Our Critics' Year in Reading
12/08/23 • 37 min
4 Listeners
The Times’s staff book critics — Dwight Garner, Jennifer Szalai and Alexandra Jacobs — do a lot of reading over the course of any given year, but not everything they read stays with them equally. On this week’s podcast, Gilbert Cruz chats with the critics about the books that did: the novels and story collections and works of nonfiction that made an impression in 2023 and defined their year in reading, including one that Garner says caught him by surprise.
“Eleanor Catton’s ‘Birnam Wood’ is in some ways my novel of the year,” Garner says. “And it’s not really my kind of book. This is going to sound stupid or snobby, but I’m not the biggest plot reader. I’m just not. I like sort of thorny, funny, earthy fiction, and if there’s no plot I’m fine with that. But this has a plot like a dream. It just takes right off. And she’s such a funny, generous writer that I was just happy from the first time I picked it up.”
Here are the books discussed on this week’s episode:
“Be Mine,” by Richard Ford
“Onlookers,” by Ann Beattie
“I Am Homeless if This Ia Not My Home,” by Lorrie Moore
“People Collide,” by Isle McElroy
“Birnam Wood,” by Eleanor Catton
“Biography of X,” by Catherine Lacey
“Madonna: A Rebel Life,” by Mary Gabriel
“The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune,” by Alexander Stille
“The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions,” by Jonathan Rosen
“Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State,” by Kerry Howley
“The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight,” by Andrew Leland
“Fatherland: A Memoir of War, Conscience, and Family Secrets,” by Burkhard Bilger
“King: A Life,” Jonathan Eig
“Larry McMurtry: A Life,” Tracy Daugherty
“Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey,” by Robert “Mack” McCormick
“Roald Dahl, Teller of the Unexpected: A Biography,” by Matthew Dennison
“The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality,” by William Egginton
“Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World,” by Naomi Klein
“The Notebooks and Diaries of Edmund Wilson”
“Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair,” by Christian Wiman
“Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals,” by Oliver Burkeman
We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
The Times’s staff book critics — Dwight Garner, Jennifer Szalai and Alexandra Jacobs — do a lot of reading over the course of any given year, but not everything they read stays with them equally. On this week’s podcast, Gilbert Cruz chats with the critics about the books that did: the novels and story collections and works of nonfiction that made an impression in 2023 and defined their year in reading, including one that Garner says caught him by surprise.
“Eleanor Catton’s ‘Birnam Wood’ is in some ways my novel of the year,” Garner says. “And it’s not really my kind of book. This is going to sound stupid or snobby, but I’m not the biggest plot reader. I’m just not. I like sort of thorny, funny, earthy fiction, and if there’s no plot I’m fine with that. But this has a plot like a dream. It just takes right off. And she’s such a funny, generous writer that I was just happy from the first time I picked it up.”
Here are the books discussed on this week’s episode:
“Be Mine,” by Richard Ford
“Onlookers,” by Ann Beattie
“I Am Homeless if This Ia Not My Home,” by Lorrie Moore
“People Collide,” by Isle McElroy
“Birnam Wood,” by Eleanor Catton
“Biography of X,” by Catherine Lacey
“Madonna: A Rebel Life,” by Mary Gabriel
“The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune,” by Alexander Stille
“The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions,” by Jonathan Rosen
“Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State,” by Kerry Howley
“The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight,” by Andrew Leland
“Fatherland: A Memoir of War, Conscience, and Family Secrets,” by Burkhard Bilger
“King: A Life,” Jonathan Eig
“Larry McMurtry: A Life,” Tracy Daugherty
“Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey,” by Robert “Mack” McCormick
“Roald Dahl, Teller of the Unexpected: A Biography,” by Matthew Dennison
“The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality,” by William Egginton
“Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World,” by Naomi Klein
“The Notebooks and Diaries of Edmund Wilson”
“Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair,” by Christian Wiman
“Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals,” by Oliver Burkeman
We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Previous Episode
10 Best Books of 2023
It’s that time of year: After months of reading, arguing and (sometimes) happily agreeing, the Book Review’s editors have come up with their picks for the 10 Best Books of 2023. On this week’s podcast, Gilbert Cruz reveals the chosen titles — five fiction, five nonfiction — and talks with some of the editors who participated in the process.
Here are the books discussed on this week’s episode:
“The Bee Sting,” by Paul Murray
“Chain-Gang All-Stars,” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
“Eastbound,” by Maylis de Kerangal
“The Fraud,” by Zadie Smith
“North Woods,” by Daniel Mason
“The Best Minds,” by Jonathan Rosen
“Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs,” by Kerry Howley
“Fire Weather,” by John Vaillant
“Master Slave Husband Wife,” by Ilyon Woo
“Some People Need Killing,” by Patricia Evangelista
We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Next Episode
How to Tell the Story of a Giant Wildfire
John Vaillant’s book “Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World” takes readers to the petroleum boomtown of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, in May 2016, when a wildfire that started in the surrounding boreal forest grew faster than expected and tore through the city, destroying entire neighborhoods in a rampage that lasted for days.
On this week’s episode, Vaillant (whose book was one of our 10 Best for 2023) calls it a “bellwether,” and tells the host Gilbert Cruz how he decided to put the fire itself at the center of his story rather than choosing a human character to lead his audience through the narrative.
“It was a bit of a leap," he says. "It was a risk. But it also felt like, given the role that fire is increasingly playing in our world now, it really deserved to be focused on, on its own merit, from its own point of view, if you will.”
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
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