Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive

look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't

have to.

Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day.

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at Zibby Owens. Sarah Gelman is the editorial director for books at Amazon. We're talking

today about Amazon's best books of the year. Named after the memoir, her father was reading when she was born, Sarah was destined for a career in books.

She started as a book publicist in New York before relocating to Seattle to work at Amazon.

Known for her guest appearances on national talk shows and her signature book club Sarah Selects,

which, by the way, has picked so many of the books that we have here on the podcast, Sarah loves fiction, memoirs, and a good multi-generational family saga.

When she's not working or reading, she is spending time with her two young sons, walking her anxious and lovable dog, or designing the perfect reading nook.

Welcome, Sarah. Thanks so much for coming back on Totally Booked. I can't wait to discuss your Amazon best books of the year, 2025, your most anticipated, and just books in general. So exciting. Thank you for having me. I love to talk about books with you. I have to say your recent picks, one after another after another. I'm like, yep, me too. Yep,

love that. Love that. I feel like we are on the same page and a lot of our picks. I love it when you look at someone else's best of list and it's like, oh, yeah, because sometimes I look at them and I'm like, I don't know. This just isn't my taste, but it's someone's taste. but we really want our list to be something that people look at and they recognize some books.

Like, I don't want it. my taste, but it's someone's taste. But we really want our list to be something that people look at

and they recognize some books. Like, I don't want it to be totally esoteric. And then also,

you see the books. You're like, okay, I've heard of the correspondent. So I'm going to try this

other book, too, because this feels like a list I would like. So we're purposeful about that.

We don't need these to be books that people have never heard of I would like. So we're purposeful about that. We don't need

these to be books that people have never heard of before. Okay. There we go. Although some, yeah, I mean, yeah, I was going to say, both. They should be both. They should be both. A nice mix. A nice mix. A nice mix. A nice mix. I mean, the correspondent, nobody had heard of at the beginning, right? I know. And it became a sleeper hit.

And it's such sleeper head.

And it's such a funny story how we came to discover it. I mean, obviously there was word of mouth,

but you probably have this in your job. It's really hard to go back and read something once you've

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