Lit Hub Weekly: November 30 – December 4, 2020

TODAY: In 1826, from his boarding school, Nikolai Gogol writes home to his mother, describing a “radical new change” in his poetic style. Only two pieces he wrote during this period have survived.

“I’m not saying Gravity’s Rainbow is itself earnest. Humorless. Stale. I’m not making any comment on the book’s qualities.” Patrick Allington has opinions about America’s real mid-century genius, William Gaddis. | Lit Hub Literary Criticism
“So it goes in 2020, my eighth year of holding the revolving-door position of ‘authorized biographer’ for Bette Ford.” Lives may end, but do biographies? | Lit Hub Biography
We asked the best book designers in the business about their favorite covers of the year: they have thoughts. | Lit Hub Design
Colm Tóibín on Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain, Justin Taylor on the life and work of Breece D’J Pancake, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
Christina Lane profiles Joan Harrison, the forgotten woman behind Hitchcock, and a trailblazing producer during a pivotal era in Hollywood. | CrimeReads
“Reading Ferrante reminds us that personhood is inherently fluid, blurred, and unstable, that the solidifying process of most fiction is a consoling myth.” Pamela Erens on the “secret engine” that powers Elena Ferrante’s work—and may be why men rarely read her. | VQR
“He was chronicling not just a century but a past and future of a people, represented by his characters’ memories, griefs, hopes, thoughts and dreams.” Maya Philips on the playwright August Wilson’s continuing legacy. | T Magazine
“No one in the history of the world has randomly stumbled onto as many kidnappings as Jack Reacher.” Michael Robbins on Lee Child’s ex-military drifter-hero. | Bookforum
“If every Tolkien fan gave us $2, we could do this.” J.R.R. Tolkien’s longtime home is about to hit the market—and fans have launched a crowdfunding campaign to buy it, hoping to turn it into a museum. | The New York Times
“There’s an awful lot riding on these few weeks.” England’s booksellers talk about reopening in the weeks before Christmas. | The Guardian
“In our homes, thanks to, or through the fault of, bookshops, we imitate the libraries we have visited from childhood and construct our own bookish topography.” Jorge Carrión on the libraries that formed him. | The Paris Review
If you were wondering what Stacey Abrams’ (aka Selena Montgomery’s) books are really like, know that her “protagonists are equally as horny for justice and truth as they are for creamy skin and flawless breasts.” | Glamour
From history to art, memoir, and more, Smithsonian scholars recommend their favorite books of 2020. | Smithsonian Magazine
How did “the magical Middle Ages” come to be synonymous with fantasy literature? Maria Sachiko Cecire on Tolkien, Lewis, and the rise and fall of the Oxford school. | Aeon
“Like everyday life, scientific research is steeped in metaphor—which presents a productive paradox.” Henry M. Cowles on the metaphors of neuroscience. | Los Angeles Review of Books
Janet Evanovich, Ann Patchett, Bryan Washington and others on which books make the best gifts. | Washington Post
What’s on Mariah Carey’s reading list? Titles by Isabel Wilkerson, Lenny Kravitz, and… her own book! | Los Angeles Times
Tom Beer highlights four books that deserved more buzz in 2020. | Kirkus

Also on Lit Hub:

Isabel Wilkerson on one of America’s original sins • Damion Searls translating Rilke • In which Jeff VanderMeer considers the cephalopod • Anna Badkhen grapples with the climate of evil at Auschwitz • Lizzy Saxe on colonial nostalgia in fantasy writing • Aaron Gilbreath on letting go of a book after 20 years • Doug Mack on the view of America from Belorussia • Wojciech Jagielski on the ghosts of the Chechnyan War • Looking back at Obama in the early senate years: a photo-history by David Katz • How social medicine can help us understand pandemics •

On the life of John of Sacrobosco • John Gray goes deep on the philosophy of the feline • The hard luck tale of one of the world’s great libraries • Kelly Link very much thinks you should read Robertson Davies’s great Canadian classic, Fifth Business • Snapshots of 19th-century bohemian New York • Leonardo Da Vinci was one of the least prolific painters of his time • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on his beloved wife Aliya • Wendy Ortiz on the urges that never quite leave us • Delphine Minoui on reading as refuge from a civil war • On the misguided Norwegian exceptionalism underlying the Nobel Peace Prize • On the one and only Harriet the Spy • Sydney Stern, biographer of the Mankiewicz Brothers, weighs in on Mank • Thomas Maltman finds a little humility teaching in the Mojave • On the rise of the NBA game as spectacle • On the loneliness of men • Aubrey Gordon on the pervasiveness of fatphobia • A conversation between Aminatta Forna and Maaza Mengiste

Best of Book Marks:

A year of literary listening: AudioFile’s best nonfiction audiobooks of 2020 • Pulitzer Prize-winner Jane Smiley recommends five Émile Zola novels about Paris • On her birthday, a classic review of Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem • Black Swan Green, The Once and Future King, Moominvalley in November, and more rapid-fire book recs from François Vigneault • Jane Smiley’s Perestroika in Paris, Thomas Perry’s Eddie’s Boy, and Ijeoma Oluo’s Mediocre all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week