I'm Gilbert Cruz editor of the New York Times Book Review and this is the Book Review

podcast.

We're winding down, down, down, down towards the end of the year.

And I'm hoping to use the last few weeks of December

to catch up on some big books from 2023

that I wasn't able to get to,

and maybe even possibly read something that was not published this year.

I'm recording from home today so I'm just going to take a quick look on that shelf over

there right in front of me at my pile of things that I would like to read.

There's an old Chester Himes book there.

There's a collection of Lori Moore essays.

I'd like to read that.

There's a book called Our Wives Under the Sea

by Julia Armfield that I've been meaning to check out.

There is the first book from Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Erniend Diaz, who we spoke to on the

podcast after he won his Pulitzer, and that book was loaned

to me by one of my co-workers here at the Times.

If I don't return it soon, she might put a hit out on me.

So I have a pile of things I'm hoping to get to over the holidays and I hope you also have a

pile. I hope you have a lot to choose from and maybe some of those are books that were on are

10 best books of the year. On this week's episode I'm speaking with the

author of one of those books, John Valians, author of Fire Weather, a true story

...