Rebecca sits down with Vanessa Diaz to discuss the adaptation of Hamnet, in wide theatrical release this week. They talk about the film as a standalone piece of art, how it works as an adaptation, the key differences between the book and the movie, and how to tell if it's for you.

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We’ve got the chops to match the book lover in your life with their next favorite read. And it only takes a few clicks to gift Tailored Book Recommendations! Simply head to mytbr.co/gift to get started.

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Even as a Shadow, Even as a Dream

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Jeff and Rebecca talk about the Goodreads Choice Winners, the NYT's 10 Best of the Year, NPR's excellent year-end round-up before talking to Katie del Rosario of Spotify about the year in audiobooks and Spotify's Audiobooks Wrapped.

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Spotify Audiobook Trends for 2025

NYT 100  Notable Books of 2025, which does, in fact, contain its top 10

NYT Top Ten

NPR’s “Books We Love”

WaPo’s top ten

Goodreads Choice Awards

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Jeff and Rebecca look back on their It Books selections from 2025 to see what they got right and wrong. But first, take a look at a pretty uninspiring slate of December new releases.

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December Releases:

For a complete list of It Books discussed in this episode, visit our website.

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Jeff and Rebecca wrap up the 2025 Holiday Recommendations.

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In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

2 AM at the Cat’s Pajamas by Marie-Helen Bertino

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers by Samuel Burr

The Slough House series by Mick Herron

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Jane Harper

Tilt by Emma Pattee

A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean

The Unveiling by Quan Barry

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

Riverman by Ben McGrath

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy

Kevin Wilson

People Like Us by Jason Mott

Marie-Helene Bertino

Katie Kitamura

Colson Whitehead

Tom Robbins

Oreo by Fran Ross

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

Something From Nothing by Alison Roman

Start Here by Sohla El-Waylly

Good Things by Samin Nosrat

Six Seasons of Pasta (and/or Six Seasons of Vegetables) by Josh McFadden

Now & Again by Julia Turshen

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

The Lost Man by Jane Harper

The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo

Like a Mother by Angela Garbes

Essential Labor by Angela Garbes

Splinters by Leslie Jamison

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

Jonathan Evison

Model Home by Rivers Solomon

Reign & Ruin by J. D. Evans

So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport

The Imposter Cure by Jessamy Hibberd

Life in Three Dimensions by Shigehiro Oishi

The Broken Shore by Peter Temple

Light Years by James Salter

I Married You for Happiness by Lily Tuck

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levitan

Ross Gay

Hanif Abdurraquib

Ada Limon

Sarah Kay

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Jeff and Rebecca are back with another holiday recommendation show. Part 2 coming on Monday.

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Little Blue Truck

Little Pea by Amy Rosenthal

I Love You, Stinky Face by Lisa McCourt

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

Real Americans by Rachel Khong

A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst

The Lost Man by Jane Harper

Highway 59 series by Attica Locke

Tilt by Emma Pattee

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

Katabasis by R. F. Kuang

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

We the People by Jill Lepore

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

It’s Only Drowning by David Litt

The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt

The Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

Blob by Maggie Su

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

Matrix by Lauren Groff

The Princess in Black by Shannon Hale

Survivor’s Guilt by Robyn Gigl

Jinx Ballou series by Dharma Kelleher

How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe by Charles Yu

Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway

Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson

Audition by Katie Kitamura

A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar

Palaver by Bryan Washington

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff

Mr. Ives' Christmas by Oscar Hijuelos

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Winter by Ali Smith

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Jeff and Rebecca inhale a slew of best books of the year lists.

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Book Riot’s Best Books of 2025

National Book Award winners

Shein partners with Alibris to sell books

Lit Hub’s Book Twitter bracket

Libro.fm's top 10 audiobooks of the year

Audible’s best of 2025

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Vanessa Diaz is back to talk with Jeff and Rebecca about what magical realism is, where it comes from, and how to talk about it.

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One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriela Garcia Marquez

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Labyrinths or Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar

The Storyteller’s Death by Ann Dávila Cardinal

The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez

Magical/Realism by Angelica Villareal

The Week of Colors by Elena Garro, Megan McDowell (trans.)

The Queen of Swords by Jazmina Barrera, Christina MacSweeney (trans.)

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Vanessa Diaz sits in for Rebecca this week and talks to Jeff about the challenges of making a best books of the year list before getting into the news of the week.

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Amazon’s best books of the year

David Szalay has won the 2025 Booker Prize for his novel Flesh

B&N’s best book of the Year is Mona’s Eyes

The 2025 Goodreads Choice Awards. 

I’m bookmarking this deep dive into the fashion industry’s recurrent interest in literature for knife-and-fork reading this weekend

Reader’s Digest asked three professional designers to pick the best book covers of the year

Kindle translate

Somebody is Walking On Your Grave by Mariana Enriquez

Stolen Crown by Tracy Borman

Devouring Time by Tod Goddard

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

Flashlight by Susan Choi

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This is a bonus preview of our ⁠Patreon-only⁠ episode in which Jeff and Rebecca talk about what they've been doing with their lives recently, outside of the world of books.

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Jeff and Rebecca talk about the books they still want to get to before 2026 gets here.

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Flesh by David Szalay

Maggie by Katie Yee

Kaplan's Plot by Jason Diamond

Who is Government? by Michael Lewis

Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer

The Uncool by Cameron Crowe

Joyride by Susan Orlean

A Truce That is Not Peace by Miriam Toews

Trying by Chloe Caldwell

Next of Kin by Gabrielle Hamilton

Girl Warrior by Joy Harjo

The Season by Helen Garner

Does This Make Me Funny? by Zosia Mamet

Palaver by Bryan Washington

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

Black-Owned by Char Adams

This is for Everyone by Tim Berners-Lee

Every Screen on the Planet by Emily Baker-White

Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

Heart the Lover by Lily King

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood

A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar

The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie

Squirrel by Nancy Castaldo

Isola by Allegra Goodman

We The People by Jill Lepore

The History of Money by David McWilliams

Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane

The Emergency by George Packer

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott

Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart

Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree

The Librarians by Sherry Thomas

The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett

The Persian by David McCloskey

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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