Earlier this week, I picked up a book to distract myself from my phone, which was buzzing with social media alerts, draft picks, and sweaty-palmed predictions about who the Dodgers might sign next season.

That book “Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel” It hit stores on November 19th and immediately drew me in with its thought-provoking, pithy summary of that period: “That century brought world wars, revolutions, automobiles, women’s suffrage, death camps, and the Internet.”

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With all this profound change, the cover copy also asked a question that was as valid for the previous century as it was for the previous century: “And for novelists, this raised a pressing question: How to write books as surprising and unpredictable as the world we live in?”

Actually.

In this non-fiction work 15 years in the making, author Edwin Frank Editor-in-chief of New York Review Books The creator and founder of the NYRB Classics series surveys twentieth-century novels through a list of 32 personally selected and distinctive titles (this takes into account Dostoevsky’s 1864 narrative “Notes from the Underground,” a precursor to the fiction of the next century). Frank reviews the novels James JoyceVirginia Woolf, Chinua Achebe, Gabriel García Márquez, Ralph Ellison and WG Sebald are among them. (And list lovers be warned: The appendix contains even more novels to consider.)

In an opening passage to “Stranger Than Fiction,” Frank describes World War II. He touches on books about World War II, Hans Erich Nossack’s “The End,” detailing the firebombing of Hamburg, and Vasily Grossman’s “Life,” two volumes about the brutal Battle of Stalingrad. and Destiny” and “Stalingrad.” Addressing the difficulty of writing about these horrific events, he writes: “…the creative resources of fiction struggle to both engage with and distance themselves from unbearable realities.”

Unbearable truths may always be with us. Novels may be welcome distractions, searing indictments, or countless other things, but the struggle to confront change continues. Frank’s investigative study of the novel, which he calls “the story of an exploding form in an exploding world,” is full of thought-provoking material, and I look forward to diving deeper into the chapters of this book.

And perhaps it might be helpful to consider everything we’ve been through so far and consider that—though it’s hard to think about sometimes—maybe we have what it takes to keep moving forward, in the darkness or the light.

“How does all this work out?” asks Frank in the introduction.

Then, as now, this remains a good question.

What other books will be released in November? Now let’s look at 10 more.

5 November

“Without Forgetting the Good” Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Hanover Square)

Need something comfortable and relaxing right now? In the final book of the “Before the Coffee Gets Cool” series, translated from the original Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot, a new group of characters seek healing or closure by experimenting with the time travel possibilities of Café Funiculi Funicula.

“Bel Canto (Annotated Edition)” By Ann Patchett (Harper).

In his award-winning bestseller, Patchett describes a South American hostage situation that traps an opera singer, a Japanese businessman, terrorists and more. The author’s notes—here criticizing an envelope, there revealing a character who “bores” him—offer a welcome commentary on the beloved novel.

12 November

“Didion and Babitz” Written by: Lili Anolik (Scribner)

colleague Emily St. MartinThis book and a story about it

The author said he was obsessed with this vibrant nonfiction work about two iconic Southern California writers and the Franklin Boulevard scene of the ’60s and ’70s. Didion and Babitz’s opposites attracted the friendship, ultimately driving them apart; Trust the author to share all these details and more. As Anolik warns: “Reader, don’t be a baby.”

“Lazarus Man” Written by: Richard Price (FSG)

Price, author of richly textured novels such as “Lush Life” and “Clockers” and “Whites” as well as indelible work in television and film such as “The Wire,” “The Color of Money” and “The Color of Money.” “Night” He returns with a novel about a crumbling Harlem apartment and the intertwined lives that react in its wake.

“Heartbreak is the National Anthem: A Celebration of Taylor Swift’s Musical Journey, Cultural Impact, and a Swiftie’s Reinvention of Pop Music for Swifties.” Rob Sheffield (Dey Street)

Sheffield is one of the best writers on music and pop culture, and here she takes a complex look at Taylor Swift’s work – just look at that subheading. As he proves with himself terrific essay collection “Dreaming the Beatles” Sheffield can be endlessly interesting when researching the work of artists he admires.

“Lost Treasures: Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures” Katherine Rundell (Double Day)

Rundell releases YA fantasy “Impossible Creatures” He’s here in America and he’s already back with a new book of fantasy monsters; Except they’re real. Whether you want to make a connection between wombats and Italian painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Shakespeare and Greenland sharks are fascinating.

“Shy Creatures” Written by: Clare Chambers (Seaman)

Set in a 1960s psychiatric hospital, the novel follows Helen, an unmarried art therapist who carries on a bleak affair with a married male colleague (who – red flag – prints bleak novels on her whenever he wants). I’m reading the mysteries of Dorothy L. Sayers). His life is turned upside down by the appearance of a wild-haired recluse who lives in hiding with his elderly aunt for years and turns out to be a talented artist.

19 November

“Resist: How a Century of Young Black Activists Shaped America” Written by: Rita Omokha (St. Martin’s)

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, captured on video by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, award-winning journalist Rita Omokha traveled to 30 states to meet and talk with young Black activists and explore the work these activists have accomplished over the last hundred years. Young people are in the fight for social justice.

“The Icon and the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America” Written by: Stephanie Gorton (Ecco)

Early last century, two women were at the forefront of the campaign for reproductive rights and access to birth control. Gorton’s book details how these leaders, such as Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and the now largely forgotten Dennett, were often at odds and how that affected the movement.

“Gangster Busters: How Hoover’s G-Men Defeat America’s Deadliest Public Enemies” by John Oller (Dutton)

Oller’s book follows the action-packed adventures of FBI agents in the 1930s — who often lack the experience, skills and equipment of their high-flying criminal counterparts — as the G-men chase gangsters like Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger and Pretty. Kid Floyd.

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Next ‘Book lover’

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