Why has Ancient Egypt fascinated the world for centuries?

Ronald Fritzi traces its long afterlife in his new book, Egypt Omenia.

It's more fun for a person to think, wow, isn't that amazing that Egypt could have been a colony of that land rather than that they put this civilization together themselves.

What do Tony Morrison, Truman Capote, Martin Ames, and Udora Welty all have in common?

They're all gathered together in a new anthology of profiles from Vanity Fair magazine, writers on writers.

Our reviewer, my Times colleague Matthew Schneier, has picked out some of the best.

It was new to me that Mary and Morehead Elizabeth Bishop stand as a kind of look out while she gave an elephant an illegal haircut.

We'll also talk about the 100 notable books of the year, literary news, and what we and other people are reading this week.

This is Inside the New York Times Book Review. I'm John Williams, filling in for Pamela Paul.

The holidays are upon us, and for the book review that means two things.

Our annual holiday books issue is out this week, and in it we've listed our 100 notable books of 2016.

My colleague's a Lytte Becker, Barry Goon, and our usual host, the editor of the book review, Pamela Paul, who as you will very clearly hear his suffering from Lyrngitis,

but his game to join us for this segment, are here with me now to talk about some of our favorites. Hi, everybody.

Hi, John. Hello.

Hi, how are you? Alighta, let's start with you on the fiction side of the ledger. Does anything stand out for you among the 50 fiction books that we listed?

Well, actually what I'd like to do is talk about books that are sort of below the radar, the quiet books.

And sometimes things that are published in the book are not that good.

What I'd like to do is talk about books that are sort of below the radar, the quiet books.

And sometimes things that are published earlier in the year get ignored later on.

Like Elizabeth Stout, I don't think, is going to be ignored.

But her book that came out in the spring, my name is Lucy Barton, is wonderful, and very moving, and quite subtle about the relationship of this woman and her mother.

And there's a similar quiet book that came out just a few months ago called A Life Writer by David Constantine,

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