A Pride of Literary Lions Unleashed All at Once

The pileup has left publishers jostling for shelf space and publication dates, and critics wondering how they can review all of the elite writers worthy of attention — not to mention the debut and midlist authors who might be neglected.

“You can only read so much,” said Ron Charles, the fiction editor for The Washington Post. “There are some real giants this year. It’s difficult for places like us that just run one review a day.”