If you’re still sleeping on the fact that we’ve entered the holiday season, it’s time to wake. It snowed yesterday in New York, airline tickets are officially through the roof, and The New York Times holiday movie preview landed on stoops almost two full weeks ago.

Movies are as big a part of Thanksgiving and Christmas as turkey and stress for some of us. While the season brings a glut of prestige pictures that might as well be named Oscar, Please, it’s also the time for studios to trot out their marquee directors and make mainstream movie culture feel relevant for a few minutes.

Martin Scorsese is one of the most familiar faces on this scene. This year you can look forward to "The Wolf of Wall Street" starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, and to prepare, pick up Scorsese by Ebert, a great book on the director by the late Roger Ebert.

Scorsese by Ebert is a collection of reflections, reviews, reconsiderations, and interviews that adds up to a personal reflection on the director by the critic. Ebert is the right guy for the job, someone who admired Scorsese’s work from the beginning, giving the maestro his first review for Who’s That Knocking at My Door, the movie that Scorsese started when he was a student at NYU with an unknown Harvey Keitel.

Elsewhere, Scorsese has said that the only thing valuable about his first movie is that it captured the way New York Italian-Americans talk, but Ebert rightly begs to differ. He’s rapturous about the movie, and does an excellent job of capturing what’s so exciting about the rough, funny, and inspiring debut. With characteristic clarity, Ebert places the movie in the context of Scorsese’s work, movie history, and the director’s love for cinema.

Ebert and Scorsese were never friends, but they got to know each other, and their acquaintance extends back to the director’s beard and dungarees days, when he wore snug tees instead of expensive suits. In one funny anecdote, Scorsese’s mom tells her son he can’t wear jeans to a function that Ebert and Gene Siskel were hosting in the director’s honor. The book also contains a must-read interview with Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader right before "Taxi Driver" came out, where Scorsese explains why "Taxi Driver" is a more feminist film than "Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore."

It’s impossible to read more than a few pages of Scorsese by Ebert without wanting to spend the weekend watching movies like "Mean Streets," "After Hours" (which Ebert appreciates more than Scorsese), and "Goodfellas." But now that you’ve realized that Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and Christmas will happen as soon as you’ve let your guard down, you might not have time for movie marathons. So between flight planning, shopping amongst the bustle, and stress headaches, consider thumbing through Scorsese by Ebert whenever you get the chance to wind down.

Purchase original Biographile drawings by Nathan Gelgud here.