Here we are in mid-December, which means that along with all of the other year-end lists we produce and avidly consume at this time each year, The New York Times Book Review's staff critics are also looking back on everything they read in 2025, and toasting the books that have stayed with them.

On this episode, host Gilbert Cruz talks with Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai about their standout fiction and nonfiction of the past 12 months.

Books mentioned:

• "What We Can Know," by Ian McEwan
• "Flesh," by David Szalay
• "The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny," by Kiran Desai
• "Playworld," by Adam Ross
• "When the Going Was Good," by Graydon Carter
• "I Regret Almost Everything," by Keith McNally
• "When All the Men Wore Hats," by Susan Cheever
• "Notes to John," by Joan Didion
• "A Flower Traveled in My Blood," by Haley Cohen Gilliland
• "38 Londres Street," by Philippe Sands
• "Wild Thing," by Sue Prideaux
• "Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life," by Dan Nadel
• "Class Clown," by Dave Barry
• "Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel," by Frances Wilson
• "Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures: A Biography of Denis Johnson," by Ted Geltner
• "Shadow Ticket," by Thomas Pynchon
• "Selected Letters of John Updike," edited by James Schiff
• "Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford," by Carla Kaplan
• "More Everything Forever, AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity," by Adam Becker

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.