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📚Blockbuster Book Summer, New Nooks and More Bookish News
HarperCollins, Shobha Rao, Felicia Pride
Kyle Colley
August 06, 2025
Happy August!
Alright, we are back on track this week, all work, no play, with limited jokes. It's time for us to be serious for once.
This Week’s Standups:
📚 Bookum Talks
📺 Book-to-Screen Adaptations
📖 New book by Shobha Rao
This Week On Bookum:
Let the good times roll!
We have not one… but TWO Bookum talks this week.
In the Far East Endzone, join us Thursday at 12 PM EST for a special Creators Talk Podcast with the insightful Prof. Timothy Welbeck.
Bio break:
"Prof. Welbeck is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University. A Civil Rights Attorney by training, Timothy is a scholar of law, race, and cultural studies."
You might have heard about his exciting new class in the news (read as social media feeds if you are Millennial or Gen Z) on Kendrick Lamar: Kendrick Lamar and the Morale of the m.A.A.d City.”
We will be discussing music, literature, culture, and building the curriculum!
Look at that. Chopin. Bach. And now Kendrick can be studied for college credits.
And we didn't forget about the far west endzone over there; Join us Friday at 3 PM PST with the gifted Felicia Pride on our Founders Talk Podcast!
Felicia is a filmmaker, writer (credits on Grey's Anatomy and Bel-Air), and creator of Honey Chile Media, a media and production company that tells stories for, by, or about Black women over 40.
If you have read Tia Williams' Seven Days in June, Pride is also the executive producer, writer, and showrunner of the forthcoming series on Amazon Prime Video, working with Will Packer Media and Kinetic Content.
We will discuss running a film and media production company, writing, and her new book Come Close, A Romance Novella.
Both of these should be a lot of fun! You can listen live on the Bookum App (Nooks) and send/write in your questions on the Nook!
Download the app today to join!
This Week in The Book World:
Just because summer blockbuster season is coming to a close (I still want my money back from…🙄never mind) doesn't mean we can't highlight some forthcoming book-to-screen adaptations that are actually in the works.
The Love Hypothesis movie has finally found its Olive and Adam.
Olive will be played by Lili Reinhart (Hal & Harper), and Adam will be played by Tom Bateman (Murder on the Orient Express). It will be directed by Claire Scanlon (Set It Up).
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For Carley Fortune fans, Every Summer After has been picked up by Prime Video and has cast Sadie Soverall (Saltburn) as Percy, and Matt Cornett (High School Musical) will play her love interest, Sam.
Last but not least, although the book just released this year, expect the newest Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, out Nov 20, 2026.
Joseph Zada will be Haymitch Abernathy, Whitney Peak as Lenore Dove Baird, and Mckenna Grace as Maysilee Donner.
Are you excited for any of these? Let us know on the Bookum Community Feed!
This Week in Publishing:
Award-winning author Shobha Rao is back with another sure-to-be unforgettable novel: Indian Country.
Book Summary:
Janavi and Sagar were never meant to end up married. Janavi is a wonderfully independent, young modern Indian woman. She works for an organization that helps street children, often lost to the world of poverty and human trafficking. Sagar is a trained hydraulic engineer, an expert in dam construction. He is the least favorite son, his parents never able to forgive him for an unspeakable act from his past. Sagar seeks refuge in his daydreams of one day finding hidden treasures in the fabled Indian river, the Ganges.
Yet the two are forced together into an arranged marriage which neither of them wants. Even worse, Sagar has already accepted a job in America, in a strange place called Montana, where he will be in charge of dismantling a dam.
Montana upends all their expectations. Sagar’s white colleagues do not welcome him with open arms, and Janavi finds herself unable to forgive her sister back in India, whose betrayal led her to this marriage and this strange place.
When a colleague of Sagar’s is found drowned, Sagar is the obvious scapegoat. But is this death one in a long history of people of color paying the price for the white man’s arrogance and expansionism?
Just like the Ganges River that dominates Sagar’s dreams, throughout the novel run short historical stories of settlers who conquered both the West and India, and who form the foundation upon which Sagar and Janavi stand.
Add Indian Country to your TBR on Bookum today!
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Happy Reading!
See you next week!
Footnotes (Aka other articles we are reading and Bookum content):
Bookum Club is Starting “Lead Boldly: Seven Principles from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Next Tuesday August 12th, Get Your Copy Today and Join Us - https://www.harpercollinsleadership.com/9781400244102/lead-boldly/
Cree Myles, Book Content Creator, ranks over 2M+ views with ‘Monster’ Poetic Devices video reels - https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLmsjB9gxiK/
The Audible Situation Got Much Worse, Daniel Greene - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H0ivgubPtI
Haley Pham, Book Content Creator and Author, featured on ESPN Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@espn/video/7520338390953282847?q=Haley%20Pham%20Sports&t=1754461066537
Book Publishing Sales Fell Across the Board in May-https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/financial-reporting/article/98298-book-publishing-sales-fell-across-the-board-in-may.html
