I'm Gilbert Cruz and this is the Book Review Podcast.

We have one more year and episode for you.

I recently sat down with three of our staff critics, Jen Zalai, Alexandra Jacobs, and Dwight

Garner to talk about their years in reading.

We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Hello, everyone.

Hey, Gilbert.

Hi, Gilbert.

We could go in many directions.

Usually the staff critics for the New York Times pick their top 10 books of the year.

That is not something that we did this year.

I think perhaps you can tell me if I'm wrong to the delight of some or all.

But what I want to do is talk about your year in reading, what things you loved, what things

you returned to new or old.

I was trying to figure out thematically, which was a way to start.

But one thing I noticed, whether it was in the top 10 books that we worked on together

as a group or in individual books that you reviewed, we did a lot of memoirs.

And memoirs are very, they're in a court in like form, they're very pliable form.

I did want to start with celebrity memoirs because at least in the back quarter of the

year, the celebrity memoir was huge.

We had Bono, we had Matthew Perry, Jeanette McCurdy, Quentin Tarantino wrote a celebrity

memoir of sorts in Alexandra on your list of favorite books of the year that we're going

...