having a first-person narration to explain the story, but rather describe it through plot

• Emulate similar emotions that the book or original text created to give readers a sense of connection or nostalgia

I am excited to see if our opinions of adaptations change as we read through this season. Will we learn to appreciate them more, or will we scrutinize them further? We’ll have to circle back and revisit this at the end of our season.

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What do you think makes a good adaptation? Leave a comment below!

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Season 5 Book List

And now, the moment we have all been waiting for! Here are the books and adaptations we will be reading and experiencing this season: