Book Riot – The Podcast

Episode: Goodreads Choice Winners, NYT 10 Best, and Spotify Wrapped for Audiobooks
Hosts: Jeff O’Neal and Rebecca Schinsky
Guest: Katie Del Rosario (Spotify Audiobooks)
Date: December 8, 2025

Overview

This episode dives headfirst into some of the biggest book-related events and lists at the end of 2025. Jeff and Rebecca break down the prestigious New York Times 10 Best and 100 Notable Books of 2025, analyze Goodreads Choice Award results, and highlight unique features from NPR’s Books We Love. The second half of the show (starting at [35:25]) features a lively, data-packed interview with Katie Del Rosario, Associate Director of Audiobooks at Spotify, focusing on the inaugural Spotify Wrapped experience for audiobook listeners, major trends in audiobook consumption, and their own personal listening favorites of the year.

Main Topics and Discussion Points

1. Reflections and Book News Roundup

• Best Books List Season ([01:22])
  • Jeff reflects on the “last call” nature of end-of-year book lists: “This is the book Internet equivalent of buying your gifts on Christmas Eve.”
  • The hosts preview upcoming topics, notably Spotify’s inclusion of audiobooks in Spotify Wrapped ([01:49]).

2. Spotify Wrapped Age Discourse and Family Playlist Politics ([02:06])

• Spotify Wrapped’s “listening age” feature amuses and confuses, sparking a tangent about how musical (and now potential reading) age might be calculated:
  • Jeff: “I listened to a lot of jazz from the late 50s, like an 85-year-old, apparently.”
  • Rebecca: “It is a very up two minds situation when wrapped comes around every year… I spent the entirety of March listening to the new Jason Isbell album just on repeat. And that'll bork your data for the whole year.”
  • A humorous aside on sharing Spotify accounts with spouses and the logistical nightmare of separating playlists ([03:01]).

3. The New York Times Notable Books and Top 10 ([10:37]–[19:32])

a. How the Lists Work—and Don’t Work

• Rebecca confesses she forgot how the NYT lists are constructed: “The Notables contain the top 10. It kind of functions as a long list or a short list, basically.” ([11:29])
• Audition by Katy Kitamura snub noted—leading to thoughtful debate on the Times’s mysterious criteria for ‘notability’.
• Jeff questions, “If it’s notable, they have to be notable... Or it has to be your best list… because I think this mishmash gets us confused and other people confused.” ([13:16])
• Both hosts call for more clarity—suggesting badges or icons to indicate if a book is listed for literary excellence or newsworthiness.

b. Surprises and Snubs

• Surprising inclusions (e.g., Angel Down by Daniel Kraus, The Director by Daniel Kelman) and omissions (Kitamura’s Audition and even the National Book Award winner not present in the Notables).
• Rebecca: “It is very interesting that it can be an award winner and not a notable.” ([17:47])

c. The Fantasy League Angle

• Hosts track how their fantasy picks performed in relation to the actual lists ([15:04]).

4. Other Big Book Lists

a. NPR’s Books We Love ([20:02])

• Rebecca highly recommends NPR’s interactive, filterable list: “If you are stumped on what to read or what to buy for somebody… a great way to narrow down some gifting.”
• Jeff adds, “The experience is really great. NPR continues to do a really nice job over there.” ([21:53])

b. Goodreads Choice Awards—A Lukewarm Analysis ([21:53])

• Jeff floats: “How about we don’t [talk about them]?” pointing out their tendency toward safe, unadventurous favorites due to voting mechanisms.
• Rebecca: “It’s just the most predictable of the lists every year because of the regression to the mean reasons.”
• The hosts analyze vote totals and patterns, discussing why Romantasy doesn’t dominate overall votes as much as expected. Rebecca theorizes: “There are a whole bunch of romantasy titles that are all selling like several thousand copies each, but there’s so many of them.”
• Noteworthy: Frederick Backman’s My Friends dominated fiction voting, and surprising entries include The House of My Mother by Sharifranke.

c. Washington Post’s List

• Rebecca shouts out Ruth by Kate Reilly’s inclusion: “This is the only list I’ve seen it appear on. And I’m just delighted for her to get those shouts.”

5. The Book World’s Human Side ([09:01])

• Humorous digressions about Sheboygan, Wisconsin and listener emails, adding a personal, bookish warmth to the episode.

Featured Interview: Spotify Wrapped for Audiobooks

[Starts at 35:25]

Introduction: Spotify Does Audiobook Wrapped!

• Rebecca: “This is the first year, if you’re an audiobook listener on Spotify, that they have included your audiobook data in Spotify wrapped.”
• Katie Del Rosario (Spotify Audiobooks) joins with fresh data and insights.

How Spotify Wrapped for Audiobooks Works ([36:01]–[41:31])

• First-ever inclusion of user audiobook data.
• User Experience: See number of books finished, top audiobook and genre, possible author clips, and more, if minimum listening thresholds are met.
• Interactive features mirror music wrapped—“turns your year of listening into really fun moments.”
• Editorial side: Playlists, video watch feeds, and five major curated lists (including best audiobooks, debuts, indie audiobooks, and trends).

Key Audiobook Trends of 2025

a. Romantasy and Spicy Romance Dominate

• Katie: “Romance, spicy romance and romantasy continue to be huge... The huge bulk of those titles are in those categories.”
  • Top listens include Fourth Wing and Iron Flame (Rebecca Yarros), Sarah J. Maas, Emily Henry, and Kelly Hart titles.

b. The Adaptation Effect ([42:24])

• Book-to-screen drives audiobook surges: over 60% of top 100 audiobooks were tied to adaptations.
  • Example: +600% in listens for The Hunting Wives by May Cobb after adaptation news.
• Rebecca: “So it sounds like you’re seeing evidence of that second pattern... exposed to the media or the idea that the adaptation is out there, and then they go to the book.”

c. Dystopian Anxiety & Tech/Nature

• “We've seen a really big uptick in what our team dubs dystopian anxiety this year… classic dystopian fiction [like] Fahrenheit 451 and I Who Have Never Known Men, as well as fiction and nonfiction focused around AI and other emerging technologies.” ([45:01])
• Top nonfiction picks include books on AI, optimism, and anxiety about the future.

d. Music Memoirs

• Strong year for music memoirs (Bono, Gucci Mane, Mark Hoppus).

e. Backlist Power

• Tolkien, Brandon Sanderson, and others make top author lists with mostly backlist titles, reflecting evergreen appeal.

Editorial Lists and Discovery ([57:04])

• Spotify produced 13 primary curated lists spanning:
  • Fiction, romance, self-care, mystery/thriller, history, horror, YA, memoir, sci-fi/fantasy, family/kids audiobooks, and more.
  • Family audiobook list is highlighted for holiday road trip recommendations.
• Data-driven lists track other slices: most repeated audiobooks (“12 Laws of the Universe” tops that chart, with Frog and Toad for kids); top debuts; top genres.

Notable Quotes & Data Highlights

• On the Goodreads Choice Awards:

  • Jeff ([22:05]): “It is in stands in notable contrast to what we were just talking about about curation and personal selection… You’ll probably find many of them [winners] at Target.”
  • Rebecca ([23:23]): “As a sum of its parts, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts on this list. And it's just like, yeah, can we just not.”

• On Spotify’s Audiobook Wrapped:

  • Katie ([37:33]): “When you open up your audiobooks experience, you're going to see the number of audiobooks that you've listened to, the cover image of your top audiobook, your top audiobooks genre, and if you're eligible, clips from your top authors, which is super exciting.”

• On Book-to-Screen Adaptation Effects:

  • Katie ([43:17]): “More than a 600% increase in listening for The Hunting Wives by May Cobb and a 330% uptick in Ruth Ware's The Woman in Cabin 10 in the two weeks after the show’s premiere.”

• On Dystopian Anxiety Trend:

  • Katie ([45:01]): “People are anxious and they're looking for ways to figure out meaning with what's going on around us.”

• On Backlist Resurgence:

  • Katie ([55:36]): “It's really fun to see just how many authors are peaking in that global top authors list with only backlist.”

• Surprising Data Points:

  • House of My Mother by Sharifranke, both a Goodreads winner and a most-repeated audiobook—unexpected given its “heady” content ([58:59]).

Personal Audiobook Picks of the Year ([51:14])

• Jeff:

  • Carpool Detectives by Chuck Hogan (“a true story of four women who, during COVID, became amateur detectives and took up a cold case”)
  • Marriage at Sea
  • This American Woman by Zarna Garg

• Rebecca:

  • Mary Roach Replaceable You
  • Marriage at Sea (in print)
  • Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (partial audio)
  • Full cast Hamlet (Folger Library)—her “hack” for Shakespeare appreciation

• Katie (Spotify):

  • Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaughey (“the one that has stuck with me all year”)
  • Moderation by Elaine Castillo (“sharp, funny satire of the tech industry and a surprisingly charming love story”)
  • Vera or Faith by Gary Shteyngart (co-narrated with Shannon Tayo)
  • Everything is Tuberculosis by John
  • Jesus Land by Joel Kidd (on ‘90s evangelical youth culture)

Fun and Memorable Moments

• Playlist divorce jokes:

  • Jeff ([03:13]): “You don't need to get a divorce lawyer involved for your playlist. Come on, stay together for the playlist. At least till they're out of college.”

• Mothers-in-law “keeping Patricia Cornwell in business” ([05:23]), and a running meta-joke about which family members read which bestsellers.

• Sheboygan shout-out ([09:55]): “Shouts to Sheboygan. Sounds like an emo record.”

• Holiday romance reading:

  • Rebecca: “There's a Christmas tree in my living room right now and I just want to drink coffee and read a holiday romance.” ([33:17])

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:04] – Episode intro and best-of-the-year list discussion preview
• [02:06] – Spotify Wrapped age jokes and playlist politics
• [10:37] – NYT Notables & Top 10 Beat: Methodology and Surprises
• [20:02] – NPR Books We Love overview
• [21:53] – Goodreads Choice Awards analysis—vote totals, predictability, Romantasy surprise
• [35:25] – Interview with Katie Del Rosario on Spotify Wrapped for Audiobooks
  • [36:01] – How dressed-up Wrapped works for audiobooks
  • [41:31] – Big 2025 audiobook trends (Romantasy, adaptations, dystopian, memoirs)
  • [47:28] – Top nonfiction audiobooks (data and editorial lists)
  • [51:14] – Personal audiobook picks from all three
  • [54:48] – Surprising user behaviors and most-repeated audiobooks

Conclusion

This episode delivers smart, witty, and data-driven analysis of the major year-end book lists and their cultural context, while also offering a unique insider perspective on the audiobook world via Spotify’s first-ever audiobook Wrapped. Whether you want hot takes on the NYT and Goodreads lists or crave deep dives into what drives current audio reading trends, there’s something here for every book lover.

Memorable Quote:
"[Spotify Wrapped] is a really rich experience. We hope that there's something that everybody can find to Listen to." – Katie Del Rosario ([41:31])