The Best Books of the Year (So Far)

We’re halfway through 2025, and we at the Book Review have already written about hundreds of books. Some of those titles are good. Some are very good. And then there are the ones that just won’t let us go. On this week’s episode of the podcast, Gilbert Cruz and Joumana Khatib talk about some of the best books of the year so far.Here are the books discussed in this week’s episode:“King of Ashes,” by S.A. Cosby“The Director,” by Daniel Kehlmann“A Marriage at Sea,” by Sophie Elmhirst“Careless People,” by Sarah Wynn-Williams“Isola,” by Allegra Goodman“The Catch,” by Yrsa Daley-Ward“Daughters of the Bamboo Grove,” by Barbara Demick“The Sisters,” by Jonas Hassen Khemiri“The Buffalo Hunter Hunter,” by Stephen Graham Jones“Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin,” by Sue Prideaux“Raising Hare,” by Chloe Dalton“To Smithereens,” by Rosalyn Drexler“The Fate of the Day,” by Rick Atkinson“Flesh,” by David Szalay“Things in Nature Merely Grow,” by Yiyun Li“These Summer Storms,” by Sarah MacLean 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.