We Pick Our Favorites: 2025

Summary

The Book Case — “We Pick Our Favorites: 2025”

ABC News | Charlie Gibson, Kate Gibson
Date: January 1, 2026

---

Overview

In this special New Year's episode, hosts Charlie and Kate Gibson reflect on their favorite books discovered and discussed throughout 2025. Continuing their mission to entice listeners out of literary ruts and into unexpected genres, they alternate sharing top picks, reminiscing not only on the books themselves but also on memorable author interviews and the impact these works had on them as readers. Their selections span genres and themes, from climate fiction and memoir to epistolary novels and survival sagas, each accompanied by quotes, anecdotes, and, where possible, insights from the authors themselves.

---

Key Discussion Points & Notable Books

1. The Guardian and the Thief by Meghan Majamdar

Picked by: Kate Gibson
Segment begins: [02:40]

• Theme: Moral ambiguity amidst crisis; set in climate change-ravaged India.
• Kate was particularly moved by the book’s exploration of where morality intersects survival. She admires how Majamdar “does it beautifully... without becoming didactic. There is no lecturing in this book” ([02:51]).
• The narrative refrains from overt moralizing but compels the reader to consider what they might do to ensure their family’s survival.
• Charlie adds praise, noting Majamdar’s status as a young, “old soul” author.
• The book was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Meghan Majamdar ([04:41]):
“I felt the more truthful thing would be to show how both of these main characters in the book have elements of guardians and elements of thieves in them. And that moral murkiness I find so interesting for fiction... People are not like that. We change in circumstances...”

• Meghan expands on the constant, everyday calculations we make between ethics and convenience, using shrimp-buying as a concrete example ([06:07–08:01]).

Notable Quotes:

• Kate ([02:52]): “It is just a story of would you do this for your family's survival?... and she never directly asks that question.”
• Charlie ([04:03]): “This is a book about moral relativism, about how do our morals intersect with the imperatives of our lives?”

---

2. Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

Picked by: Charlie Gibson
Segment begins: [08:21]

• Theme: Grief, love, and tribute; personal memoir following the sudden loss of Brooks’s husband, Tony Horowitz.
• Charlie felt the book was uplifting, a testament to love and resilience rather than a depressing account of loss.
• Brooks shares her process—delaying her grief and ultimately retreating for solitude on Flinders Island to write ([09:43]).
• Both hosts note the universality of loss; Charlie shares a poignant personal story about his mother's passing.

Geraldine Brooks ([09:43]):
“So I'm dealing with all the kinds of things that you don't want to be thinking about... when you're just desperately sad and wish you could just go and sit under a yew tree and throw a veil over your head. But modern life doesn't allow you to do that.... I realized that I needed to get away from all that noise and go somewhere extremely quiet.”

Notable Quotes:

• Charlie ([11:31]): “Everyone has lost someone... that they wish they could write a tribute as beautiful as the one Geraldine Brooks has written in Memorial Days. But... those tributes never get written. They just get... held in your heart.”
• Kate ([12:53]): “There are few moments in life where your life cracks. There's a before this thing happened, and then there's an after this thing happened. And she does such a beautiful job... of capturing what that's like.”

---

3. Heart the Lover by Lily King

Picked by: Kate Gibson
Segment begins: [12:53]

• Theme: Love triangle, enduring love, and grief; notable for its spare style and emotional focus.
• Kate commends King for bringing freshness to the well-trodden trope of love triangles and for her depiction of hospice moments.
• Lily King reveals the writing process was inspired by Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake and her own need for joy/fun in her writing ([14:54]).

Lily King ([14:54]):
“I read six pages [of Tom Lake]... I just thought, she is having fun and I want to have fun. So I flipped to the back of that notebook... And I just started writing these three characters in a classroom in college. And I immediately knew where we would go.”

• King also reflects on thinking of this as her “minor book”—shorter in length and emotional weight, and how that freed her creatively.

Notable Quotes:

• Kate ([13:15]): “Her characters stay with me, and I just loved this book. I thought it was beautifully written... I would highly recommend.”

---

4. Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhurst

Picked by: Charlie Gibson
Segment begins: [17:13]

• Theme: Survival at sea, psychological endurance, and marriage under extreme duress; based on the true story of Maurice and Marilyn Bailey.
• Focuses less on physical survival and more on the psychological and emotional dynamics between the married couple adrift ([18:38]).
• Marilyn’s inventiveness and emotional stability are contrasted with Maurice’s despair, even suggesting suicide.
• The aftermath of survival and how a marriage endures such a test make up the book’s impactful second half.

Sophie Elmhurst ([18:38]):
“The sheer idea of being trapped on a life raft with your spouse for a long period of time... what happens in that kind of crucible, that... claustrophobic setting.”

• The making of playing cards from a book on the raft is cited as a haunting detail about maintaining sanity.

Notable Quotes:

• Charlie ([19:49]): “As one reviewer noted, most survival stories involve men. But in this case, it was Marilyn who held things together.”
• Kate ([21:29]): “People who are eating raw turtle to survive took the time to make playing cards and played cards every day. It's really a great story.”

---

5. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Picked by: Kate Gibson
Segment begins: [26:36]

• Theme: The power of letter-writing; self-expression and connection across generations and experiences.
• Epistolary format centers the character Sippel von Antwerp—“a tough old girl” who writes to anyone, including strangers like a 23andMe operator.
• Inspired directly by 84 Charing Cross Road, Evans set out to explore a whole life via letters ([28:02]).
• The lack of physical description yet deep character development is praised.
• The book was largely discovered by the Gibsons before it hit bestseller status.

Virginia Evans ([28:02]):
"I try to write the book I want to read. And so that was the book I wanted to read... So then the character Sybil... sort of arrived to me. Her voice, her way of being, her particular manner."

Notable Quotes:

• Kate ([27:12]): “The main character, Sippel Von Antwerp, is amazing... and she will correspond with literally anybody who writes her.”
• Kate ([29:20]): “There is so much that is unspoken... in both the supporting character and the main character.”

---

6. The Interpreter by David Shipler

Picked by: Charlie Gibson
Segment begins: [31:15]

• Theme: War, language, trust, and the ambiguous role of interpreters set during the end of the Vietnam War.
• Loosely based on Shipler’s own reporting experience, with the character Lan representing the complexities of divided loyalties.
• Explores the impossibility of fully objective translation; how interpreters inevitably shape what is understood in moments of peril ([32:44]).
• Shipler notes the importance of both faithfulness to words and the need to translate the “meanings above the words.”

Will Cooley ([32:44]):
“The character I've created... believes [he is] faithful to the integrity of the words that are being spoken to him and that he is changing into English... He is poetic.”

• The discussion transitions into a broader conversation about translation and the gaps between languages.

Notable Quotes:

• Charlie ([35:59]): “You feel immersed in Vietnam. You can taste it, you can smell it, you can sense its ambiguities... and the book, The Interpreter, really raises that question.”
• Kate ([36:46]): “This book argues that there can't be 100% direct translation all of the time. It's going to require some interpretation.”

---

Memorable Moments & Quotes

• Humor & Banter: Kate teases Charlie about singing and church ([00:40]), and their playful jabs add warmth to the episode (“Indulgent is not even... on the list” [02:29]).
• Reflection on Reading & Discovery: Celebration when books they champion “become a bestseller” ([30:20]), and satisfaction from finding “the wonderful book... before it became a bestseller.”
• Advocacy for Literacy: The hosts urge listeners to “get as many people reading as we possibly can,” citing past episodes on literacy and book banning ([37:29]).
• Personal Touch: Charlie shares an intimate story about losing his mother and the wish to memorialize loved ones ([11:31]).

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:40] — The Guardian and the Thief
• [04:41] — Meghan Majamdar interview segment
• [08:21] — Memorial Days
• [09:43] — Geraldine Brooks interview segment
• [12:53] — Heart the Lover
• [14:54] — Lily King interview segment
• [17:13] — Marriage at Sea
• [18:38] — Sophie Elmhurst interview segment
• [26:36] — The Correspondent
• [28:02] — Virginia Evans interview segment
• [31:15] — The Interpreter
• [32:44] — David Shipler interview segment

---

Conclusion

Charlie and Kate close the episode reaffirming their goal to broaden listeners’ literary appetites and gratitude for their book-loving community. They urge everyone to include more reading—and listening to The Book Case—in their 2026 resolutions.
Charlie ([37:51]): “We wish you great reading, a great reading list for 2026. We hope we'll contribute to your reading list and may reading be on your list of New Year's resolutions.”

---

To learn more about the books and authors mentioned, refer to the episode description for links.

Transcript

[Kate Gibson]

Finding a hoodie that lasts through the.

[Will Cooley]

Season can be tough.

[Charlie Gibson]

The American Giant Classic full zip hoodie is made to last year after year.

[Will Cooley]

Snag the hoodie that brings comfort for life.

[Charlie Gibson]

Save 20% off your first order at american-giant.com with code STAPLE20 at checkout. So should old acquaintance before God and never brought to mind. And that's as much as you'll ever hear me sing. Hello, bibliophiles, it is a new year. Don't Forget to write 2026 on your checks. Does anybody write checks anymore?

[Kate Gibson]

Kate? No, not really. And I have to say, all of you at home just got a nice preview about why my mother and I often tried not to sit next to him in church. I'm the Kate part of the Kate and Charlie part. And we do wish you a happy New Year. We hope you made your New Year's resolutions, and one of them is to listen to the bookcase religiously and that you're making other people have that be their New Year resolution, too. Like, you know, take hostages, man. Like, go. Go. Make people listen to.

[Charlie Gibson]

Well, it's not uncommon that people, you know, ask each other what's on your list of New Year's resolutions, and I think you put forth a good one to listen to the bookcase every weekend religiously.

[Kate Gibson]

I think I said the word religiously.

[Charlie Gibson]

Religiously. I. I don't think you need to have. Have a prayer involved. But anyway. But bottom line, we are delighted to beginning our fifth year of the bookcase. And our fourth year really was a treat. We had a Booker Prize winner.

[Kate Gibson]

Yeah.

[Charlie Gibson]

We had great mystery writers. Yep.

[Kate Gibson]

We had Dave Barry, always a highlight.

[Charlie Gibson]

Including Harlan Coburn and Abir Mukherjee. In the mystery writers area. We had Geraldine Brooks.

[Kate Gibson]

We did. That was a coup.

[Charlie Gibson]

We had Colin McCann. Yes, you mentioned Dave Barry.

[Kate Gibson]

I think I stole that part of your thunder.

[Charlie Gibson]

At any rate. And now Kate and I wish everyone a happy New Year. And. And we are reading books that are going to be published in the first few months of the new year. And they're pretty good.

[Will Cooley]

Yeah.

[Kate Gibson]

And we're looking forward to bringing those to you in the new year. We have all sorts of great ideas for the new year. So please, please, please tune in and tell your friends to tune in. But we thought we would dedicate this New Year's Day show to talking about the books we really loved in 2025. So I'll start. Should I start?

[Charlie Gibson]

Well, I gave you first dibs because I'm an indulgent father, and she snatched one that I would have picked. I won't say which one. But she still left me a rich list from which to pick and so I had to leave out some, actually. So, Kate, you start.

[Kate Gibson]

And then there's so many ways I would describe you. Indulgent is not even on the. Like, it's not even. It's not even on the list.

[Charlie Gibson]

Oh, it should be. It should be. Anyway, we will alternate and Kate will start.

[Kate Gibson]

Da da da da da da. So my first book, I think it was incredibly relevant to me when I read it. The Guardian and the Thief by Meghan Majamdar is what I'm going to start with. I loved the book. I just loved it because I think in a time where everything seems very extreme, our politics are extreme, environmental policy is extreme. I think discussions about moral relativism in these times is really critical. And Meghan Majomdar does it beautifully in this book without even remotely becoming didactic. There is no lecturing in this book. There is no boy, people should be sorry because they did this in this book. It is just a story of would you do this for your family's survival? Would you do this for your family's survival? And yet she never directly asks that question. And it's a beautiful ride with lots of incredible world building that drops you right into the middle of. Climate change threatened India. She doesn't tell you when at some time in the future. And India has been torn apart by climate change. I just love this book.

[Charlie Gibson]

It's really very, very good, I thought. I agree totally.

[Kate Gibson]

Yeah, she's made me a huge mega Majamdar fan and I cannot wa to see what she does next. I'm going to become a reader full of faith in this woman's work.

[Charlie Gibson]

And she's so young.

[Kate Gibson]

Yeah, I know. Writing a book like this, it's really an old soul book, I think.

[Charlie Gibson]

And she was on the final list of the National Book Award, wasn't she?

[Kate Gibson]

Yeah, yeah, she was. Which again, it's amazing that she came that close to the All American Literary Prize.

[Charlie Gibson]

Right?

[Kate Gibson]

Given that this book is placed squarely in India, we wanted to give you a little quote from the show where she talks about who is good and who is bad and how that helped inspire the novel and also how those calculations that we make of can I live with myself if I do this? Can I live with myself and do that? And how she winds that beautifully into her narrative. Really, it's a hell of a book. I highly recommend it. Anyway, here it is, the great Mega Majamdar talking about how she does what she does.

[Meghan Majamdar]

I realized that it wouldn't be very interesting. It wouldn't be very interesting. It wouldn't be truthful if I wrote a book where there was a clear mother who is this saintly good character, and then there's a thief who intrudes. And I felt that the more truthful thing would be to show how both of these main characters in the book have elements of guardians and elements of thieves in them. And that moral murkiness I find so interesting for fiction, because I think it's true. You know, who do you know who is wholly good and who do you know who is wholly bad? People are not like that. You know, we change in circumstances. We change depending on how comfortable and safe we feel or how threatened we feel. And I wanted to bring those moral questions into the book.

[Kate Gibson]

Hmm.

[Charlie Gibson]

I hope it doesn't scare people away. But to my mind, this is a book about moral relativism, about how do our morals intersect with the imperatives of our lives? What will we do when those we love might become imperiled by things like climate change? Do we have the luxury of maintaining high moral standards when our family may not have enough to eat?

[Meghan Majamdar]

One of the things that I find so interesting is that we are making those calculations. All the time in my life, I am making choices about when I'm going to heed my ethics and when I'm going to turn away from them. I remember reading an article several years ago about shrimp farming in Southeast Asia and how a lot of US Shrimp comes from Southeast Asia. And the conditions under which people are made to work on those boats were horrific. They often worked without pay. They were in deep debt. And that's. That's the shrimp that we're getting in this country. So I make a choice when I buy that shrimp, just to give you a very ordinary, everyday example, I make a choice to put that out of my mind. I feel, well, I am just a tiny part of this vast system. There is really nothing I can do. But I do choose to participate in this system, and I do allow that feeling of distance. I know that those people are real, but I am very far away from them. And I allow that distance to impose on what I believe are my ethics. And I make choices like that all the time. You know, I make choices that serve my family, that are convenient for me, that enable me to have a comfortable and delicious dinner. I make those choices all the time. So what am I doing? I am putting myself above those people who are working in horrific conditions, far away from their own family. And I. I privilege myself not because I am thinking through the ethics very carefully, but because I am paying attention to convenience and comfort. And I think these things are going to come up.

[Kate Gibson]

If you missed this title in 2024, please go to your local independent bookstore and find it. It's really a beautiful book. Amazingly enough, it is a page turner and is not terribly depressing or heavy. The Guardian and the Thief by Meghan Majamdar. Amazing book and one of my favorites for 2025. That being said, I will now throw to you for your dance solo.

[Charlie Gibson]

I would start with Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks. We have featured a number of novels in these four years in which grief plays a part. It is such a difficult thing to deal with personally, and I think it's a very difficult thing to deal with and be original about it as an author. In Memorial Days, Geraldine Brooks deals with the sudden death of her husband, Tony Horowitz. You might avoid the book thinking it would leave you depressed, but just the opposite. It left me feeling uplifted. In that Geraldine Brooks could write what is, in essence, a love story and a tribute to an extraordinary, ordinary man that you come to know. Tony Horowitz dropped dead suddenly and with no warning. He was just 60 years old. The two of them for years had worked jointly as reporters, and Horowitz was an excellent one. And then Geraldine Brooks left that partnership to raise a family and to write novels. Horowitz was not without his idiosyncrasies, but he was a figure larger than life, both professionally and personally. And the interesting twist here is that Geraldine Brooks effectively delayed her grieving for three years. And then devoted herself totally to thinking about Tony and about writing about their life. So when the time came to write, she got as far away from civilization as it's possible to get.

[Geraldine Brooks]

The day I got that sudden, shocking news which could not have been more unexpected. He was, as far as we knew, a radiantly healthy man in the prime of life. And nothing had prepared me for it. And I then, you know, was just tipped headlong into the bureaucracy of death and all the things that you have to do, particularly if you've got kids, just to keep your life functioning. So I'm dealing with all the kinds of things that you don't want to be thinking about, like credit cards and health insurance and just all of it when you're just desperately sad and wish you could just go and sit under a yew tree and throw a veil over your head. But modern life doesn't allow you to do that. And so because I had just squashed any possibility of properly grieving him down for so long, I realized that I needed to get away from all that noise and go somewhere extremely quiet. Where all I had to do was think about him and think about what had happened to me and try and make some sense of it. So the first thing I did was think where would be good to do that. And booked a shack on a beach on Flinders island, which is the most remote place I could think of. It's in the Bass Strait between the Australian mainland and Tasmania. Very, very few people lived there, and none of them lived anywhere near the shack. So I just was completely alone. And that was what I needed. And once I was there, it was just a case of get back to the day it happened and try and remember everything that happened and allow yourself to have the feelings that you didn't allow yourself on that day.

[Charlie Gibson]

I think the reason I'm so moved by this book and Joan Didion also wrote one of a similar vein that I much admire. But I think everyone has lost someone that they feel was so exceptional that they wish they could write a tribute as beautiful as the one Geraldine Brooks has written in Memorial Days. But of course, we can't write like Geraldine Brooks. And therefore those tributes never get written. They just get. Well, they get held in your heart. I remember when my mom died, and I'll get personal here for a minute. She was the glue that held our family together. And whenever things needed fixing in the family, she was the one to whom we turned. And she called it love in action. The day she died at home, I was there and I. I remember going out for a walk right after she was gone. And traffic was moving, people were shopping, people were cutting the lawn. You know, normal life. And I kept thinking, don't you people know that the world has changed and that something monumental has happened? And I remember thinking how much I wished I could write something that would tell the world how special my mother was. As I say, I think all of us have had those thoughts about someone. Well, Geraldine Brooks did it. Memorial Day is a beautiful book. Tony Horowitz was an exceptional man. And Geraldine Brooks does him great honor and writes about dealing with grief in as meaningful a way, I think, as I have ever read.

[Kate Gibson]

And I think one of the things also, too, that is so beautiful is she beautifully captures a moment in life. There are few moments in life where your life cracks. There's a before this thing happened, and then there's an after this thing happened. And she does such a beautiful Job, I think, of capturing what that's like and how you have to get stuck in the crack for a while. You have to honor the crack. It's a beautiful, beautiful book. And I love talking to her. And that was also sort of. I was like, ooh, we get to talk to Geraldine Brooks. So that was awesome. The next book I wanna talk about is Lily King. The book has sort of a funny title. It's called Heart the Lover. It is a spare, slim, beautifully written book about a love triangle. But again, and it's funny that dad just talked about the fact that Geraldine Brooks manages to write about grief in a fresh and interesting way. One of those books that makes you go, yeah, yeah, as you're reading it. Lily King's Heart the Lover did that for me with a love triangle and with love that refuses to die. Talk about cliche topics in literature. And yet she manages to present them in a fresh, slim and sparing way. Her characters stay with me, and I just loved this book. I thought it was beautifully written. And again, there is some heavy stuff in this book. Maybe not as heavy as I'm mourning my husband after three years, but there's some heavy stuff in this book, including a few chapters that take place in hospice. And yet Lily King does such a beautiful job of writing about the beauty of those moments and what's to be thankful in those moments for? Anyway, here she is talking about why she wrote this book, how she ended up getting the inspiration for this book, but also, too, how she managed to have fun with it and not put a lot of pressure on herself in terms of this being a very important book in her career. And it's a beautiful, sparing novel that I would highly recommend. So here she is, the great Lily King.

[Lily King]

Well, it was really. Ann Patchett, dear friend of mine, sent me her manuscript of Tom Lake. I was writing another novel, a political murder mystery. Got 90 pages in. I didn't see a way through. I didn't care about any of the characters anymore. She sent me her book. I read six pages. I mean, I love that book. I read the whole thing. But the first six pages, I just thought, she is having fun and I want to have fun. So I flipped to the back of that notebook that I was writing my political murder mystery in. And I just started writing these. These three characters in a classroom in college. And I immediately knew where we would go. I knew kind of emotionally the trajectory that I wanted this narrator to take. And I knew the last part and where we would all end up 30 years later. I didn't know how we were going to get there. And so as I write, I take notes in the back of a notebook and I just. I kind of, you know, get a few milestones up ahead that I'm sort of aiming to toward. And then I go there and I go there and I go there and that's sort of how I write. I had very little confidence in this book as I was writing it, and I wasn't really sure it was going to make it. And I remembered my friend, the writer Deborah Spark, saying to me years ago that she had a friend who said, I've decided this is my minor book. And so I definitely had that thought, like, this is my minor book. It is a small book. Minor books are small. Minor books are not, you know, 400 pages. And so that's kind of how I got through it. Like, this doesn't have to be very long. Doesn't have to be very long. It's okay to, you know, with what you have. And I just. I had the idea that it was a short book from the very beginning, I think, because I knew what was coming in the third part. And I knew that was going to be hard to write. And I was going to carry around a lot of heavy, heavy feelings while I was writing it. And I think the only way I could think about doing it is if it was going to be short.

[Kate Gibson]

Was Heart the Lover, by the way.

[Virginia Evans]

Going to be one of yours?

[Kate Gibson]

No. Oh, okay, fine. I just want to make sure that if I'm stealing, I want full credit for it. I like having full credit for stealing. All right. So that being said, we will go from Heart the Lover to my number.

[Charlie Gibson]

Two would be Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhurst. I think we've all read survival stories and this is one of the most extraordinary I think you'll ever read. But Marriage at Sea is not just about hardships or tragedy. It's about the psychological effects of days at sea waiting for a rescue that doesn't come for 117 days. A married couple that reacts totally differently to their circumstances. One ready to give up and the other holding out hope, holding the couple together with incredible inventiveness. And then the back half of the book is about how the two of them deal with life after. And improbable a rescue does come. Sophie L. Merce tells the story compellingly. And the psychological effects on the couple is what fascinated her and fascinated me as a reader. Maurice and Marilyn Bailey were the couple. They were sailing from England to New Zealand when a Whale capsized and sank their boat. And for those 117 days, they were adrift in the Atlantic Ocean in what? Essentially, there's pictures involved in the book. Essentially, it was a kiddie pool with a crude cover, A very crude cover. And they had no food. They had to grab it as it came by. Talk about a strain on a marriage. As you researched their story, were you most struck by the physical hardships they endured or the emotional and psychological hardships that they endured?

[Sophie Elmhurst]

That's such a good question. Definitely what interested me the most and what I spent the most time thinking about was the latter, the emotional and psychological. And that's really why I wanted to tell the story that, you know, the physical hardships, well, I suppose they're more obvious and they're more extreme, but they're practical. And you deal with them in a way quite quickly. I think, if you're people who are gonna survive as they. As they were, they were practical people. And she especially, you know, could set up these systems, you know, could figure out how to catch the rainwater, figure out how to fish, how to catch, you know, the turtles with your bare hands, and, you know, the rest of it. Those were kind of almost simpler or more straightforward to overcome. Right. Each one was a sort of practical challenge. And then you had to find your way through that challenge. Whereas the emotional and the psychological, the sheer just idea of being trapped on a life raft with your spouse for a long period of time, how that works, what happens in that kind of crucible that, like, fiercely claustrophobic setting. And especially as she was dealing with a spouse who was really struggling psychologically. To me, that was endlessly fascinating, you know, and I still feel like I am still thinking about it.

[Charlie Gibson]

And so am I. As one reviewer noted, most survival stories involve men. But in this case, it was Marilyn who held things together. She kept up spirits. She imagined menus that they could have after they were rescued. Maybe as ship after ship passed them by unnoticed, she tried to convince herself and Maurice that when the first seven boats went by and didn't stop, that rescue was just not supposed to happen yet. She made slips of paper into playing cards. She simply would not let them die. And Maurice, on the other hand, was. Was Debbie Downer. He proposed almost immediately, a double suicide. And as author Sophie Elmhurst notes, he didn't die. He failed at that as well. The trip had been his idea from the beginning, and she was their savior before, as I say, the eighth ship to be within visual range finally picked them up. The book is a survival story, to be sure, but it's also a portrait of a marriage going through an impossible test. They survive. The marriage survived, much to my surprise as a reader. And then Maurice improbably credits himself with empowering Marilyn with the authority to take over the tiny kiddie pool life raft and figure out how to manage survival. Marriages are fascinating. We can never.

[Kate Gibson]

And so are men. I just want to insert that. And so are men.

[Charlie Gibson]

Well, this is not the strongest example of our gender, but marriages are fascinating. You know, we can never really know what's going on behind the public face of a married couple. But Sophie Elmer does an extraordinary job of interpreting the dynamic between Marilyn and Maurice Bailey. We know from the beginning how the story comes out, but how it gets there and what happens after rescue makes for compelling reading.

[Kate Gibson]

She does a beautiful job of interpreting the marriage, and that's a really good way of putting it, because it's not like her diaries wrote about their marriage. You know, I sense that we are at a turning point in our marriage. Like, she wasn't reflective in that way. She was really just observational about their circumstance and what they were doing. So the fact that Sophie Elmer's manages to put together such a beautiful interpretation of their marriage. And the other thing I hadn't thought of, you know, in the Tom Hanks movie with Wilson, I guess Wilson is sort of an example of this, but you don't think of what happens to you mentally when you're by yourself for that long. And one of the things that really stuck with me from that book was that she takes time to cut up one of the books that they have in there, Raft, and she makes playing cards. She sits there and she draws all of the individual playing cards and she makes them play cards. Not because it's a thing to do and a way to kill time, which God knows they got a lot of, but because it's going to keep them mentally together. Anyway, that stays with me from the book that people who are eating raw turtle to survive took the time to make playing cards and played cards every day. It's really a great story.

[Charlie Gibson]

So that's four books we leave 2025 savoring two more, one from Kate and one from one from me. After we take a break.

[Grow Therapy Announcer]

If you're feeling bogged down by the impossible expectations or the noise of New Year, New Me take a second to pause. Growth therapy gives you space to slow down, check in, and start the new year from a more grounded place, whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not.

[Kate Gibson]

The other way around.

[Grow Therapy Announcer]

They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the US Offering both virtual and in person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity or availability and get started in as little as two days. And if something comes up, you can Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. There are no subscriptions, no long term commitments, you just pay per session. GROW helps you find therapy on your time Whatever challenges you're facing. Grow Therapy is here to help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans, including Medicaid in some states. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growththerapy.com booknow today to get started. That's growththerapy.com booknow growththerapy.com booknow availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. If you're feeling bogged down by the impossible expectations or the noise of New Year, New Me, take a second to pause. GrowTherapy gives you space to slow down, check in and start the new year from a more grounded place. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th. Grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the US offering both virtual and in person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity or availability and get started in as little as two days. And if something comes up, you can Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. There are no subscriptions, no long term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow helps you find therapy on your time whatever challenges you're facing. Grow Therapy is here to help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans, including Medicaid in some states. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growththerapy.com booknow today to get started. That's growththerapy.com booknow growththerapy.com booknow availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. If you're feeling bogged down by the impossible expectations or the noise of New Year, New Me take a second to pause. Growtherapy gives you space to slow down, check in and start the new year from a more grounded place. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th, grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent, licensed therapists across the US Offering both virtual and in person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity or availability and get started in as little as two days. And if something comes up, you can Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. There are no subscriptions, no long term commitments. You just pay per session. GROW helps you find therapy on your time. Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow Therapy is here to help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans, including Medicaid in some states. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growththerapy.com booknow today to get started. That's growththerapy.com booknow growththerapy.com booknow availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

[Kate Gibson]

Welcome back. We're listing some of our favorite books for 2025. The last one that I want to talk about really is one of my favorites for this year. I just love this book.

[Charlie Gibson]

Kate stole it from me.

[Kate Gibson]

This one is. Yes, did steal this one. So I'll take full credit for stealing this one. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. Oh my gosh, I love this book, you guys, and I can't wax rhapsodic about it enough. The main character, Sippel Von Antwerp, is amazing. And with a name like that, you'd think she'd be, I don't know, a daguerreotype, a stereotype of, you know, you're uppity. But she is this beautiful correspondent.

[Charlie Gibson]

I like the idea that she says she'd be a daguerreotype. An old photograph.

[Kate Gibson]

Yeah, exactly.

[Charlie Gibson]

And the stereotype of an older woman.

[Kate Gibson]

Yes.

[Charlie Gibson]

No, she's a, she's a tough old girl.

[Kate Gibson]

Oh, God. And she's funny.

[Charlie Gibson]

Yeah.

[Kate Gibson]

And she will correspond with literally anybody who writes her. One of her most robust correspondents is somebody who's just a Telephone operator for a 23andMe ancestry tracing type service. And she starts a huge correspondence with him. And he's one of my favorite characters.

[Charlie Gibson]

You should mention that it's an epistolary novel.

[Kate Gibson]

It is an epistolary novel. I'm sorry, I haven't. The whole novel takes place in letters. And I think it's also worth noting that my favorite epistolary novel of all time is 84 charing crossroad. And so we're going to hear from Virginia Evans in a minute about actually how this book came directly from 84 Charing Crossroad, which is my favorite epistolary.

[Charlie Gibson]

Novel of all time.

[Kate Gibson]

So here you go.

[Virginia Evans]

For me, it was the letters. It was during COVID and I had just read 84 Charing Crossroad. That book did something for me during that time that I needed, which was sort of a healing work or something. That just felt wonderful. I felt wonderful reading that book. It felt sort of is maybe wholesome, the right word, or digestible or kind or sort of human. I just really enjoyed reading that book. And I finished the book. And that book is so short and. But it's very satisfying. I mean, it's a perfectly executed book, but it's very short. And I thought, I want that. I want more of that. I want that, that, but more and deeper. And always when I'm starting to write a new book, I try to write the book I want to read. And so that was the book I wanted to read. And so then it was kind of, if I want to write a whole life story in letters, what kind of a person, you know, what kind of a person would write enough letters to. To make that and receive enough variety of letters to sort of put together a puzzle of someone's life? And so then the character Sybil, who is the principal character of the book, sort of came. And I will say she sort of arrived to me. Her voice, her way of being, her sort of particular manner sort of arrived.

[Kate Gibson]

I think it's amazing that this book comes from 84 Charing Crossroad. If you haven't read 84 Charing Crossroad, it's about a book lover and an antiquarian bookseller and about how, as they correspond as he's sending her books, they strike up a friendship and really, like an unspoken romance. And so one of the things I read into the Correspondent was obviously what you read is what she puts to paper. And she's very thoughtful about that. But there is so much that she doesn't say. There is so much that is unspoken in both the supporting character and the main character of the Correspondent. And the other thing that I just want to mention that I think Virginia Evans does so brilliantly. She never describes Sibyl von Antwerp physically, not once. And yet the first paragraph, she describes how Sibyl von Antwerp sits at her desk. Her ritual of getting her desk ready so that she can begin her correspondence for the day. And in that one paragraph, you know Sibyl von Antwerp. And I guarantee you, you know a Sibyl von Antwerp. We all do.

[Charlie Gibson]

And one of the things I most like about this book is, is that we found it before it became a bestseller. And she was delighted to talk to us because I don't know that many people were at that point.

[Kate Gibson]

No.

[Charlie Gibson]

You know, we don't follow the bestseller list, but we're always very pleased that one of the books that we have.

[Kate Gibson]

Found, we always kind of call each other to celebrate, like it's our celebration.

[Charlie Gibson]

Yeah, exactly. That was the wonderful book that we read about, the Octopus, Remarkably Bright Creatures.

[Kate Gibson]

By Shelby Van Pelt.

[Charlie Gibson]

Right.

[Kate Gibson]

And I think we're gonna see that as a movie and. Or series in the next couple of years.

[Charlie Gibson]

Well, it was her first book, and nobody knew about it. And we just. We read it. We were just knocked out by it. And it's still. Three or four years later, it's still showing up on bestseller list. So we do love that, and we.

[Kate Gibson]

Hope that for the correspondence, which I guarantee you, you will love it, and after you read it, you will give it to people. You know, we have actually heard about that in the reviews for our podcast, and we couldn't be more pleased because Virginia Evans is amazing, and this book is totally worth the hype.

[Charlie Gibson]

And she'd written a lot of books, and this was the first one she got published, which is amazing to me. Maybe it's because I was a journalist all my professional life that I would again call to your attention David Shipler's the Interpreter, and this will be my last one. And maybe that's not fair, because the book appeals, I think, to everybody, not just journalists. But if this were a movie, and I think it would make a good.

[Kate Gibson]

One, so do I. Gray Oliver Stone picture.

[Charlie Gibson]

You'd see at the outset that title that goes up on the screen that says Based on a true story. Shifler was in Vietnam. He was reporting for the New York Times from 1973 through the rather ignominious end of the war in 1975. And his story involves an interpreter that he calls Lan L A N. The character is based on the interpreter that Shipler worked with during his years in Vietnam. And Lan's loyalties, the thing that fascinated me, Lan's loyalties are opaque. His seeming loyalties in the book, because he's working with the character that represents Shipler, are loyalties to the South. But that was true. And then he switched over to the north before coming back to the south and interpreting for an American character that, as I say, Shipler bases on himself. But where did Lon's loyalties really lie? Well, in fact, it's pretty clear his loyalties are really to Vietnam writ large. And therefore, how much can the reporter trust his interpreter to tell him accurately what the person being interviewed is saying, and does the interpreter have his own agenda as he does a translation? We asked Shipler about that.

[Will Cooley]

I've worked with interpreters in lots of different countries. Some are better than others and some are more trustworthy than others. The character I've created in this book is, he believes, faithful to the integrity of the words that are being spoken to him and that he is changing into English. And he's a fluent English speaker. He's poetic. Could all Vietnamese really be that poetic? Or all peasants out in the rice fields dodging the war, able to talk in metaphors the way all of these folks do? The interpreter encounters a communist agent, an uncover undercover communist agent, who challenges him about his translations because the agent would like him to translate in an anti American way and a pro communist way. And Lon is very determined not to do that. So yes, it's, it's an issue. But I, I think that if you work with somebody over time, you get to a sense of the person's honesty because you're in a conversation back and forth with the person you're interviewing through the different languages. And I think you can, you can kind of tell if things are being distorted to a point. So you do, you do have to trust the interpreter. It's very important.

[Kate Gibson]

But you also, I think, have to make up for language gaps. I mean, it's something that I learned when we were working at PBS and we were translating. There's a large Somali population in Minnesota where I'm from, and we were making a documentary about adverse childhood experiences and we realized that there's no word for depression in Somali. Now try to explain, you know, try to come up with a word for depression in somebody else's language without adding a certain amount of poetry to it.

[Will Cooley]

I think you're right about that. I would certainly accept an interpreter's translating into good English. You know, if the person is speaking well and grammatically in his or her own language, then it should be translated into good English. And at one point I have my interpreter, my fictional interpreter, say something to the effect is, I translate the words, but I translate the meanings above the words. And I think that's where your example comes in. If there is no word for depression, then, but there is a concept of it, at least then, and the person is describing that concept, then the translator is free to use the word depression. I would say the other aspect of this is proper grammar. Because if you need an interpreter who speaks really good English, proper grammar. And if the person who's. You're interviewing is speaking proper grammar in their own language, then you want the translation to come out grammatically, too. So it's. It's a very. Being an interpreter is a very high level skill, and it's not so easy to find people who. You can do it.

[Charlie Gibson]

Well, it's a bit of a spoiler, but when the war ends, Lon makes a decision to stay in Vietnam, despite the fact that he's been working for an American reporter. And that's as much as a spoiler that I would give. But as you might expect from his broad and lengthy background as a reporter, Shipler knows how to write. You feel immersed in Vietnam. You can taste it, you can smell it, you can sense its ambiguities. But as someone who's depended myself on an interpreter, but in my case, always in a studio setting, not in a dangerous setting, I was always conscious of not knowing really how precise were the translations that the audience was getting. And the book, the Interpreter really raises that question. Could the correspondent be absolutely sure, for instance, that Lon would keep him safe and out of danger?

[Kate Gibson]

Well, and I would argue that this book argues that there can't be 100% direct translation all of the time. It's going to require some interpretation at some time.

[Charlie Gibson]

Yeah, yeah. So, anyway, this is a book, the Interpreter, David Shipler, the author, a book that I think deserves attention but didn't get as much as it should have, I think, when it was released. So there you have it. Kate's and my. Look back at Our favorites from 2025. Three from each of us. But I would add that it killed me to leave out Samantha Harvey's Orbital, that won the Booker Prize for the best piece of 2024 fiction. So there. Kate. I sneaked in a fourth.

[Kate Gibson]

Aren't you adorable?

[Charlie Gibson]

Anyway, well, we'll make the list next January 1st. You won't really know what we're talking about next year unless you listen to the bookcase. A new edition coming out every Thursday.

[Kate Gibson]

Yeah, but we're so happy that you're here, and we hope you're inviting friends. Our goal is to really just get as many people reading as we possibly can, get as many people as excited about reading as we possibly can. Hence the shows on literacy, book banning, and the importance of libraries. And we can't wait to bring more of that to you in 2026. The job is my honor.

[Charlie Gibson]

We take a moment to wish all of those listening a happy New year. We hope 2026 will be a good one for all of you. We're excited about what we're reading and we hope you will be too. We wish you great reading, a great reading list for 2026. We hope we'll contribute to your reading list and may reading be on your list of New Year's resolutions.

[Kate Gibson]

Happy New Year, yeah. The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our Executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg, Arielle Chester at Good Morning America, and Josh Cohan from ABC Audio. Follow the Bookcase wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to listen, rate and review. If you'd like to find any of the books mentioned in this episode, we have them linked in the episode description.

[Will Cooley]

Hi, it's will cooley from the new york rangers. Cooley scores. Bring in the new year with me in miami. The NHL winter classic is coming to the sunshine state. Watch as we take on the florida panthers in the 2026 discover NHL winter classic in miami. Catch all the action on january 2nd at 8:00pm eastern on tnt and hbo max. That's january 2nd at 8:00pm on tnt and hbo max. For tickets and more info, visit NHL.com winter classic.