The 10 Best Books of 2025

The Book Review

The New York Times

Books, Arts

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2025

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times book review, and this is the book review podcast.
0:12.8	It is time. It's time for our best books of the year episode. How many books? We have 10 books as we do every year, five fiction, five nonfiction. This is going to be an extra full episode. How many books? We have 10 books as we do every year. Five fiction, five nonfiction.
0:22.8	This is going to be an extra full episode. It's going to be like a double-stuffed Oreo of book
0:28.2	conversation. Later on, I'm going to be joined by several editors to talk about our nonfiction
0:33.5	books of the year. But we are going to start with Dave Kim and Jumanagh Katib here to talk about the best fiction of the year.
0:41.8	Dave, welcome.
0:43.0	Hello, Gilbert.
0:43.9	Hi.
0:44.5	Shumana, hello.
0:45.6	Hello.
0:46.5	So last year when we did this episode, I don't know if you recall, but the three of us had been at the National Book Awards the night before, and we're feeling very
0:55.4	hazy.
0:56.2	Yes.
0:56.7	Our energy level was much lower.
0:58.6	Hopefully, we are going to hit a higher note today.
1:02.2	I think so.
1:02.9	Okay, good.
1:03.7	So we have five books on this list, and before we start our conversation in earnest,
1:08.4	I'm going to read off the titles and the authors here. They are as
1:12.9	follows. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kieran Desai. The Sisters by Yonis Hassan Kimeri,
1:20.8	Angel Down by Daniel Krause, the director by Daniel Kelman, and Stonyyard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.
1:29.3	Jumana, I would love for you to start with one of the earliest books that we discussed this year.
	...

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