10 books to read in December, from a Roosevelt biography to prize-winning poetry

With apologies to T. S. Eliot, December mightiness beryllium the cruelest period — astatine slightest for publishing. As imprints absorption connected awards play and vacation sales, respective of this month’s champion titles are retired arsenic paperback releases. Never fear, readers; these soft-covers present large plots and volition besides permission country successful your fund for the champion benignant of gifts: much books! Happy vacation reading.

FICTION

Casanova 20: Or, Hot World: A Novel
By Davey Davis
Catapult: 304 pp., $18
(Dec. 2)

What if you were truthful beauteous you could seduce anyone, but mislaid that allure? Would you descend into depression, oregon would you question a caller way done the world? Adrian, astatine the extremity of his 20s with countless “friends” of each genders, exits the planetary pandemic with his mojo gone. The 1 idiosyncratic who loves him platonically, Mark, is older, ill, and surviving crossed the country. Together they grapple with however to beryllium seen successful a nine that ignores truthful galore of us.

The Definitions: A Novel
By Matt Greene
Henry Holt: 176 pp., $18
(Dec. 2)

“We archer ourselves stories successful bid to live,” said Joan Didion famously, and successful Greene’s caller dystopian novel, survivors of a neurological microorganism person mislaid the quality to specify words, fto unsocial archer stories — they’re successful a spot known arsenic “The Center” but person nary memories. The hostility derives not from further unwellness oregon uprising, but from the implicit unrecognizability of a satellite wherever meaning exists lone successful fleeting moments and tin seldom beryllium shared.

Television: A Novel
By Lauren Rothery
Ecco: 256 pp., $28
(Dec. 2)

Rothery, a filmmaker, started penning abbreviated stories during the pandemic, and present successful her stylish debut caller focuses connected the municipality she knows best, Los Angeles (the screen photograph is simply a inactive from 1 of her movies). Verity, an irascible but hugely palmy aging Hollywood star, alternates narration with his younger champion person Helen successful a communicative involving an aspiring scriptwriter named Phoebe. Pay attention, carefully, to what inspires the title.

House of Day, House of Night: A Novel
By Olga Tokarczuk
Riverhead: 336 pp., $28
(Dec. 2)

First published successful 1998, this aboriginal gem from Nobel Prize victor Tokarczuk takes spot successful Silesia, a portion of Poland adjacent to the Czech Republic and influenced by its Bohemian culture. Like the author’s much precocious acclaimed “constellation,” oregon spread-out novels, “House of Day” includes vignettes with her obsessions — mushrooms, dreams, deaths — and multiple, vivid characters surviving successful a azygous village.

Galápagos: A Novel
By Fátima Vélez
Astra House: 208 pp., $22
(Dec. 2)

Colombian writer Vélez debuts with a communicative that winds up connected a vessel afloat of dying artists. The never-named unwellness (clearly HIV/AIDS) retains the vocabulary and symbolism of a plague narrative. The queer friends aboard successful 1992, including creator Lorenzo and his spouse Juan B., cognize that they’re ne'er going to disembark. Instead, Decameron-style, they archer stories astir their past lives and looming deaths, with grotesque details heightening urgency.

NONFICTION

In the Arena: Theodore Roosevelt successful War, Peace, and Revolution
By David S. Brown
Scribner: 496 pp., $31
(Dec. 2)

Theodore Roosevelt believed beingness should instrumentality spot “in the arena” wherever instauration and struggle occurred, which historiographer Brown (“A Hell of a Storm”) demonstrates to beryllium Roosevelt’s ain milieu, whether connected foot, successful the saddle, oregon occupying the Oval Office. Fortunately, the writer isn’t penning a hagiography. He portrays our 26th president fully, covering his maverick tone arsenic a worker and statesman, but besides the lifelong racism that influenced immoderate of his policies.

This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days
By John Darnielle
MCD: 560 pp., $36
(Dec. 2)

Founder and sole subordinate of The Mountain Goats, singer-songwriter Darnielle is besides a novelist (“Devil House,” e.g.) and now, decidedly a poet: The lyrics tied to a year’s worthy of sunrises and sunsets scope from unexpectedly tender to horrifically sad. The quality of the postulation is that each entry, portion varying successful quality, feels authentic — wrung with pleasance oregon symptom from this wildly talented artist’s committedness to beingness connected earth.

A Long Game: Notes connected Writing Fiction
By Elizabeth McCracken
Ecco: 208 pp., $27
(Dec. 2)

The Story Prize-winning McCracken knows a batch astir penning fiction, but deliberation of her caller rubric little arsenic a trade publication and much arsenic a guidebook for first-time tourists and seasoned travelers alike. The writer reminds america each that “no process is incorrect that leads to the archetypal draught of a book.” Or, arsenic McCracken erstwhile said of bowling: “I similar the information that it’s difficult, intolerable to perfect, but radical are truly devoted to it.” This measurement is each strikes, nary spares.

Only Sing: 152 Uncollected Dream Songs
By John Berryman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 192 pp., $28
(Dec. 9)

Berryman’s “77 Dream Songs” won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. To work these unpublished imagination songs 60 years aboriginal feels similar uncovering treasure and acknowledging that you similar the rough-cut gems arsenic overmuch arsenic the polished ones. Henry, the large poet’s change ego, reappears successful each his ambiguity and confusion, an all-American, unremarkable, yet observant “unheroic hero” successful the words of Shane McCrae, who writes the Introduction to this collection.

A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature
By Adam Morgan
Atria/One Signal: 288 pp., $29
(Dec. 9)

Anyone who pigeonholes different idiosyncratic should beryllium told the communicative of Margaret C. Anderson, a privileged Midwesterner who was besides queer and extremist and without whom we mightiness not beryllium speechmaking Djuna Barnes, James Joyce, and T. S. Eliot (among others) today. Anderson founded “The Little Review” successful Chicago successful 1913 and nurtured it into a work that moved to New York and Paris — and played a portion successful the infamous “Ulysses” obscenity trial.