nyt book review podcast hiatus

Celebrating 15 Years of “The Book Review” Podcast

The podcast, which debuted in 2006, features the biggest names in literature.

The New York Times is thrilled to celebrate the 15th anniversary of “The Book Review” podcast this month, our show that takes listeners inside the literary world. Produced since 2006, “The Book Review” is the longest-running podcast at The Times.

Throughout the years, the show, hosted by Pamela Paul, editor of The New York Times Book Review (Sam Tanenhaus was the founding host) and produced by Pedro Rosado of Headstepper Productions, has featured some of the biggest names in literature: from Gary Shteyngart, the very first author to appear on the show, to Toni Morrison to John Updike to John Grisham to Colson Whitehead, and in nonfiction, writers ranging from Michael Lewis to Calvin Trillin to Isabel Wilkerson. “The great joy of this podcast for me as host is in the guests,” Paul said. “It’s such a privilege to ask the writers I admire most about how and why they’ve written the books they’ve put out in the world.”

The podcast, which routinely appears at the top of the Arts chart on Apple Podcasts, has also featured voices from throughout The Times, including Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, Wesley Morris and Frank Bruni, Thomas Friedman and James B. Stewart, to name a few.

Over the past 15 years, “The Book Review” podcast has missed only three weeks — the first three weeks of quarantine in March 2020. “We were pretty desperate to get back,” Paul said. “The podcast crew here at the Book Review is small and works closely together. This allowed us both to keep one another company and to connect us to the outside world.”

You can read more about the history of the Book Review podcast, including some of the team’s fondest memories, here . To listen to Pamela’s favorite episodes from her eight years hosting the show (and interviews with more than 800 authors and critics), please head here .

Explore Further

Andrew lavallee named deputy, news and features, books, pamela paul to oversee daily and sunday book coverage, introducing “rabbit hole,” a new narrative audio series from the new york times.

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The Book Review

The world's top authors and critics join host Gilbert Cruz and editors at The New York Times Book Review to talk about the week's top books, what we're reading and what's going on in the literary world. Listen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioapp

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Book Review

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Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The New York Times Book Review, discusses this week's issue.

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Audio formatted version of the New York Times Book Review, weekly. Aftersight is a media organization that serves individuals with barriers to print. This podcast is produced by AINC under the Chafee Amendment to the Copyright Act which states that authorized nonprofit organizations whose primary mission is to provide copyrighted works in specialized formats to individuals with barriers to print are exempt. By continuing to listen, you verify you have an eligible need.

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Book Club: Let’s Talk About ‘My Brilliant Friend’

The first novel in elena ferrante’s neapolitan quartet was just voted the best book of the 21st century. we like it too..

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This July, The New York Times Book Review published a list of The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century , chosen by 503 literary luminaries. The No. 1 book was “My Brilliant Friend,” by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein. And it wasn’t just critics and writers who loved the book; “My Brilliant Friend” came in at No. 8 in our readers’ choice list .

The book is the first novel in Ferrante’s so-called Neapolitan quartet, which tracks the lifelong friendship between Lenù and Lila, two women from a rough neighborhood in Naples, Italy, even as family, relationships and work pull their lives in different directions.

In this week’s episode, the Book Review’s MJ Franklin discusses the book with his colleagues Joumana Khatib, Emily Eakin and Gregory Cowles.

They also discuss comments and questions that readers submitted. If you’ve read “My Brilliant Friend” and want to join the conversation, we’d love to hear your reactions in the comments. We’ll get you started:

Emily Eakin: “I think one of the striking things about this book — which I found, on a second read, utterly engrossing, as engrossing as the first read, actually, I couldn’t put it down — is the efficiency of the world building.”

Joumana Khatib: “ One of the things that struck me when I was rereading this was just how easily Ferrante is able to access the mind and life of a child, like a really precocious child, and how wonderful it is to inhabit that. And also how frightening.”

Greg Cowles: “It is propulsive and fevered. It drives you forward with characterization and with plot. But the language itself — she falls back reliably on comma splices and run-on sentences in a way that pulls you right through. One sentence leads to the next without even a period to break them up. And it’s not elegant, but it’s very effective in creating this kind of hypnotic tone.”

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected] .