Say what you will about 2020—you can use profanity, it’s OK—but you definitely can’t accuse it of being uneventful. This was a bizarre year for people in every field, and literature and publishing were no exception. Here are 10 of the weirdest, funniest, and most inexplicable things to happen in the book world this year.
Feb. 14: There’s been no shortage of books about the Trump administration over the last few years, but perhaps only one that details the president’s fascination with badgers. In January, Business Insider reported that Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng’s book, Sinking in the Swamp, due out the following month, revealed that Trump had a habit of peppering his then chief of staff, Reince Priebus, about the mustelids. “The president would also ask if Priebus had any photos of badgers he could show him, and if Priebus could carefully explain to him how badgers ‘work’ exactly,” the authors wrote. Of course, Trump’s interest in the animals was the only odd thing about his presidency, which was otherwise completely and totally normal.
July 6: The panic over the coronavirus led people to do some pretty crazy things: hoard toilet paper, obsessively wash cans of beans they bought at the grocery store, convince themselves they were finally going to learn to play the ukulele. In July, a few readers in Florida were somehow even more extra—they decided to microwave library books in hopes of killing the virus, leading to pleas from librarians to please stop treating the tomes the same way they would a Hungry-Man frozen dinner.
July 16: Author Lorrie Moore has never microwaved a book (that we know of), but she still wanted to set something on fire. So in a July essay for the New York Review of Books, ostensibly about Sally Rooney’s Normal People, Moore essentially declared war on millennials, opining that they were not on fleek, and certainly not bae. Millennials “have no authentic counterculture” and “seem like nice people. But not normal.” Twitter, of course, had a field day with the essay, with author Tony Tulathimutte writing, “Lorrie Moore baiting everyone into getting mad online means she beat us at our own game.”
Aug. 6: A library in Texas wanted people to know that despite the coronavirus lockdown, they were still open for curbside pickup. So in August, they did it in the most ridiculously over the top way: with a commercial starring “Curbside Larry,” a library employee with Texas-sized enthusiasm. “What’s it going to take to put you into a biography or a science fiction today?” asked the pitchman, in a twangy tone reminiscent of old-school car dealership ads. The Internet was instantly charmed, with one Twitter user gushing, “CURBSIDE LARRY IS MY BOYFRIEND.” Yeah, yeah, get in line.
Aug. 7: Fox News host Sean Hannity thought he’d add a little gravitas to his latest book, Live Free or Die, by featuring a Latin motto—“Vivamus vel libero perit Americae”—on the cover. Unfortunately for Hannity, an Indiana University student pointed out that the motto is nonsense, translating not as “Live free or America dies,” but rather as “Let’s live or he passes away from America for the detriment of a free man.” Hannity’s publisher, Threshold Editions, changed the motto, and Hannity has wisely been sticking to English since then.
Aug. 17: There’s no better combination than great literature and fine dining. One patron of a library in Walla Walla, Washington, agreed, stashing five cans of Hamm’s beer and a pack of Godzilla Heads chewing gum behind a panel. Apparently he never came back to reclaim it—library workers discovered the stash in August, and calculated that it had been there for more than 30 years. Tragically, killjoys from the city deposited the brewskis and gum at a landfill. And that’s why we can’t have nice things.
Nov. 5: Obviously, the relationship between President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden is not exactly a close one. But it is in the mind of an Arizona teenager, who imagined the two as soulmates in a fanfic story called “That one where Joe Biden is a French teacher and Donald Trump thinks they’re rivals.” Slate interviewed the young author just days before the election, who said he wrote the story “partially just out of spite.” Which is as good a reason as any, we guess.
Nov. 9: Inspirational speeches from coaches to their teams have been around as long as organized sports. But in November, University of Minnesota football coach P.J. Fleck put his own spin on the pep talk, reading his players Taro Gomi’s children’s book Everyone Poops to amp them up for their game against the University of Illinois. Unbelievably, the gambit worked—the Golden Gophers beat the Fighting Illini the next day, which must have left Fleck feeling flush with pride.
Dec. 4: Do you think you know more about the publishing than bestselling romance novelist Nora Roberts? Well, you don’t. But in December, one online fan thought she did, complaining on a message board that Roberts and her publisher were holding back her next book unnecessarily. Roberts smacked the fan down with a retort that’s already legendary: “I have personally explained the process to you, Debra.” Yeah, Debra.
Dec. 11: Pretty much every company these days wants a “brand ambassador”—someone with a large social media following willing to shill their products. In December, a clothing company reached out to legendary novelist Ursula K. Le Guin, offering her free leggings in exchange for hyping their goods on Instagram. It turned out to be an offer that Le Guin could indeed refuse—the novelist is famously hostile to capitalism. Also, she’s dead. And now the world will never know just how fire those leggings are.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
Photos in illustration by Philippe Clement-Arterra/Universal Images Group via Getty Images, Grace Cary, Zane Williams, Harris County Public Library, Dan Tuffs/Getty Images, David Berding/Getty Images, Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Politicon, City of WallaWalla, Mandel Ngan, Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images, Michael Loccisano/Getty Images fro Unbridled Eve
