Our Book Critics on Their 2025 in Reading
12 December - 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
The 10 Best Books of 2025
In this week’s episode, host Gilbert Cruz gathers a group of fellow editors at The New York Times Book Review to talk about the most exciting fiction and nonfiction of the year.
1 hour 18 mins
2 December Finished
Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Hamnet'
In this week's episode, host MJ Franklin leads a discussion about Maggie O'Farrell's "Hamnet" — one of the Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2020, and the source of Chloé Zhao’s new movie of the same name.
1 hour 2 mins
28 November Finished
Welcome to Literary Award Season
It began with Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s Nobel Prize in October, and continued this month with the Booker Prize and the National Book Awards. Our panel of editors discusses what it all means.
46 mins
22 November Finished
Nicholas Boggs on Writing a James Baldwin Biography
Nicholas Boggs’s “Baldwin: A Love Story,” is many things at once. It’s a comprehensive biography of James Baldwin. It’s a nimble excavation of Baldwin’s work. And, most pressingly, it’s an argument for a new critical framework to understand Baldwin through the lens of love. Boggs joins MJ Franklin on this week's episode to talk about his new book.
36 mins
14 November Finished
The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, 50 Years Later
On Nov. 10, 1975, during a calamitous storm, the Edmund Fitzgerald sunk below the waves of Lake Superior. All 29 men aboard went down with the vessel. Just in time for the disaster's fiftieth anniversary, John U. Bacon has written a new account of the story, “The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald." In this week’s episode of the Book Review podcast, Bacon spoke with Gilbert Cruz about his new book.
39 mins
7 November Finished
