Book Club: Let’s Talk About ‘John of John’
1 August - 55 minsEarly in Douglas Stuart’s new novel, “John of John,” the Booker Prize-winning author describes a peculiar irony: “What skinned him was that the closer he got to home, the more lost he felt.”
It’s a passing line, but it captures the tension at the heart of this magnificent book: Here is a story of two men, each profoundly isolated, trying to figure out how to exist in a small, claustrophobic world.
The traveler heading home and dreading it is Cal, a young gay man who has recently graduated from college in Edinburgh and has been floundering ever since. At the start of the novel, he is summoned back to the small village where he grew up to care for his sick grandmother. He obliges, but he’s n...
Series Episodes
Let’s Talk About the Best Books of the Year (So Far)
It’s time for our annual midyear check-in on the books that we can’t stop thinking about.
39 mins
24 July Finished
Sophie Elmhirst on the True Story of a Shipwrecked Couple
Host Gilbert Cruz's conversation from last year with author Sophie Elmhirst features "Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession and Shipwreck" — the gripping 1970s story of a couple shipwrecked by a whale — newly out in paperback this summer.
31 mins
17 July Finished
This Author Says You Shouldn’t Be Intimidated by ‘The Odyssey’
explicitFirst, a primer from the author of “Circe,” Madeline Miller. Then, A.O. Scott on all the genres inside the 3,000-year-old poem.
43 mins
10 July Finished
Jill Lepore on What to Read This Fourth of July
As America celebrates its 250th birthday, Jill Lepore, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, offers a reading list for the occasion. Then we round up some of the summer’s most anticipated beach reads.
52 mins
3 July Finished
Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Yesteryear,' by Caro Claire Burke
Burke’s best-selling novel, about a tradwife influencer with some surprises in store, is one of the buzziest books of 2026. On this episode, MJ Franklin discusses “Transcription” with fellow Book Review editors Jennifer Harlan and Joumana Khatib.
58 mins
27 June Finished
