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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 Times’s staff book critics are also looking back on everything they read in 2025, and toasting the books that have stayed with them.

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

Books discussed on this episode:

• “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: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines,” by Graydon Carter with James Fox

• “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: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children,” by Haley Cohen Gilliland

• “38 Londres Street,” by Philippe Sands

• “Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin,” 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

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.