The 10 Best Books of 2025 Image

The 10 Best Books of 2025

2 December - 1 hour 18 mins
Podcast Series The Book Review

All year long, the staff of The New York Times Book Review conducts a running discussion over what belongs on its year-end Top 10 list. In this week’s episode, host Gilbert Cruz gathers a group of fellow Book Review editors to talk about the most exciting fiction and nonfiction of the year. 

Here are the books discussed in this week’s episode:

Fiction

“The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” by Kiran Desai“Angel Down,” by Daniel Kraus“The Sisters,” by Jonas Hassen Khemiri“The Director,” by Daniel Kehlmann“Stone Yard Devotional,” by Charlotte WoodNonfiction

“A Marriage at Sea,” by Sophie Elmhirst“Wild Thing,” by Sue Prideaux“Mother Emanuel,” by Kevin Sack“There Is No Place for Us," by Brian G...

1 hour 18 mins

Series Episodes

Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Hamnet'

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

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 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

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

Book Club: Let's Talk About 'The Buffalo Hunter Hunter'

Book Club: Let's Talk About 'The Buffalo Hunter Hunter'

“The Buffalo Hunter Hunter,” by Stephen Graham Jones, is a searching historical novel that examines America’s past sins and also a gory horror thriller. In this Halloween episode of the Book Review Book Club, the host MJ Franklin discusses the novel with Gilbert Cruz and Joumana Khatib.

45 mins

31 October Finished

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