Our Book Critics on Their 2025 in Reading
12 December 2025 - 36 minsHere we are in mid-December, which means that along with all of the other year-end lists we produce and avidly consume at this time each year, The New York Times Book Review's staff critics are also looking back on everything they read in 2025, and toasting the books that have stayed with them.
On this episode, host Gilbert Cruz talks with Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai about their standout fiction and nonfiction of the past 12 months.
Books mentioned:
"What We Can Know," by Ian McEwan"Flesh," by David Szalay"The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny," by Kiran Desai"Playworld," by Adam Ross"When the Going Was Good," by Graydon Carter"I Regret Almost Everything," by Keith McN...
Series Episodes
Chuck Klosterman Has So Much to Say About Football
The journalist, novelist and cultural critic Chuck Klosterman is best known for writing about rock music and pop culture. But Klosterman got his start in college as a sports journalist, and with his new book, “Football,” he has finally devoted an entire collection to the sport that has fundamentally shaped him alongside American society at large.
45 mins
23 January Finished
The Books We're Excited About in Early 2026
A new year means new books are on the way! So many new books. On this week’s episode, host Gilbert Cruz talks with fellow Book Review editors Joumana Khatib and MJ Franklin about the upcoming fiction and nonfiction titles they’re most anticipating between now and April.
45 mins
16 January Finished
'The Correspondent' Author Virginia Evans On Her Breakout Year
Virginia Evans’s debut novel, “The Correspondent,” was published last April and became one of the publishing industry’s heartwarming champions of 2025. For Evans, who had written and failed to sell seven previous novels, the book’s popularity has felt magical, as she explains to host Gilbert Cruz on this week’s podcast.
40 mins
9 January Finished
Book Club: Let’s Talk About ‘What We Can Know’
Ian McEwan’s latest novel, one of the Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of 2025, is a literary mystery about a scholar’s search for a long-lost poem.
51 mins
27 December 2025 Finished
What Did 2025 Mean for Books?
On this week’s episode, host MJ Franklin talks with his Book Review colleagues Alexandra Alter, Tina Jordan and John Maher about the biggest book stories and most significant reading trends of 2025.
47 mins
19 December 2025 Finished
