AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Folks, if you can, get out a pen and paper because we're about to talk about some of our favorite books of the year, and you might want to jot a few of these titles down. With us to talk about NPR's annual interactive books roundup, Books We Love, is Andrew Limbong, host of NPR's Book Of The Day podcast. Thanks for being with us.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: Hey, Ayesha.
RASCOE: We love this time of year. But for listeners who aren't familiar, tell them about Books We Love.
LIMBONG: It is not just, like, a best of - here's the 10 best books you've got to read in 2025, right? We ask everyone at NPR - so we got editors and producers and people on the business side and all that stuff. We asked them what their favorite books of the year were. This year, we're in the neighborhood of 380 books, which is a lot. But the size and scope is sort of the whole point.
RASCOE: So what have you got for us?
LIMBONG: All right, well, word on the street, I hear that someone on your staff is looking for something plotty (ph).
RASCOE: OK.
LIMBONG: So one of the books I personally recommended was a Emma Pattee's "Tilt." Now, this is a book about a woman. She's super-duper pregnant, and she's at an IKEA running an errand when an earthquake happens. And it's a really speedy book because at its core, it is a very - person has to go from point A to point B, right? She's got to find her way home out of this IKEA in a Portland that has been ravaged by an earthquake, and she runs into a few obstacles here and there, and she sort of has to be on the move. But what it is also is a critique or a pretty funny send-up of the "Keeping Up With The Joneses" of parenthood - right? - you know, that feeling where if you don't buy the fanciest schmanciest bajillion-dollar stroller, you are a failure.
RASCOE: Yeah.
LIMBONG: It's sort of poking at that and asking some interesting questions about motherhood and marriage and relationships, all while being straight up an action-adventure book.
Another sort of plotty book is Kashana Cauley's "The Payback." This is a bit of a heist novel about a woman and her friends who concoct a bit of a "Ocean's Eleven" type caper to wipe out everyone's student loans. This isn't necessarily taking place in our world. It's in a bit of a heightened world where there are these special cops on the hunt for anyone who is late to repay their debts, and they will track you down and kind of assault you if you're late on your repayment. It's a pretty thrilling read.
RASCOE: OK. Well, what about nonfiction?
LIMBONG: Yeah. I know - we're at the time of year where a lot of families are traveling, right? And traveling can be stressful. So a book I've been thinking about is called "A Marriage At Sea" by Sophie Elmhirst, right? It's about a young British couple in the '70s who decide they want to sell everything off and sail to New Zealand. Things don't go great (laughter). And they end up floating on a life raft in the Pacific. It's a deeply reported book, but it does also make me think, like, oh, maybe me dragging my partner to the airport and the plane is delayed - things could be worse than having to eat stale McDonald's fries. You know what I mean?
RASCOE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
LIMBONG: (Laughter) While we're talking about nonfiction, there's also this book called "Fetishized" by Kaila Yu. And this is a essay collection about having mixed feelings about being objectified. She was a former model, and so she cops to catering for what we might call the male gaze, but she is also aware of the broader political, cultural baggage that doing that can have. And so I think it's an interesting insight into a weird slice of life.
RASCOE: So what's a book that you recommend personally?
LIMBONG: One of the books I put up for Books We Love was called "The Rest Of Our Lives" by Ben Markovits. This was actually one of the finalists for the Booker Prize. It's about a guy whose wife cheated on him a while back, but he swore not to do anything about it until they became empty nesters - right? - until their youngest was off in college. And so the book follows him dropping his daughter off at school and then going on a road trip. He doesn't have a destination in mind. He just is sort of driving to drive and to figure things out.
I was a bit trepidatious about this novel. I thought it would be - people in books discourse have been thinking a lot about men - right? - men in books and men in literature. And I thought it was going to be a very, like - here's the answers about all the problems plaguing men kind of book. But it's actually this really quiet and sweet and intimate book about a guy just trying to find some roots in some of the people he's sort of lost touch with.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Andrew Limbong. Thank you so much, Andrew.
LIMBONG: Thanks, Ayesha.
RASCOE: And Books We Love publishes tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern. You can find it online at npr.org/bestbooks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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