Books Briefing: December books

December 1, 2020

Hi readers,

Here’s your weekly catch-up on everything you need to know going on in the book world.

The news:

December is often a quiet time for publishers, which allows the few new releases a chance to stand out. Here are seven new titles to watch for this month.
Penguin Random House announced plans to buy Simon & Schuster for more than $2 billion, a deal that would create the first megapublisher. The sale will dramatically change the industry, increasingly a winner-take-all business in which the largest companies compete for brand-name authors and guaranteed best sellers.
BookExpo, the biggest publishing convention in the U.S., has been canceled for 2021, and the future of the trade show is unclear.
Our bureau chief in Japan, Motoko Rich, speaks with Yu Miri, who won the National Book Award for translated literature for her novel “Tokyo Ueno Station,” which follows several homeless characters in Japan. “I’m kind of like a parabola antenna, so that I can magnify the small voices of people who aren’t often heard,” she tells Rich.
Fiction out today: “A Certain Hunger,” by Chelsea G. Summers; “Ordesa,” by Manuel Vilas; “Dissipatio H.G.,” by Guido Morselli.
Nonfiction out today: “Black Futures,” edited by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham; “Sometimes You Have to Lie,” by Leslie Brody; “Mediocre,” by Ijeoma Oluo; “Dancing in the Mosque,” by Homeira Qaderi.

The critics:

Dwight Garner reviews a new edition of “The Babur Nama,” by the Central Asian warlord Zahiru’d-din Muhammad Babur, who founded the Mughal dynasty. Yes, there’s plenty of grotesque violence in these pages, but Babur also comes across as “intelligent, humane, self-critical and even light-souled,” Garner says. “If you only read one autobiography from a sensitive 16th-century warlord this year, make it this one.”
Jennifer Szalai reviews “A Question of Freedom,” by the historian William G. Thomas III, which is about generations of enslaved people who sued for their freedom before the Civil War. Szalai calls it a “rich, roiling history that Thomas recounts with eloquence and skill.”
And John Williams writes about “The Glorious American Essay,” an anthology edited by Phillip Lopate, a selection of 100 essays from colonial times to the present on a wide range of philosophical and practical subjects.

That’s all for now. Please stay in touch and let me know what you think — whether it’s about this newsletter, our reviews, our podcast, our literary calendar, our Instagram or what you’re reading. We on the Books desk read all of it, and I’ll make every effort to write back. You can reach me at books@nytimes.com.

All my best,

Joumana Khatib

Books at The New York Times

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