Sunday Special: Gifting Books for the Holidays

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Speaker 2 Welcome, everyone, to the Sunday Special. I'm Gilbert Cruz.

Speaker 2 Thanksgiving has come, Thanksgiving has gone, and that can only mean one thing. The holiday season is fully upon us, and it's time to start thinking about gifts for your family and friends.

Speaker 2 I know, I get it, this can be a stressful activity, but do not despair because I am here to tell you that books are the best gifts.

Speaker 2 You can literally find a book for every single person on your list, no matter what they're into, no matter if they even read books. So that is what we're going to talk about today.

Speaker 2 With me today are two of my colleagues who I often pester for gift ideas for people in my life. Both are editors at the book review, Jumana Khatib.
Welcome, Jumana. Hi, Gilbert.
And Sadie Stein.

Speaker 3 Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 Okay, before we dive in, you both read books for a living. Amazing job.
But what does reading for pleasure look like for both of you?

Speaker 4 Okay, I can, I know myself well enough that this is going to sound like parody,

Speaker 4 but I will read any book that doesn't have a plot. I will read any book

Speaker 4 about a narrator and some kind of lowercase D distress.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 4 I don't like true crime. I think left to my own devices, I tend to read mostly fiction.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 4 salivate a translated fiction. I think that's very exciting.
And I like a book that really surprises me. Oh, and also the dialogue can't be bad.

Speaker 4 Like, like that is, that is something that will make me put down a book is

Speaker 4 really bad spoken conversation.

Speaker 2 All right. Sadie, you were on the Sunday special earlier this year when we talked about going back to school, things that we read when we were younger.

Speaker 2 However, I sit next to you and I know that particularly when it comes to nonfiction, although you're one of the most well-read people I know, the sort of the range that you possess is absolutely insane.

Speaker 2 What are the type of things that you go to, you know, when you don't have to read a ton for work?

Speaker 3 Yeah, my tastes are pretty Catholic.

Speaker 3 I guess I do like eclectic books. I like anything about

Speaker 3 dolls and ghosts, of course.

Speaker 3 But that's really the same thing. That's just about absence and humanity, right? So basically

Speaker 3 anything to do with that.

Speaker 3 I like things about crafts. I like interiors.
I like books with really good rooms described in them. I like fiction with good food.

Speaker 4 That's very important.

Speaker 3 I don't love

Speaker 3 apocalypses, but you know, I'm learning to love them. I

Speaker 3 don't tend to love novels about mothers and children.

Speaker 2 Do not say that to Jubana, by the way.

Speaker 4 That's all I read.

Speaker 2 She loves a book about

Speaker 2 that.

Speaker 4 Especially a single one. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't know why.

Speaker 3 Very fair.

Speaker 3 But yeah, as you know, looking at

Speaker 3 my desk, it's stuff I'm interested in. It's stuff I, in real life, will never do, like gardening.
It's

Speaker 3 museum exhibits I won't get to. It's things that remind me of when I was five years old.
It's random books my grandparents gave me. There's no rhyme or reason to my reading.
It is,

Speaker 3 I think I can break an algorithm.

Speaker 2 All right. Well, I think that is a great transition into what we're here to talk about, which is

Speaker 2 some of the best books of the year. We, as a group, over the course of a year, read hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of books.

Speaker 2 And at the New York Times Book Review, somehow we distill that down to 100 books, which we call our 100 notable books.

Speaker 2 The two of you, in addition to many of our other editors are involved in this process, you are reading a lot of these books.

Speaker 2 Before we get into incredibly specific category recommendations, which we're going to do in the second part of this conversation, I would love for the two of you to reflect on the things that you loved from this year most because

Speaker 2 we read so many.

Speaker 4 Okay, so one of my best reading experiences was,

Speaker 4 no surprise, was a translated novel, translated from the Swedish. This is The Colony by Annika Norlin.
It's a debut novel.

Speaker 4 And the premise is actually

Speaker 4 pretty fascinating. So our sort of avatar is this journalist who's totally burnt out.
She can't pick up the phone. She's just like, she's beyond spent.

Speaker 4 So she goes to the woods and observes this group of people living in the middle of nowhere. She can't exactly figure out how they know each other.

Speaker 4 She eventually becomes becomes very entwined with them. And I thought,

Speaker 4 I, this book, I was talking about this with a colleague, and we both agreed this was the kind of book that was so well drawn. It was so unexpected.
Every single turn took me by surprise.

Speaker 4 This is the kind of book that reminded me of why reading is exciting. And I'm not even like, I felt that kind of, I made contact with that childlike sense of joy reading this book.

Speaker 2 So that's The Colony by Annika Norlin and that's one of the books on our 100 best books of the year list. And we're going to put all these titles in the show notes so you can take a look later.

Speaker 2 Shumana, you mentioned that you love translated literature. Why? What is that about?

Speaker 4 Oh, I mean, I love understanding like different ways that

Speaker 4 thoughts can be communicated or, you know, when you have access to different reference points or idioms, then it becomes totally mind-expanding.

Speaker 4 And I have such an affection for translators because they toil in invisibility. And I think it's one of the hardest things to do.
I mean, I grew up in like a mixed-language house. And so

Speaker 4 I understand how hard and frankly existential it can be. And like, I had no idea that this was a whole subset, apparently, in Swedish literature is like the burnout novel.
This is fascinating.

Speaker 2 Sadie, I think you have a book that you want to talk about that was translated.

Speaker 3 I do. Although, surprisingly, I think not a great favorite of yours.

Speaker 3 This is Perfection by Vincenzo Letronico. And this is, in fact, his reimagination of another book originally written in French,

Speaker 3 a book by Georges Parek from the 60s called Things, which I also recommend. Basically, this is about

Speaker 3 an expat, youthful couple, millennial couple, living in Berlin and then Lisbon.

Speaker 3 They are trying to sell their apartment on Airbnb, sell it as a desirable property. And essentially, it goes through their lives object by object, signifier by signifier.
And it is

Speaker 3 a novel which, although a rewrite of the 60s novel could only have been written this year.

Speaker 3 That's depressing for some,

Speaker 3 too close for some. For others, I think it's incredibly well observed and interesting.

Speaker 3 And it's short, too.

Speaker 2 Have I seen this book on my

Speaker 2 Instagram? You have seen it everywhere.

Speaker 3 With a pink lily.

Speaker 2 I would expect people, a lot of people out there of a certain age sort of toting this book around.

Speaker 4 Every commuter on the F-train.

Speaker 3 It's an easy read, and it's very much about appearances, ironically, and

Speaker 3 signaling and what things mean to young people today, what materialism means.

Speaker 2 Do performative men read this book?

Speaker 3 I should think so, but the joke would be on them.

Speaker 2 It would be. Yes.

Speaker 2 Jumana, so many of us at the book review read

Speaker 2 a lot of big books this year. The one Sadie just talked about, pretty small, but the one you're going to talk about, quite large.
Quite large.

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think.
I forgot to mention that another one of my sort of tent pole qualities as a reader is like the longer it is, the more interested I am.

Speaker 4 This has become my legacy.

Speaker 2 Very annoying for your colleagues who you recommend books to all the time.

Speaker 4 I know, but I'm usually right. You know, the Beasting.
The Beasting.

Speaker 2 You're welcome.

Speaker 2 Okay. The Beasting listing.

Speaker 4 You're welcome. I know.

Speaker 2 Paul Morris the Beasting, listeners, if you haven't read it from a couple years ago.

Speaker 2 It's fantastic. Tell us about this next one.
Okay.

Speaker 4 So this is The Loneliness of Sonia and Sonny. This has been a long cooking book.
This has been like 20 years in the making. This is by Kieran Desai.

Speaker 4 And this is what you think of as an like, you know, old-fashioned, sweeping, time-spanning, continent-jumping, rich, kind of romantic epic. And it follows two immigrants.

Speaker 4 Sonia, when we meet her, is a college student and she's lonely and she's miserable and like hates the dorm food. And she gets mixed up with this like horrible older painter and

Speaker 4 then Sonny, who is a journalist and trying to make it in New York.

Speaker 4 And of course, both Sonia and Sonny are you know, grappling with their family ties back in India and their paths cross first on a train.

Speaker 4 And then it turns out that their families know each other in these increasingly entwined ways. It's lush, it's sensual, it's completely absorbing.
There's a real wit to this book.

Speaker 4 And I think that for me,

Speaker 4 the representative anecdote that I have about this book is that I was reading it when I was visiting my family over the summer.

Speaker 4 And I was so absorbed in this book that I did not notice that the neighbor's orchard was on fire.

Speaker 2 Metaphorically?

Speaker 4 No, no, no, literally.

Speaker 2 What happened to the orchard? The orchard burned. I don't know what to tell you.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 No plot.

Speaker 2 I didn't know how to fact-check that.

Speaker 4 I'll give you their number. I don't know if they speak English.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Next.

Speaker 2 Really, really unexpected here. Sadie, did you read Sony and Sonny?

Speaker 3 I did at Jumana's urging, and I'm very glad for it.

Speaker 4 All right, Gilbert, what is a book that you enjoyed this year?

Speaker 2 It is a book that I also think several people at the book review loved. It's a book called The Director.
I think this is the book that I have actually recommended the most to people this year.

Speaker 2 It's by Daniel Kelman. This is a novel.

Speaker 2 It's essentially historical fiction, but like elevated literary historical fiction. It's about the Austrian filmmaker G.W.

Speaker 2 Pabst, who became famous in the early part of the century when he made a movie called Pandora's Box, which made the silent film actress Louise Brooks very famous.

Speaker 2 In the book, he is compelled for both professional reasons and personal reasons to go back to Austria.

Speaker 2 This is a terrible time to go back to Austria because, as we learn, this is right when Nazi Germany is taking over.

Speaker 2 They close the borders, and Pabst is now stuck in Austria, and he has to make movies there for the Third Reich.

Speaker 2 It's sort of this fascinating exploration of the compromises that are required when you have to make art sometimes, the way in which some people unfortunately find themselves starting to find authoritarianism appealing.

Speaker 2 But I just thought it flew by. Pabst is an amazing character, even though he's a real life person.

Speaker 2 There are a couple of incredibly tense scenes and then incredibly sort of like

Speaker 2 funny Orwellian bureaucratic scenes. It's quite good.

Speaker 4 I had the feeling, especially as at the climax, I think I said this to both of you, but like, I had the feeling of like when I was a kid and I was reading something that I could comprehend on like a word level, but emotionally, it was above my pay grade.

Speaker 4 It was just, it was stunning. It was stunning.
I don't remember the last time a book like that really kind of stopped me in my, in my tracks.

Speaker 4 I felt beyond overwhelmed in a satisfying way, in a cathartic way.

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And that's one I think you could give to a lot of different people.
Completely.

Speaker 4 Completely. Yeah.
The film buff.

Speaker 2 The historical fiction fan. Right.

Speaker 4 The people who like to make fun of book clubs.

Speaker 3 A dad who thinks he doesn't like fiction.

Speaker 2 Dads who like reading about World War II. These are all, these are all appropriate categories.
Sadie, you have another novel that you really love this year. Yeah, another big,

Speaker 3 fun novel, immersive novel that I think I will be giving to a number of people this year for the holidays, and which I've already given to a bunch of people just for pleasure, is Adam Ross's Play World.

Speaker 3 And this is

Speaker 3 a coming-of-age novel set in the early 80s, Upper West Side, New York City. It's about a child actor whose father is himself a performer and

Speaker 3 whose family is all involved with a therapist with questionable boundaries. This is about the protagonist's relationship with a much older family friend, also a client of this therapist.

Speaker 3 And it is about

Speaker 3 so many things. It is about

Speaker 3 growing up too fast. It is about parental ego.
It is about what memory does to how we think about youth. It takes place right around where I live.
So that was just kind of fun and exciting for me. But

Speaker 3 I hadn't read anything quite like it

Speaker 3 in a while. And in some ways, it's an old-fashioned book, but I think it's very

Speaker 3 much of the moment. And I think it's an interesting way to look at the changing mores of youth and childhood and sexuality

Speaker 3 some 40 years ago. It's also just a good story.

Speaker 2 Now, in part of this book,

Speaker 2 the main character, as you sort of alluded to, but didn't directly lay out, becomes involved with someone who is a couple decades older than him.

Speaker 2 What would you say to someone who's like, I am not interested in reading about this?

Speaker 3 Oh, it's upsetting for sure. And I think one thing you feel throughout this book is how abandoned he is by the adults in his life.

Speaker 3 By no means should you go into this thinking it's a romp.

Speaker 3 It's, I would say, unless that's a particular trigger for you, I think it's handled sensitively enough and interestingly enough

Speaker 3 that I would recommend it.

Speaker 4 It's a very specific portrait of the kind of laissez-faire parenting, which, you know, I remember when his mother finds out not that he's the woman that he's dating, the thing that she's horrified by is not the age gap, but that she doesn't think that the woman is attractive enough for her son.

Speaker 4 So it's a very, very precise. I know, that's exactly it, right? And like, that's also kind of what makes this book so great.

Speaker 4 Like if a book could have a smell, this book smells like a 1989 Gristides on Columbus Avenue.

Speaker 4 Both of you understand what I mean.

Speaker 2 There will be no more specific reference made on this episode.

Speaker 3 Probably not.

Speaker 2 And that is Playworld by Adam Ross. Sadie, I want you to talk about a piece of nonfiction that honestly

Speaker 2 I think most of the desk, the book review, was obsessed with.

Speaker 2 It is a book called A Marriage at Sea.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Which is the opposite. of so many of the big fiction books that we've been talking about.
This is a slim piece of nonfiction telling a story that happened in the 70s, and it is beautiful.

Speaker 3 It is. And I think I said to you, like, it's not often we run across a book which is sweet and there is a sweetness to this book.
Now, that's not all it is by any means, but

Speaker 3 it's lovely.

Speaker 3 What's it about? So what this is, is

Speaker 3 a story of two newlyweds, a young, pretty young couple, she younger than he, who

Speaker 3 got married, decided to give up their lives in England and go to sea.

Speaker 2 This is England in the 1970s.

Speaker 3 Yes. And this couple, Morris and Marilyn, decided to give it all up and

Speaker 3 sail to New Zealand. And they did it for about nine months.
It was going okay when a sperm whale breached, capsized the boat, and they were thrown onto a makeshift raft for several months.

Speaker 3 And so this becomes then both a story of survival, the day-to-day quotidian horror of survival,

Speaker 3 and that much more than that, it becomes, in this author's hands, a portrait of marriage. And this is not a story which has never been told.
Indeed, after they were finally rescued,

Speaker 3 by a Korean fishing boat, they were sort of media darlings. They wrote a book about the experience.
So what the author's doing here is something different.

Speaker 3 She's really writing a nonfiction novel based on the facts on the ground, but also fleshing out these characters and fleshing out their emotional lives and doing it with tremendous sensitivity. And

Speaker 3 she follows them after the end of the marriage,

Speaker 3 how difficult the publicity was for these particular people.

Speaker 3 But really, I think anyone who reads this book, if you're in a relationship, I think you find yourself really thinking about that. You're like, which one am I?

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 3 How would I have done?

Speaker 2 Am I Morris or am I Marilyn?

Speaker 3 I bet I can guess which one you are.

Speaker 2 I do not. There's no world in which I want you to guess who I am.

Speaker 3 But I think most of us are a mixture of the two. And then I think The End, which I won't give away such as it is, is actually one of the more moving things I've read.
in the past couple of years.

Speaker 3 I cried. I don't know about you.

Speaker 4 It's a beautiful book, a lovely book i can't think of anyone who couldn't derive pleasure from this okay so i'm not married the two of you are this was cheaper than premarital counseling this prepared me for almost any kind of situation in extremis it also made me not want to leave my apartment okay but i i do appreciate that they this couple was so

Speaker 4 do we want to say optimistic that Morris couldn't swim? Or was it Marilyn that couldn't swim?

Speaker 2 Marilyn couldn't swim.

Speaker 4 Marilyn couldn't swim. Marilyn could not swim.

Speaker 4 She had lots of other skills, but swimming was not one of them. And that just seems like quite the oversight when you were about to take off across the world by sea.

Speaker 2 Okay, so that is A Marriage at Sea, A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhurst.

Speaker 2 Those books that we just talked about were just a few of the selections from our 100 notable books of 2025. A lot of stuff on there.

Speaker 2 We're going to take a break, and when we come back, we've tried to come up with incredibly specific categories for which we could buy gifts for. We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 The New York Times app has all this stuff that you may not have seen. I can immediately navigate to something that matches what I'm feeling.

Speaker 5 The way the tabs are at the top with all of the different sections.

Speaker 2 It's just easier to navigate that way. There is something for everyone.

Speaker 5 The personalized page, the YouTube. That one's my favorite.

Speaker 4 I can also save my articles easily in this area.

Speaker 2 Right under the buy line, it says, click here if you like to listen to this article.

Speaker 5 I like that the cooking tab on top is really easily accessible.

Speaker 6 So if I'm on my way home and I'm just thinking, oh, what am I going to make for dinner? I'll just quickly go on to cooking and say, Oh, I've got this in my pantry.

Speaker 2 I'm gonna try out some of these recipes I see in here.

Speaker 6 I go to games always.

Speaker 2 Doing the mini, doing the wordle.

Speaker 5 I loved how much content it exposed me to, things that I never would have thought to turn to a news app for.

Speaker 2 This app is essential: the New York Times app. All of the times, all in one place.

Speaker 4 Download it now at nytimes.com/slash app.

Speaker 2 Welcome back. I'm here with Jumana Katib and Sadie Stein, editors of the book review, and we are about to do you all a solid.

Speaker 2 We are going to help you find the perfect gift for very, very specific people in your life. All of them are books.

Speaker 2 If these people in your life do not like books, they will after you give them one of these.

Speaker 2 Okay, let's start with the obvious, the type of person that is possibly most difficult to shop for, the quote, person who has everything.

Speaker 2 I don't know these people, but supposedly they're out there. The person who has everything, Sadie, what book would you buy this person?

Speaker 3 Nothing more fun than shopping for the person who has everything.

Speaker 3 Now, first of all, this is going to be controversial, but I think very good gift giving and especially book gift giving depends on being always alert.

Speaker 3 You have to have a shelf going of books for these situations. Whenever you're in a thrift store, at a tag sale, a book barn, a library sale.

Speaker 3 You have to be ever ready to snatch up something odd, which appeals to a niche interest or a specific geographical area.

Speaker 2 So always be shopping.

Speaker 3 Always be shopping.

Speaker 2 Abs. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Have your gift shelf. Always be

Speaker 3 gifted shopping. Have your gift shelf going at all times.
So

Speaker 3 ideally, according to this premise, you already have a bunch of interesting and eccentric and highly specific books from which, but let's say you're starting from scratch. Yes.

Speaker 2 Let's say everyone is not you. Okay, okay.
So let's say

Speaker 3 it's someone from Sacramento. You look up,

Speaker 3 you look up antique guidebooks to Sacramento with beautiful art, maps and guidebooks. That would be a good thing, I think.

Speaker 4 Also, art books and garden books are basically picture books for adults.

Speaker 2 And for the person that has everything, you think

Speaker 2 an art book, a gardening book, a coffee table book, you can never go wrong.

Speaker 4 Here's the other thing. The person who has everything

Speaker 4 does not yet have a window into how you look at them.

Speaker 4 So when you hand them a book and you say, I thought of you because of X, they're never going to read it, but they're going to think like, oh, that person pays attention to me.

Speaker 4 I'm seen by the person giving me a gift.

Speaker 3 I saw you. I'm thinking of you.

Speaker 4 I perceive you.

Speaker 3 You're perceived, but in only the most flattering terms. Exactly.
Do you know a good one, if you're building up a shelf like this?

Speaker 3 Entertaining is Fun by Dorothy Draper.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's so good.

Speaker 3 What is that? Well, she was a decorator. She was this kind of grand dummy decorator who wrote outrageous prose.
And

Speaker 3 she also wrote this book, Entertaining is Fun, about how to entertain, how to have people over. It was written in the late 40s.
It's just really fun. The book itself looks great.

Speaker 3 It's been reissued by Rizzoli, I think. Polka dot cover, good on a shelf.

Speaker 3 I think it's a cheery and eccentric and fun, but not weird gift.

Speaker 2 Do you expect that when you gift someone a book that they are ever going to read it?

Speaker 4 50-50.

Speaker 2 Okay. 50-50.
Sadie?

Speaker 3 It depends on the book.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 I feel like this is a thing where you are, as you say,

Speaker 2 mirroring back to them what you think of them. and you maybe understand that they will put it on a shelf, they'll put it on their coffee table, and they may never read it.

Speaker 4 Weren't these your wedding favors? Didn't you give books to every single person that came to your wedding?

Speaker 2 We did. We had every play setting had a different book with an inscription from my wife to be and I.
Yes.

Speaker 4 So, actually, you can carry the rest of this.

Speaker 2 I do not expect that most of my wedding guests read any of those books, but it's a thing to have.

Speaker 2 It is a souvenir. It is a thing to put on a shelf.
Maybe it spurs a memory. As with these books, when they look at that book, they think of you, and that's hopefully a nice association.

Speaker 2 All right, let's go to another category. Okay.
Help my mom find a new cozy crime slash mystery series.

Speaker 4 Okay, well, if she hasn't read any Richard Osman, she should read Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club. It's so funny.

Speaker 2 And what are those books about?

Speaker 4 These are about octogenarians solving and sometimes perpetuating crimes, but mostly solving.

Speaker 2 And these are cozy and funny.

Speaker 4 Cozy, funny.

Speaker 2 And written by one of the tallest men. I've ever.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Richard Osman.

Speaker 4 Richard Osman.

Speaker 2 Previously a British game show host.

Speaker 4 Yes, yes, yes. And

Speaker 4 there's nothing unsettling. There's nothing gory.

Speaker 4 It's just a good old-fashioned, you know, mystery.

Speaker 2 Sadie, do you have a recommendation for a cozy mystery from my mom?

Speaker 3 Yes. Well, you know, I love Janice Hollett's kind of twisty, kind of puzzle boxy mysteries, especially the mysterious case of the Albert and Angels.

Speaker 3 She does these kind of modern epistolary books, and I really think you have to read them as books.

Speaker 3 They require your full attention and your full concentration, and they reward it. And she does different things in each one, but it could be everything from a phone transcript to

Speaker 3 a bunch of text messages to, in short, it's ingenious.

Speaker 3 She's a brilliant platter. Check it out for sure.

Speaker 2 Okay, next category, the foodie reader. Someone who's really interested in food and wants a non-cookbook? Non-cookbook.

Speaker 4 I would start with Toast by Nigel Slater. Odds are that Nigel might be new to this foodie.
He's a British food writer and cook, vegetable savant.

Speaker 4 Toast is really about his childhood and his development of his taste and palate and sort of like coming alive.

Speaker 4 Like that scene in Ratatouille when you have berries and then you have cheese and then you put them together in your mouth at the same time and it's like fireworks.

Speaker 4 Like that's kind of what it's like, but more British and less

Speaker 2 ratty. Less rat-based.

Speaker 2 Less rat focused.

Speaker 4 And although there is a great recollection of his living next door door to nudists when he was a child, which is interesting.

Speaker 4 And I trust the Brits to render that in appropriate and slightly inappropriate color. What else would I recommend?

Speaker 3 What I was going to say is one trick for people who are interested in cooking and or books is there are a lot of writers who have written cookbooks.

Speaker 3 There's the Rawl Dahl cookbook, the Rumor Godd cookbook, the Maya Angelou cookbook, the Pat Conroy cookbook.

Speaker 4 Someone is in the Pat Conroy cookbook.

Speaker 3 A lot of seafood.

Speaker 2 You're kidding.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. He has a really good method for bluefish, actually.
And these can be really fun and interesting to look at. And a lot of these people care a lot about food.

Speaker 3 And of course, Raldahl's prose are as

Speaker 3 acid as you would imagine. And

Speaker 3 another one I would say, kind of walking the line between food book and coffee table book, I've had very good success with Dinners to Gala, the most stunning book.

Speaker 3 It's all Gala Dali's incredibly elaborate,

Speaker 3 absurd, over-the-top dinner party menus.

Speaker 4 Gala, of course, the wife of Salvador Dali.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 4 Do it and invite me over.

Speaker 3 I have never pulled it together to make one, but if I'm, I'm in. I'm in for 2026.

Speaker 2 Let's move on to the next one. We have a grandmother who who loves the performing arts.

Speaker 2 What are we all giving Granny?

Speaker 3 I would go for Diagilev's Empire, How the Ballet Russe Enthralled the World, which is about the Ballet Russe in

Speaker 3 Paris in the 1920s. And it's really gossipy and it's really fun.
And you don't need to like ballet. to enjoy all the incredible dirt that the author brings to it, but

Speaker 3 a ballet lover would also appreciate this.

Speaker 4 What do you think, Gilbert?

Speaker 2 I have a recommendation.

Speaker 4 Where's the Klaxon?

Speaker 2 These are two books that I've grown to love over the past many years.

Speaker 2 It's a two-book set, although you can buy each of them separately. These are Stephen Sondheim's books, Finishing the Hat.

Speaker 2 and Look I Made a Hat, which are collections of the lyrics for every Stephen Sondheim musical, annotated, introduced by Stephen Sondheim.

Speaker 2 If you've ever listened to one of his musicals, you know how clever he is. And it's just a joy to not only see the lyrics written down,

Speaker 2 listen to the cast recordings while you're reading the lyrics, but also have him tell you why he wrote this, how he wrote it, the different iterations of the rhymes and the rhyme schemes that he went through.

Speaker 2 I feel like these are two books that you actually could read again and again over the years

Speaker 4 and find so much joy you know my dad might like that too this is actually also great for him speaking of dads let's talk about books for dads and i think we should start with new dads so i actually have quite a number of new dads in my life and i'm gonna just swing wildly between recommendations um i i i do think any kind of Bruce Springsteen adjacent book, even though I will never read it, is a sure bet.

Speaker 4 So there's one out that there's one that came out this year called Tonight in Jungle Land, which is all about the making of Born to run.

Speaker 4 I also think that this memoir, now you have to be on very good terms with this new dad, right? So depending on where he is in his hormonal or sleep deprivation journey, this could be risky.

Speaker 4 But The Uncool by Cameron Crowe, who is a journalist in the 70s, he wrote for Rolling Stone.

Speaker 4 And he had one of those sort of picaresque lives where I think dad will be entertained and possibly could look down at his little bundle of emerging consciousness and think, oh, what a life my child might have.

Speaker 4 Maybe he or she will go undercover and do great things and depict their childhood in a book.

Speaker 2 I have one recommendation for this new dad,

Speaker 2 who probably isn't cool because any new dad is just like, like new moms, just sort of hanging on for dear life.

Speaker 2 I didn't really understand until recently how

Speaker 2 dads are obsessed with the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Speaker 2 I read a book, because it's the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, called The Gales of November by a man named John E. Bacon.

Speaker 2 The legend lives on from the Chippewa home down at the big lake they call Gitchigoo.

Speaker 2 It tells the whole story of this

Speaker 2 of this tragedy that happened in 1975 on Lake Superior that was immortalized in a song by Gordon Lightfoot.

Speaker 2 The wind and the wires made a tattletale sound and the wave broke over the railing.

Speaker 2 And I have not, over the past few weeks, run into

Speaker 2 a man who was not interested in talking about the Edmund Fitzgerald. I don't know what it is.
It's in the genes.

Speaker 4 I would love for you guys to develop some interiority and maybe not have your emotional life projected onto a ship sinking.

Speaker 2 That's so sad. All 29 men went down with the ship.

Speaker 3 Well, the anniversary, yeah, it's happening.

Speaker 3 I have one. I don't know about young hip cool dads, but especially perhaps for a father, the journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson are so beautiful.

Speaker 3 And what he writes, his observations about Waldo, and of course,

Speaker 3 knowing what happens,

Speaker 3 it's hard to read, but

Speaker 3 it just shows how parental love has not changed.

Speaker 2 I do not know what happens, so please do not tell me. Okay.

Speaker 4 Noted, stay off Wikipedia.

Speaker 2 You're giving me a sad face.

Speaker 2 Is it as sad as the Edmund Fitzgerald?

Speaker 3 There are fewer casualties, but I would argue yes.

Speaker 2 Okay. Sadie and Jumana, let's move away from the specific.
I'd love each of you to just throw out a couple more recommendations that you think could apply to a bunch of people or something like that.

Speaker 3 Look for the twist. Look for, for instance, the poet Stevie Smith's random gift book, Cats in Color, with their incredibly bizarre captions.

Speaker 3 Look for John Betchaman's extremely weird children's book, Archie and the Strict Baptists.

Speaker 3 You know, look for Ionesco's children's books. They are unexpected.
They are weird. They are great.

Speaker 3 People won't have them, but if they're interested in these poets and writers, they will love having something new from them.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 4 let's see. I think a great option is always something for the snob.
I happen to know a lot of snobs in New York City.

Speaker 2 I believe it.

Speaker 4 So I actually am looking at Trip by Amy Baradale.

Speaker 4 This is the book that kidnapped my consciousness and still has it as far as I'm concerned, because it touches on the finer points of Buddhist ideas about life after death.

Speaker 2 This is a novel. This isn't.

Speaker 4 Although it quotes heavily from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. This is a novel.

Speaker 4 It follows a documentarian who

Speaker 4 goes to Nepal to sort of capture a Buddhist scholars conference. She slips on a hairbrush and dies.
That's not a spoiler.

Speaker 4 What she does in this sort of limbo of the bardo is that she checks in on her son who has some, you know, he has some differences. And he's going on a trip of his own.
Like every page is a surprise.

Speaker 4 It's hysterically written. I don't think Amy Berradale is as known as she ought to be.

Speaker 4 And it's just like, this is, if you want to talk about like anti-algorithmic books, this is the definition of that. And you don't have to be a parent to like it.

Speaker 2 Sadie and Jimana, the two of you have given just like a raft of recommendations. I think we are going to put all of them in the show notes.

Speaker 2 We are going to take a break. And when we return, we will have, as we do every week, a game.

Speaker 8 This is A. O.
Scott. I'm a critic at the New York Times.

Speaker 8 What I do and what the other critics here do is part of the same project that all of the journalists at the New York Times work on every day to give you clarity and perspective and above all, a deeper understanding of the world.

Speaker 8 When you subscribe to the New York Times, it's not just here are the headlines, but here's the way everything fits together. If you'd like to subscribe, please go to nytimes.com/slash subscribe.

Speaker 2 Okay, we're back. Sadie Jumana, it is game time.

Speaker 2 We have spent a lot of time today talking about what books might appeal to some hyper-specific person in our lives or the lives of someone else.

Speaker 2 But what do people, in general, think and feel about books? To answer that question, we have surveyed 137 real life, actual people, and now we are going to play the Sunday special co-worker feud.

Speaker 2 Here's how it works. We asked our survey respondents, again, 137 people, a series of questions.
You are going to try to guess how they responded. We're going to play three rounds.

Speaker 2 Each round starts with a face-off. So put your hands on your buzzers.
I will read a question, and you're going to buzz in and try to guess the most popular answer to that question.

Speaker 2 Is this going to be fun?

Speaker 2 Yes, survey says yes. Okay,

Speaker 2 here is the first round.

Speaker 2 The top five answers are now on the board.

Speaker 2 Name a book that everyone has to read in high school.

Speaker 2 Sadie.

Speaker 3 The Great Gatsby.

Speaker 2 Survey says

Speaker 2 that is the number one answer. Well done, Sadie.
You have to decide now whether you want to play or pass.

Speaker 3 If I played, I'd be looking for the other answers to this one.

Speaker 2 For the other four, yes.

Speaker 2 I'll play. You are going to play, all right.
There's a real competitor here.

Speaker 2 Sadie,

Speaker 2 name book that everyone has to read in high school the scarlet letter survey says

Speaker 2 the scarlet letter that was the number four response you have to pick another one huckleberry finn

Speaker 2 oh

Speaker 2 that is a book that everyone has to read in high school but amongst our 137 survey recipients it did not appear on the list great expectations

Speaker 2 great expectations not on the list. Luckily, however, you have one more guess.
Name a book that everyone has to read in high school.

Speaker 3 Romeo and Juliet.

Speaker 2 Excellent. That was the number five response.
Romeo and Juliet. There are two more answers on the board.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 I guess people don't do Hemingway anymore.

Speaker 3 Catcher in the Rye.

Speaker 2 Catcher in the Rye. Survey says.

Speaker 2 Yes! That was the number three response. Sadie, you have one more book to guess.
Name a book that everyone has to read in high school.

Speaker 3 Beloved.

Speaker 2 Beloved is not on the list. You got four of the five, which is well done.
Jumana now has the opportunity, if she guesses the right one, to take this round.

Speaker 2 Jumana, name a book that everyone has to read in high school.

Speaker 4 I'm going to go with To Kill a Mockingbird.

Speaker 2 Oh, good one.

Speaker 2 That was the number two response. Well done, Jumana.

Speaker 4 Well done, Sadie. I couldn't have gotten all five.

Speaker 2 All right. We are on to round two.

Speaker 2 Hands back on buzzers, please. You're not checking your email, are you?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 2 Okay. Hands back on buzzers.

Speaker 2 Top five answers are on the board. Name a topic that dads love to read about.

Speaker 2 Jumana.

Speaker 4 Maritime disasters.

Speaker 2 Survey says.

Speaker 2 well done. We're going to go ahead and count that under vessels, which is our number five response.

Speaker 3 My husband says conveyances.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Vehicles, vessels, conveyances.
Maritime, I love a maritime disaster. Sadie, you get a chance to steal if you can guess a more popular answer.

Speaker 3 The Civil War.

Speaker 2 Number three, war. Sadie, would you like to play or pass?

Speaker 3 I'll play.

Speaker 2 You are going to play. See, she's really, she's more competitive than she seems.
Sadie, name a topic that dads love to read about. There are three more answers on the board.

Speaker 3 Ancient Rome.

Speaker 2 That is the number two answer. We're going to put that in the history category.
Jimana is making a face.

Speaker 4 These are insane categories. It's like, oh, you know, what it means to be a man.
You know what? I'm going to say masculinity.

Speaker 2 That is not on the board. Also, it is not your turn.
So we're talking out of turn. It is not your turn.
Sadie, you have two more answers on the the board.

Speaker 3 Okay, this is how the categories are.

Speaker 3 Sports.

Speaker 2 Number four.

Speaker 2 Sadie, you're doing amazing. You have one more answer on the board, and you have to guess this one.

Speaker 3 Can you read out the ones we've done already?

Speaker 2 We have talked about history, war, sports, and vehicles slash vessels slash conveyances.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 We have one more.

Speaker 2 Let's say it's a subcategory of one of the categories on this list.

Speaker 3 So I could say

Speaker 3 World War II.

Speaker 2 Amazing. Not surprisingly, the number one topic that dads love to read about is World War II.

Speaker 2 Sadie, you won that round. Well,

Speaker 4 great job, Sadie.

Speaker 2 Once again, the top five answers are on the board.

Speaker 2 Name a book that everyone says they should really read, but they never do.

Speaker 2 Jumana.

Speaker 4 Middle March.

Speaker 4 Come on.

Speaker 4 That's objectively correct.

Speaker 2 Objectively, according to our 137 stroke. You should have asked 138.
I don't know what to say. Sadie, you get a chance to steal.
Name a book that everyone says they should really...

Speaker 2 Name a book that everyone says they should really read, but they never do.

Speaker 3 Ulysses.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Shumana, you get a chance to guess.

Speaker 4 Moby Dick.

Speaker 2 All right, Shumana. That was the number or answer.
And now you get a chance to play or pass.

Speaker 4 I'm going to play.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 You are going to play. So, four more answers.
Name a book that everyone says they should really read, but they never do.

Speaker 4 In Search of Lost Time by Proust.

Speaker 4 Come on.

Speaker 2 Who are these people? Who is this populace?

Speaker 2 One strike. You have two more to go.

Speaker 4 The King James Bible?

Speaker 2 The number two answer. The Bible.
Okay. I myself followed that category.
All right. Three more titles to go.
Name a book everyone says they should really read, but never do.

Speaker 4 Oliver Twist, or Can I Say Anything by Dickens?

Speaker 2 Neither of those is right. Okay.

Speaker 2 Two strikes. You have one more to go.
Oh, God. And you're going to, this is it.
You know it.

Speaker 4 The Odyssey.

Speaker 2 Oh, boy.

Speaker 2 Sadie,

Speaker 2 you get to steal.

Speaker 3 But I don't know either. Okay, the power broker.

Speaker 2 That is number five. Well done.

Speaker 4 Oh, great job, Sadie.

Speaker 2 Okay, at the end of the third round, Sadie is in the lead. And now it is time for our final round, Fast Money.
This is a rapid-fire round, and you're going to do it one at a time.

Speaker 2 So, Jumana, we're going to ask you to step outside. Go get a coffee.
I think I saw some bananas in a bowl. Step outside.
You'll come back when it's your turn.

Speaker 2 Sadie, this is a lightning round. Okay.
I am going to give you a question and you are going to give me an answer. We're going to put 20 seconds on the clock.

Speaker 2 The time starts when I finish asking the first question. All right.
Are you ready?

Speaker 3 Ready as I'll ever be, Gilbert.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Question number one. Which Dr.
Seuss character would you least like to sit next to on a plane? Cat in the hat. Name a well-known book that is famously long.

Speaker 3 Mill March.

Speaker 2 Name a young adult book series other than Harry Potter. Pass.

Speaker 2 Name a book that was adapted into an iconic film.

Speaker 3 The Godfather.

Speaker 2 Name a book that every child has on their bookshelf. Cat in the hat.

Speaker 2 Excellent work, Sadie. Let's see how you did.
Which Dr. Seuss character would you least like to sit next to on a plane? You said cat in the hat.
Survey said

Speaker 2 35. 35 people also said cat in the hat, which is good.
That's a lot of people. Name a well-known book that is famously long.
You said middlemarch. Survey said

Speaker 2 zero.

Speaker 2 Name a young adult book series other than Harry Potter. You said pass.
Survey said.

Speaker 2 No buedo.

Speaker 2 Name a book that was adapted into an iconic film. You said The Godfather.
survey said,

Speaker 2 Five. Finally, name a book that every child has on their bookshelf.
You said cat in the hat, survey said,

Speaker 2 ten.

Speaker 2 You did amazing. We're going to escort you out of this room, escort you in a good way, and Jumana is going to come in.

Speaker 2 All right, Shumana, you're back in the room. I am.
How are you feeling?

Speaker 2 Somewhat.

Speaker 4 I have some trepidation, but mostly I'm thrilled to be here.

Speaker 2 Excellent, because it's your turn now. So we're going to put 20 seconds on the clock.
Are you ready? I am. Okay.

Speaker 2 Which Dr. Seuss character would you least like to sit next to on a plane?

Speaker 4 The Lorax.

Speaker 2 Name a well-known book that is famously long.

Speaker 4 War and Peace.

Speaker 2 Name a young adult book series other than Harry Potter.

Speaker 4 The Red Wall series.

Speaker 2 Name a book that was adapted into an iconic film.

Speaker 4 Dog Day Afternoon.

Speaker 2 Name a book that every child has on their bookshelf.

Speaker 4 Jeannie B. Jones.

Speaker 2 Wow. Oh my God.

Speaker 2 Excellent work, Shimana. Let's see how you do.
Oh, I can't wait. Which Dr.
Seuss character would you least like to sit next to on a plane? You said the Lorax. Survey said.
The Grinch.

Speaker 2 17. The number one answer was the cat in the hat.

Speaker 4 That's crazy.

Speaker 2 I disagree. Name a well-known book that is famously long.
You said Warren Peace. Survey said...

Speaker 2 Yay!

Speaker 2 That was the number one answer. 39.
Name a young adult book series other than Harry Potter. You said the Red Wall series, which I'm not familiar with.
Survey said?

Speaker 2 The number one answer was The Hunger Games.

Speaker 2 I'm so old. The Hunger Games.

Speaker 4 I'm so old.

Speaker 2 Name a book that was adapted into an iconic film. You said, Dog Day Afternoon,

Speaker 2 which is not a book.

Speaker 2 The number one answer here was the Lord of the Rings.

Speaker 2 Final question: Name a book that every child has on their bookshelf. You said,

Speaker 2 I don't know what this is.

Speaker 4 What did you say? I really meant

Speaker 4 Judy Bloom, and I said Juni B. Jones.

Speaker 2 You said Juni B. Jones.
Survey said.

Speaker 2 Zero. Number one answer.
Good night, moon.

Speaker 2 An iconic children's book.

Speaker 2 We are going to get Sadie back in here and tally up the points.

Speaker 4 I mean, Sadie won hand over for.

Speaker 3 No, I did not because I passed. I totally blanked on YA series.
I didn't even have one.

Speaker 2 Okay. We have tallied up the points and our winner on this week's episode is Sadie Stein.

Speaker 4 Yay, Sadie.

Speaker 2 Sadie, you won.

Speaker 3 Thank you

Speaker 3 for this honor and for the opportunity.

Speaker 2 I actually have something to gift you.

Speaker 3 It's something that's going to make me really excited and happy.

Speaker 2 It is a cheap plastic trophy with my face on it, Sadie.

Speaker 2 We call it the Gilby.

Speaker 4 You got a Gilby.

Speaker 2 And you now have... And you now have two Gilbies since you also won the last time you were on the show.
Yes for two, Sadie. And you know,

Speaker 3 I have to say, my son is very excited about these, and he uses them a lot in his games, and he gives the stuffed animals give each other trophies.

Speaker 4 That's so important with his mom's boss's face on it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the guy's a day.

Speaker 4 That's a normal relationship to work.

Speaker 4 It's a normal relationship to work-life balance.

Speaker 3 So, so

Speaker 3 this is this is a great addition.

Speaker 2 Sadie, thank you for once again joining the Sunday special. It was a delight.

Speaker 3 It was great being on.

Speaker 2 Jumana, thank you for joining the Sunday special. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 This episode was produced by Luke Vanderplug with help from Alex Barron, who's also our quiz master, Dahlia Haddad, and Kate Lopresti. It was edited by Wendy Dorr.
and engineered by Sophia Landman.

Speaker 2 Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alicia Bae Baitoup, and Diane Wong. Special thanks to Paula Schuman.
Thanks for listening. See you next week.

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