The Washington Post published a list of “50 notable works of nonfiction,” and it’s no surprise that the much-praised biography Updike, by Adam Begley, made the list.

Entries are alphabetical, so Updike comes near the end, and the annotation is short but sweet:

“Begley not only chronicles Updike’s life but also manages to produce a major work of criticism.”

You have to be a subscriber to access the full story, but The Wall Street Journal also included Updike in a round-up of “Gift Books: Biography.” Here’s what they had to say about Begley’s bio:

“Elegantly written as well as psychologically acute, both John Lahr’s Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (Norton, 765 pages, $39.95) and Adam Begley’s Updike (Harper, 558 pages, $29.99) superbly chronicle the second half of the 20th century from the vantage point of two very different American authors. Tennessee Williams, the consummate outsider, said he wanted to speak the truth as he saw it, but his romance with the theater brought him pleasure as well as self-consuming pain. Copiously drawing on Williams’s stunning letters and journals, Mr. Lahr balances quotation and interpretation, sympathy and criticism, in this searing and unforgettable portrait of the artist who gave voice to the repressed, the reviled and the restless. And in his fond but gimlet-eyed depiction of John Updike, a consummate insider, Adam Begley depicts the celebrated author as professional writer and proficient evader. Mr. Begley’s Updike comes across as vigorously self-confident and tacitly aggressive, as well as frank and furtive. As the author notes, “biography ought to give a sense of what its subject was like to shake hands with,” and he accomplishes just that in this lucid, elegant and not-to-be missed book.”