This past year has been, shall we say, not the best. But as disappointing as 2020 was in myriad ways, one thing that decidedly did not let us down were the books.
Gayle King tweeted praise, along with her nine-minute “CBS This Morning” interview with Tyson timed to the release of her new memoir: “Thank you Cicely Tyson for everything” Winter reading guide:20 books from Joan Didion, Kazuo Ishiguro, Cicely Tyson, more. Related news for 'cicely tyson daughter' Jan. 27, 2021 - Cicely Tyson’s death comes days after her memoir was released. These are the book’s most poignant moments USA TODAY - www.usatoday.comCicely Tyson’s death comes days after her memoir was released.
This past year saw the release of killer literary titles, like Rumaan Alam’s “Leave the World Behind,” Yaa Gyasi’s “Transcendent Kingdom” and David Mitchell’s “Utopia Avenue”; the return of nostalgic fan favorites in Stephenie Meyer’s “Midnight Sun” and Suzanne Collins’ “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”; moving celebrity memoirs from Mariah Carey, Diane Keaton and Alex Trebek; and the blockbuster bestselling first volume of Barack Obama’s presidential memoirs.
And from the looks of things, 2021 is going to be just as full of the good stuff. Here’s a glance ahead at 20 winter releases we can’t wait to read – ideally by the fire with a cup of hot cocoa.
Best books of 2020:These 13 titles scored perfect 4-star reviews from USA TODAY’s critics
“The Prophets,”by Robert Jones, Jr. • Release date: Jan. 5 • Jones’ powerful debut novel centers on a forbidden love between two enslaved gay men on an antebellum Mississippi plantation. Kirkus Reviews calls it an “ambitious, imaginative, and important tale of Black queerness through history.”
“Outlawed,” by Anna North • Release date: Jan. 5 • It’s 1894, and Ada is an outlaw. After a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town that hangs barren witches as women, the teenage wife joins the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a new safe haven for outcast women.
“Walking with Ghosts,” by Gabriel Byrne • Release date: Jan. 12 • The award-winning Irish actor (“Miller’s Crossing,” “The Usual Suspects”) reflects on his working-class Dublin childhood and his rise to stardom in Hollywood and on Broadway.
“A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life,” by George Saunders • Release date: Jan. 12 • The short-story master and Booker Prize-winning author of “Lincoln in the Bardo” has long taught his MFA students at Syracuse University a class on the Russian short story. Now, he brings that class to us, teaching readers how fiction works and why.
“Concrete Rose,”by Angie Thomas • Release date: Jan. 12 • Thomas revisits Garden Heights 17 years before the events of “The Hate U Give” in a prequel that explores Maverick Carter’s coming-of-age. When the dope-slinging son of a former gang legend finds out he’s going to be a father, he starts to learn what it means to really be a man.
“Let Me Tell You What I Mean,” by Joan Didion • Release date: Jan. 26 • A collection of 12 essays drawn from the early days of Didion’s five-decade career on topics as varied as a Gamblers Anonymous meeting and Nancy Reagan.
“Burnt Sugar,” by Avni Doshi • Release date: Jan. 26 • Shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, this debut novel set in India finds a grown daughter tasked with caring for the aging mother who never cared for her.
“Just As I Am,”by Cicely Tyson • Release date: Jan. 26 • The award-winning actress, nonagenarian and groundbreaking Black icon reflects on her life and long career in this meditative memoir.
“The Low Desert: Gangster Stories,”by Tod Goldberg • Release date: Feb. 2 • Twelve spare, stylish contemporary crime stories that exemplify the craft. “These spare slices of literary noir are the work of a master storyteller,” says a starred review in Publisher Weekly.
“The Four Winds,”by Kristin Hannah • Release date: Feb. 2 • From the author of “The Great Alone” comes an epic new novel of hope and sacrifice set against the backdrop of the Great Depression. In 1934 Texas, Elsa Martinelli must journey west in search of an ever-elusive better future.
“Mike Nichols: A Life,” by Mark Harris • Release date: Feb. 2 • Acclaimed film writer Harris, with deep research and vivid details, writes a comprehensive biography of one of America’s brightest creative forces. Publishers Weekly calls it “a joyously readable and balanced account of a complex man.”
“A Bright Ray of Darkness,” by Ethan Hawke • Release date: Feb. 2 • The latest novel from the acclaimed actor (“First Reformed,” “Reality Bites”) is a meditation on art and celebrity. A young man rises to fame in his Broadway debut in “Henry IV” as his marriage implodes.
“The Removed,” by Brandon Hobson • Release date: Feb. 2 • Steeped in Cherokee history and folklore, the latest from the National Book Award finalist finds the fractured Echota family reckoning with the death of their son, killed 15 years ago in a police shooting.
“Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted,”by Suleika Jaouad • Release date: Feb. 9 • Just a few weeks before her 23rd birthday, recent college grad Jaouad was given a life-changing diagnosis: leukemia, with just a 35% chance of survival. She survived the nearly four years of treatment, but it took an epic road trip to heal her soul.
“How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need,”by Bill Gates • Release date: Feb. 16 • With the help of experts in fields such as physics, engineering, chemistry, finance and politics, the technologist and philanthropist offers a practical and accessible plan for getting the world to zero greenhouse gas emissions and averting climate catastrophe.
“No One Is Talking About This,”by Patricia Lockwood • Release date: Feb. 16 • Lockwood’s first novel, following her memoir “Priestdaddy,” follows an unnamed woman made famous by a social media post in a meditation on life, both online and off.
“Klara and the Sun,”by Kazuo Ishiguro • Release date: March 2 • From the Nobel Prize-winning author of “Never Let Me Go” and “The Remains of the Day” comes a new story told from the perspective of Klara, an Artificial Friend who watches the world from her place in the store, hopeful that someone will choose her.
“The Committed,” by Viet Thanh Nguyen • Release date: March 2 • This sequel to Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Sympathizer” follows its spy protagonist to Paris in the 1980s with his brother Bon, where the two deal drugs and get roped into Paris’ criminal underworld.
“Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage,”by Anne Lamott • Release date: March 2 • The bestselling author of “Help, Thanks, Wow” returns with an inspiring guide to restoring hope and joy in the midst of suffering, drawing from her own life experience.
“How Beautiful We Were,” by Imbolo Mbue • Release date: March 9 • From the bestselling author of “Behold the Dreamers” comes the sweeping story of an African village on a collision course with an American oil company and those who take a stand and fight back against colonialism and capitalism.
This conversation will cover the first four episodes of the new season. Obviously, there will be spoilers.
Nikki: So far this season is all about CLAIRE. I’ve always found her fascinating, but just felt so frustrated on her behalf for most of season 3, because she clearly didn’t have enough to do or an obvious path to the kind of influence she wanted — she was stuck, at the mercy of that weird uneven plot with Russia (who CAAARES), constrained rather than freed by the power of the White House. It didn’t feel like her and Frank against the world anymore. When she left him at the end of last season that felt inevitable, and I was eager to watch them duke it out in season 4 because the show, for better or worse, has set up each Underwood as the only rival worthy of the other. In past seasons, Frank so easily outflanked and outmaneuvered the hapless adversaries whose loyalty or jobs or power he wanted — yes, he had to scheme and kill and cover things up, but often the people he was up against never fully realized what he was doing until it was too late — which is honestly one of the show’s weaknesses! But it also means the only person who could possibly fight Frank and beat him is, and always has been, Claire.
As hard as I root for Claire, I have to admit I was pleased that her plot of pushing Doris Jones (THE FLAWLESS CICELY TYSON)’s daughter Celia aside didn’t work out for her, even if it meant Frank temporarily seized the upper hand with that back-stabbing drop-in at the State of the Union. (I appreciated how fast Celia and Doris froze Frank out, too, when that KKK photo of his dad turned up.) I’m still waiting to see if the show lets any nonwhite characters really drive the plot, but it’s hard when so much of the power and agency and ruthless machinations are reserved for the Underwoods. A part of me was really glad that Claire didn’t succeed in leap-frogging over Celia for that House seat she wanted. (But did she ever really want it, or was it mostly to gain Frank’s attention and angle for the veep spot?)
I have always thought of Claire as kind of a closed book, and she’s such a glorious and compelling one I don’t mind, but the scenes with her mother in Texas have me rethinking her a little bit! It’s not particularly subtle, having her walk into that huge bereft house and pluck dust-cloths off the furniture of a bitter, dying woman still in residence. Ellen Burstyn is a marvelous icy terror of a mother, and it wasn’t exactly a shock to discover that Claire’s mom is like that, but I found their scenes together surprisingly…affecting? The hesitant hug! Elizabeth ripping off her wig and shouting “I AM THE MOTHER” when Claire threatens her! I don’t think she could possibly hate Frank so much, either, if she didn’t also love her daughter in some terrible, consuming but largely unexpressed way. And the show has given us so little in terms of Claire’s interior life and history that anything at all feels like a lot.
Nicole: Absolutely. I think that one of the things I’ve always loved about Claire’s treatment by the show is their lack of interest in “humanizing” her: she never eats, we’ve seen her take off her heels…once, Frank is the one who gets emo over his old college boyfriend and military reenactor nonsense and briefly loses momentum. Claire is always moving forward, like a shark. So I found it VERY unsettling to see her hesitate in her family home, wondering if she should open her mother’s door, etc.
The way Claire fights Frank is also unique in the history of their externally-facing skirmishes. She leaves her fingerprints all over it, purposefully. Claire doesn’t want to defeat Frank, Claire wants Frank to know she CAN defeat him, and drops those earrings on top of his history like “this is the tiniest, tiniest crumb of what we know about each other, don’t think I can’t or won’t take you right to the edge.”
Can we talk about Meechum, for a minute? I loved that sweet, lonely, handsome goober so much, and there are so FEW moments of genuine emotion that escape the Underwoods in this series. Frank tracing the outline of his hand on the wall? I knew in that moment that Meechum wasn’t making it through the season. Also, my heart BROKE for him when Frank asked if he was the leak, because how DARE you sir!?
RIP, Meechum. You were too precious for this sinful earth.
Nikki: Poor Meechum, we hardly knew ye. He was so unquestioningly loyal, which really makes you wonder what the hell happened in his poor puppy-dog life that the Underwoods would look like salvation. Like you, I get and actually appreciate the show not attempting to “humanize” Claire, but I sometimes wish we got more back story on the Underwoods’ pawns, since they are the closest thing this show has to real humans. I would have liked to know more about Meechum before he snuffed it. When Frank traced Meechum’s hand on the wall I actually said, out loud, “Sorry you’re about to be killed.” There was nothing left for Meechum to do but die, unfortunately, kind of like Lucas once he realized no one was ever going to believe him.
In Lucas’s case, we knew he was doomed the moment he was released from prison; it was just a question of when and how. But I still don’t know if I buy the idea that Lucas of all people would turn homicidal after one failed meeting with Frank’s Democratic opposition. And are we supposed to believe that he wouldn’t even try pitching his expose on the Underwoods somewhere first? What happened to “Slugline”??
What did you think of the assassination attempt? The show telegraphed that shooting for a while before Lucas actually pulled the trigger. All I could think was HOW HAS NO ONE EVER SHOT FRANK BEFORE. What did you think of Claire’s reaction? Do you think it was just too neat of a way to end or at least delay the standoff between them, and sink Heather Dunbar’s chances in the bargain?
Cicely Tyson Daughter Joan Didion Daughter
Nicole: Oh, let me go back to your point about Lucas! I definitely think he would have dumped everything via Tumblr and started tweeting accusations before going homicidal. He was a NEWSPAPERMAN. Obviously he was circling the drain in terms of his ability to go on in the face of constant defeat, but it didn’t ring true to me, no.
Every show about the Presidency breaks out an assassination attempt in the first few seasons. Can I say that before I saw Lucas’ face, I thought Claire might have paid someone off to do it? It WAS pat and convenient and allowed the show to back down from Underwood v Underwood, but, well, I guess it worked!
Cicely Tyson Daughter
To chime in about people of color on the show, something I was saying on Twitter the other day was that I DO so prefer how their storylines are handled on House of Cards over The West Wing. Cicely Tyson and her daughter don’t admire Frank Underwood, they want to know what they can get from him. Remy too! On TWW, black characters in particular were there to make the white characters seem progressive and anti-racist, whereas in HoC, they’ve got their own agendas. They’re playing the game.
I do wish we had a better grasp of Remy and Jackie as a couple. We get the occasional hotel room clinch, but not whatever drives that relationship. Why do they never team up? But I think this goes back to your theory that the Underwoods suck all the oxygen out of the room.
See you on Wednesday to talk episodes 5-8! Toasties, tell us your 1-4 observations!
Nicole Cliffe is an editor of The Toast and Nicole Chung is the managing editor. Together they are the Nicollective.