‘The Book Review’ Podcast Turns 20

Summary

The Book Review Podcast Turns 20

Host: Gilbert Cruz (The New York Times) Guests: Tina Jordan (Deputy Editor, Book Review), Dwight Garner (Longtime NYT Book Critic, Podcast Creator)
Date: May 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, The Book Review podcast reflects on two decades of literary culture, book trends, and the role the podcast itself has played. Host Gilbert Cruz is joined by veteran book editors and critics Tina Jordan and Dwight Garner. Together, they offer a lively, in-depth exploration of the most influential books, emerging genres, controversies, and cultural shifts in reading since 2006, plus a playful quiz to test their knowledge of "book review" history.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Podcast’s Origins and Cultural Context

• Dwight Garner recalls creating the show back in 2006:

  “...where we huddle each week on the shores of light and curse the encroaching darkness.” (00:43)

• The world in 2006: Pre-iPhone, a young Twitter, and a literary scandal dominating headlines.

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2. Major Literary Scandals and Game-Changers

James Frey’s "A Million Little Pieces"

• Oprah's Book Club selection, propelled to bestseller, then exposed (by The Smoking Gun) as largely fabricated.
• Tina Jordan:

  “They took the book apart ... the arrests. None of it had happened.” (03:29)

• Dwight:

  “... seeing him dragged low by Oprah was kind of every writer's worst nightmare ...” (05:07)

Elizabeth Gilbert’s "Eat, Pray, Love"

• A memoir about self-discovery post-divorce, highly polarizing but hugely influential.
• Tina:

  “A woman always defined by her relationships, learns how not to do that.” (06:09)

• Douglas:

  “She could also really write ... it inspires you to get out.” (07:05)

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3. The Rise & Transformation of YA Fiction

"The Hunger Games" and Dystopian YA

• Suzanne Collins’ series as a landmark for darker YA fiction; paved way for similar trilogies ("Divergent," "Maze Runner").
• Tina:

  “It's the moment where YA fiction started to get really, really dark.” (09:10)

• Discussion of adult fandoms for YA, e.g., TwiMoms.

"Harry Potter" and Record Sales

• The seventh book, "Deathly Hallows," set sales records and marked the shift in kid-lit's mainstream dominance.

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4. Global Literary Phenomena

Nordic Noir – "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

• Stieg Larsson’s 2008 release popularized Scandinavian crime fiction in the US.
• Tina:

  “... opened these floodgates. American publishers could not pick up Norwegian and Danish and Swedish thriller writers fast enough.” (13:30)

• Resulted in a shortage of translators and high demand for regional authors (e.g., Jo Nesbo).

Autofiction – Karl Ove Knausgaard & Ferrante Fever

• Knausgaard’s "My Struggle": Sparked an autofiction trend, noted for granular introspection.
• Dwight:

  “It's like watching a man lay bricks and suddenly you realize he's built the pyramids.” (15:58)

• Ferrante's Neapolitan novels: Became a communal read for women, shrouded in authorial mystery.
• Tina:

  “We were all like, this is it, like, female rage.” (20:48)

• Dwight:

  “It’s such a hard trick to pull off in the modern age ... only Pynchon, I think, has done it in the way that she's done it.” (22:02)

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5. Shifts in Literary Prizes and Author Generations

Passing of the Postwar Generation

• Reflections on the deaths of titans like Bellow, Mailer, Updike, Roth, Morrison, Amos.
• Dwight:

  “We may never replace them ... There was sort of a. A mass consensus that doesn't exist anymore.” (23:04)

Wolf Hall & the Historical Fiction Boom

• Hilary Mantel's trilogy revived interest in historical fiction, led to genre’s award dominance.
• Tina:

  “12 of the last 15 Pulitzers ... have gone to historical fiction, which is astonishing to me.” (25:35)

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6. Memoir Explosion and Cross-Genre Bestsellers

Rock Star Memoirs Elevated

• From “mass market quickies” to literary efforts ("Life" by Keith Richards, "Just Kids" by Patti Smith).
• Dwight:

  “... we've suddenly come to take this genre much more seriously and we expect more ...” (27:21)

The "Fifty Shades" Phenomenon (2011)

• From Twilight fanfic to e-book juggernaut; legitimized romance and set e-book sales records.
• Tina:

  “These books were so popular because they were great smut.” (31:01) “Fifty Shades of Gray was the bestselling book of the decade.” (31:34)

"Gone Girl" and the Trend of the ‘Untrustworthy Narrator’

• Gillian Flynn’s thriller made the unreliable female protagonist—and 'girl' titles—a staple of mysteries.
• Tina:

  “[They] want to manipulate you. And it was pretty intoxicating.” (33:48)

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7. Prize Politics, Literary Legitimacy, and New Giants

Booker Goes Global

• Paul Beatty (“The Sellout”) becomes first American to win after eligibility changes; Booker’s rising influence.
• Dwight:

  “...the heyday of the Booker was back before the Internet.” (39:26)

Pulitzer Shocks

• 2012: No award given for fiction, reflecting “behind the curtain” voting drama.

Colson Whitehead’s Dual Pulitzer Success

• Only the fourth author to win fiction Pulitzer twice, cementing literary stature.

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8. The Power of Celebrity Book Clubs

• Oprah’s foundational role, then Reese Witherspoon, Jenna Bush Hager, and even Obama’s lists.
• Tina:

  “Oprah started in 1996, but then you had all these other people come in.” (42:33)

• Obama’s lists: A sign of the “president as reader,” but also sometimes focus-grouped (per Dwight).

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9. Reckonings Around Race, Authorship & Publishing

"American Dirt" Backlash (2020)

• Criticized for appropriative perspective & tone-deaf marketing.
• Tina:

  “It was the publisher who bore the brunt of this and not her.” (48:19)

• Reflected (and fueled) industry-wide conversations about representation and publishing gatekeepers, especially post-George Floyd.

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10. Food Memoir Renaissance

• From Bourdain’s "Kitchen Confidential" to Michelle Zauner’s "Crying in H Mart."
• Dwight:

  “Food might be a gateway into aesthetics in general, to reading, to art, to literature.” (51:05)

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11. Contemporary Book Culture: Romance, Bookstagram, BookTok, Romantasy

• The pandemic era saw BookTok explode, driving old and new books up the sales charts.
• Tina:

  “... BookTok got behind those in a big way. And pretty much ... half the books on [the NYT Bestseller list] were Romantasy.” (53:16)

• Trends peaking: Romantasy sales have begun to crest.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Every memoirist’s worst nightmare ... to have someone actually track down everyone who knew you and re-report your own memoir.” – Dwight Garner, on James Frey (05:07)
• “There was a shortage of translators. ... If you could translate Norwegian thrillers, man, you were in the money.” – Tina Jordan, on Nordic Noir (14:16)
• “Who wants to read another book about a writer?” – Dwight, quoting John Updike on autofiction fatigue (17:05)
• “We may never replace them. ... There was a mass consensus that doesn’t exist anymore.” – Dwight, on the passing of literary giants (23:04)
• “Fifty Shades of Grey was the bestselling book of the decade.” – Tina (31:34)
• “After these books, all of that changed.” – Tina, on how "Fifty Shades" legitimated the romance industry (32:57)
• “We like to think that our president swims in the same cultural waters ... It’s just a sign of a curious mind.” – Dwight, on Obama’s year-end lists (44:26)
• “If you go back and watch especially some of these early, you know, BookTok videos, they're very emotional. They're like people fling books across the room.” – Tina (52:06)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:43 – The first Book Review podcast episode, 2006 context
• 02:15–05:43 – "A Million Little Pieces" scandal and memoir truth
• 06:09–07:47 – "Eat, Pray, Love" and its cultural impact
• 09:10–12:33 – YA fiction’s dark turn: “Hunger Games,” “Twilight,” “Harry Potter”
• 13:12–15:12 – The Nordic noir surge and translation boom
• 15:58–19:26 – Autofiction trend: Knausgaard, Elena Ferrante, and female autofiction
• 20:39–22:16 – Ferrante fever and authorial mystery
• 22:31–24:57 – Decline of consensus around American literary icons
• 25:24–25:51 – Historical fiction’s comeback due to Mantel's trilogy
• 31:01–33:01 – The "Fifty Shades" revolution and e-book boom
• 33:48–36:45 – “Gone Girl”’s impact on thrillers and unreliable narrator boom
• 39:15–41:03 – The Booker and Pulitzer Prize politics; Colson Whitehead’s dual Pulitzers
• 42:07–45:42 – Celebrity book clubs’ dominance; Obama’s reading lists
• 45:53–48:19 – The “American Dirt” controversy and questions of representation
• 51:45–53:57 – BookTok, Bookstagram, and the rise and cresting of Romantasy

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The Anniversary Quiz (Quiz Highlights)

• 56:00 – Gilbert hosts a four-round quiz (“chapters”) with Tina and Dwight challenging their recall of 20 years of books, literary events, prize-winners, and audio adaptations.
• Notable Quiz Segment:
  Tina on “The Looming Tower,” Dwight on Meryl Streep as audiobook narrator, both on contemporary literary history, with much laughter and camaraderie.
• 67:54 – Dwight wins (“Rarely has a winner felt more like a loser!”)

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Tone and Style

The episode is conversational, witty, and candid, keeping the playful and self-mocking NYT Book Review voice throughout. Tina and Dwight’s deep book knowledge is matched by a willingness to poke fun at themselves and each other, especially during the quiz.

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Final Thoughts

The 20th anniversary episode provides a fast-paced yet thorough recap of what’s changed (and what hasn’t) about books, reading habits, literary trends, and the world of publishing since 2006. It records the passing of one generation of writers, the rise of new genres (YA dystopia, autofiction, Romantasy), technology’s impact (e-books, BookTok), controversies over truth and representation, and the enduring (if shifting) power of communal reading. It wraps up with a lighthearted battle of bookish trivia, showcasing the hosts’ deep but always fallible knowledge.

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For further engagement:

• Recommended starting points:
  • "A Million Little Pieces" and Memoir Scandal (02:15)
  • YA Dystopian Fiction Surge (09:10)
  • Nordic Noir and Book Translations (13:12)
  • Ferrante Fever and Autofiction (15:58–22:16)
  • Fifty Shades/BookTok Culture (31:01 & 51:45)
• This episode is essential listening for any fan of books or literary culture, especially those curious about the big waves and undercurrents shaping contemporary reading.

Transcript

[Smokey Bear Announcer]

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[Gilbert Cruz]

Twenty years ago this month, the New York Times published its very first podcast.

[Dwight Garner]

This is Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and welcome to our podcast, where we huddle each week on the shores of light and curse the encroaching darkness.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Starting with yes. That was the very first episode of the show. Two decades later, hundreds of notable authors and literary personalities have passed through these metaphorical walls. Toni Morrison, Robert Caro, Colson Whitehead, Jonathan Franzen, Judy Blume, Stephen King. I could go on and on and on. Even Keith Richards came through, and I was sadly not here for that one. Today, to celebrate this August occasion, we're gonna look back at the last 20 years in books, literary hits, fan favorites, scandals, and scuttlebutt. I'm Gilbert Cruz, and I have the ideal duo to mark the occasion with me, Tina Jordan, who has worked in and around books for 35 years and is now deputy editor of the Book Review. Tina, welcome.

[Tina Jordan]

Hi, Gilbert.

[Gilbert Cruz]

And Dwight Garner, longtime book critic here at the Times, and, appropriately for this episode, the man who came up with the idea for this very podcast in the first place. Dwight, it's so great to have you here.

[Dwight Garner]

Great to be here, Gilbert.

[Tina Jordan]

Thank you.

[Gilbert Cruz]

So let's go back 20 years to when this podcast first came out. It's 2006. G.W. bush was president. Twitter had just launched. We did not know the joys that this platform would bring us in the ensuing decades. The iPhone had not been invented yet, thankfully. And just as the year kicked off, the book world was consumed with a scandal.

[Tina Jordan]

I don't know what is true and I don't know what isn't. So first of all, I wanted to start with the smoking gun report titled the man who Conned Oprah. And I want to know where they write.

[Dwight Garner]

I think most of what they wrote was pretty accurate. Absolutely.

[Gilbert Cruz]

In January of 2006, there was a controversy involving a book called A Million Little Pieces. This was a big deal. Do you remember this?

[Dwight Garner]

Of course I do. Just coming through the door, you felt this book had a bit of electricity. It had this great cover, this hand covered with sort of, like, the sprinkles on an ice cream cone. And they evoked drugs. It was a bright cover. And you just thought, this looks like something.

[Gilbert Cruz]

This was a book by James Fry. It had come out in April 2003, and in September 2005, Oprah selected it as a selection for her book club, which had existed at that point for almost 10 years. It propelled it onto the bestseller list. And then, Tina, what happened?

[Tina Jordan]

What happened was Oprah had him on the show in October 2005, and something must have ticked off the people at the website called the Smoking Gun. Do you guys remember this website?

[Gilbert Cruz]

I remember it only because of this book.

[Tina Jordan]

Yes. So the Smoking Gun, I believe the last week in December, published a piece called A Million Little Lies, and they took the book apart. Like, they had found his arrest records. Basically, everything he said had happened. You know, the girlfriend dying, the arrests. None of it had happened.

[Gilbert Cruz]

And this was a memoir in which James Fry talked about his addiction to drugs and alcohol and his attempt to rehabilitate himself by going to a clinic.

[Tina Jordan]

Correct. And interestingly, he had tried to sell this book as a novel. And Doubleday, to whom he sold it, said, wait, did all this stuff happen to you? Let's publish this as a memoir. So they did. And he actually told the Times later, and I quote, it was written exactly as it was published, so he didn't change a word. And unlike most memoirs at the time, which came with, like, a little paragraph at the beginning saying, you know, this is how I remember it. Obviously, I've had to make up quotes, blah, blah, blah. There was none of that.

[Gilbert Cruz]

This phenomenon of a memoir being written and then people finding out that some of it is not true or much of it is not true, was not necessarily a new thing. Something that felt new to me at the time, and Dwight, correct me if I'm wrong, was the public shaming that James received on live television when he had to go on OPRAH in early 2006 and sit there as Oprah sort of confronted him about this.

[Dwight Garner]

Yeah, it was ugly. There was something about James Fry that was a little bit confrontational, a little bit. You know, he was sort of mailer. Like, he was sort of, you know, puffed up and was ready to take on the world. And then seeing him dragged low by Oprah was kind of every writer's worst nightmare of sort of your fear of being revealed. And actually, this is every memoirist's worst nightmare, because, you know, we all know by now that memoirs are at least slightly a species of fiction. I mean, you don't remember everything that happened to you in these conversations, and we're aware of that. But to have someone actually track down everyone who knew you and re report your own memoir is, I don't think, something that any memoirist would want to go through. But this was an egregious case.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Another book from that year that turned out to be a very big deal, and I'm going to turn to you, Tina, to talk about this one, was Eat, Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. This was a memoir that was eventually, in addition to being a bestselling book, was made into a movie starring Julia Roberts. I looked this up. The title of the book has commas. The title of the movie does not have any punctuation.

[Dwight Garner]

I did not.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It's just Eat, Pray Love. No commas. Tell us about Eat, Pray Love.

[Tina Jordan]

All right, so Elizabeth Gilbert was this glamorous New York City journalist who had come through, I think, a divorce and a rebound relationship and decided she was gonna chuck it all and go find herself and figure out what made her happy. And she went on this year long trip which took her to India and Indonesia and Italy. And then she wrote a book about it. And the book, if I were to summarize it in a few lines, would be, a woman always defined by her relationships, learns how not to do that. And it was incredibly polarizing, of course, because here was this, you know, privileged woman who could take a year off to take this trip. Right. But I think it touched a chord with people because at its heart, what the book was about was, we have so much. Why are we so unhappy?

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah.

[Dwight Garner]

She could also really write. I mean, the book is fun, you know, and it inspires you to get out. It inspired a lot of women to sort of, you know, go and try to find themselves. And some didn't have the experience she did or many didn't.

[Tina Jordan]

Right.

[Gilbert Cruz]

So it was. And remind me, because it's been a while since I've had to think about Eat, Pray Love was it. She went to one place and sort of like did a food thing. She went to another place, did a spiritual thing and something like that.

[Tina Jordan]

That's roughly right. And then went to another place and met a man.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Would you say, Tina, that this is a self helpy book?

[Tina Jordan]

I would say this is a self helpy book for a certain kind of woman.

[Gilbert Cruz]

And did it signal something at the time or going forward about the type of self helpy type book that there would be?

[Tina Jordan]

I think you saw certainly a lot of copycats and you saw a lot of Books that were about women finding happiness for themselves, not through their jobs, not through their partners. None of that.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah. What is the closest you have done to an Eat, Pray, Love situation?

[Tina Jordan]

One time I left my husband and children and went to Morocco for three weeks.

[Dwight Garner]

Wow.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Really?

[Tina Jordan]

Yes. And the Canary Islands. And when I came home, my husband had gotten another dog.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Three weeks, I'd had it.

[Tina Jordan]

I was done. I was done.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Oh, good on you. We're gonna jump ahead to a book or a series of books that continue to resonate in the culture all these years later. This is the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. The first book came out in 2008. She published a trilogy, and since then, two prequels have been published, the most recent being last year, Sunrise on the Reaping. It was a big success last year. So almost 20 years on from the first Hunger Games book, and it's still sort of a going concern. There's a movie version of Sunrise and the Reaping coming out later this year. What do you recall about this phenomenon? When it happened and sort of what it said about dystopian fiction, YA fiction.

[Tina Jordan]

I think it's the moment where YA fiction started to get really, really dark. I mean, the premise of the book, let's don't forget, is about teenage kids who fight to the death in a televised show. That's what the book is about.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah.

[Tina Jordan]

And it inspired the same kind of fandoms that we saw with Twilight. The first Twilight book was 2005, and with Harry Potter, for that matter.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Right. Harry Potter, if I'm recalling correctly, the last. The seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, had come out the year before. Yes, 2007. And I looked this up. So I am going to say this because this is a crazy fact, but at least according to the Guinness Book of World Records, it was the fastest selling book in its first 24 hours of all time. That seventh Harry Potter book. So that series had just finished, and Hunger Games comes in on, you know, a year later, and it kicks off its own. I don't want to call them copycats necessarily because it's derogatory, but its own set of books that sort of followed in its wake. You had the Divergent books, which came out in 2011, the Maze Runner books, which came out in 2009. And these are essentially all trilogies or thereabouts. Dark trilogies. Dark YA trilogies about kids who are in dystopian societies.

[Tina Jordan]

Right. But more than that, what all of these books had was, were a lot of adult readers. They weren't just books for kids. I mean, when you look back at the sales of YA during that time, they weren't just driven by, you know, middle school and high school kids. I mean, there was a whole group of Twilight fans, the moms. I forget what they called themselves.

[Gilbert Cruz]

TWI Moms.

[Tina Jordan]

TWI Moms.

[Gilbert Cruz]

No, TWI Hearts.

[Dwight Garner]

I don't know.

[Tina Jordan]

It was. Whatever. It was like, that was a big part of. Of, like, why these books were so successful.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah. Dwight, what do you remember about dystopian fiction around this time? Because two years before the Hunger Games in 2006, Cormac McCarthy's the Rogue came out. And that was this moment where this sort of literary titan dipped into genre in a way, by writing this dystopian book.

[Dwight Garner]

Right. And now, of course, you know, dystopia. Dystopias are the morsel at the end of every fork in terms of every novel you pick up, even the most. I mean, we're living in this world that writers feel like they need to respond to, and the only way they can. I'm not speaking about every writer, but so many, even our best literary writers just feel like in order to respond to this moment, they also almost have to go beyond it, almost to imagine where we might be in 10 years or so. And Hunger Games books were so. I remember my kids being so enveloped in them. I mean, just obsessive. And I remember just taking them to the Strand to buy them on the days when they came out, you know, and they loved them so much.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I'm afraid to ask, because I feel like you're putting this on your kids, but did you ever have a chance to read them?

[Dwight Garner]

No. No. Why not? I don't know why I'm busy.

[Gilbert Cruz]

He has so many books to read.

[Dwight Garner]

Anyway, I should.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You know, I was asking out of curiosity not to shame you.

[Dwight Garner]

I did read the Harry Potter books aloud to them, but by this point, my kids were able to read by themselves. So, you know, you lose your access to what they're reading when they start grabbing their own books.

[Gilbert Cruz]

What are they reading now?

[Dwight Garner]

My son loves the movie with the new Going to Mars movie.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Oh. Project Hail Mary. He loves that writer, Andy Weir.

[Dwight Garner]

Andy Weir, Yeah. And I need to read Andy Weir because my son keeps telling me how great those novels are.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Dwight, I will tell you that Andy Weir was recently a guest on the podcast, so I think you should do me a solid. Go back and listen to that episode. I'm happy to take any feedback you have. I shall. Okay. Tina, I'm going to Go back to you, just because you are the expert on this next topic, which is Nordic noir, you know, sort of scandi thrillers.

[Tina Jordan]

Right.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You know, we're talking here primarily about the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which came out in 2008. It crystallized or popularized for many a genre that had been around for a very long time before this. But this was sort of like this moment when it exploded, at least in America.

[Tina Jordan]

Right. You had seen Nordic nor here before Henning Mankel, so on. But this was the huge novel. I think it had come out in Sweden three years before. It's about a disaffected journalist who hires a surly young hacker to help him solve the mystery of the disappearance of a young girl. And there was something about both of those characters that just grabbed American audiences. And those books were huge, but they also, like, opened these floodgates. And American publishers could not pick up Norwegian and Danish and Swedish thriller writers fast enough. It was actually to the point where there was a shortage of translators.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Is that so?

[Tina Jordan]

It's true. Like, if you could translate Norwegian thrillers, man, you were in the money. You earn a lot of money because there just weren't enough people to do it.

[Gilbert Cruz]

To your recollection, what were some of those sort of big authors that American audiences got to know after? I'm thinking of, like, Yo Nesbo.

[Tina Jordan]

And people like, Yo Nesbo is probably the big one to mention. Henningman Kill became huge after.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Right.

[Tina Jordan]

Like, he's sold, I think, in small numbers.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Right. And his. His series, which is. Or one of his series which is focused around a gentleman named Wallander, had been around for a while before the Dragon Tattoo, but was something that people started to pick up more after.

[Tina Jordan]

And what these books share is, like, an incredibly dark worldview. I mean, there's no redemption in most of these books. I mean, the crime gets solved, but horrible things happen.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It is the most ironic thing because, of course, I'm sure you both know every year the Nordic and Scandinavian countries are so high on the list of the happiest nations in the world.

[Tina Jordan]

I don't know how that can be. Like, you pick up one of these books, you pick up a Jo Nesbo, and you're reading about Oslo and you're like, is this the Oslo I visited?

[Dwight Garner]

Maybe this is why they're happy. You know, it's like the reason people watch horror movies, to expunge the stuff.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I was just gonna say that's what it is. Like, you're happy, and you need to find a place for your sort of Your dark impulses. Let's talk a little bit more about the Scandinavians. We should go to 2009, which is when in America a book name My Struggle or the first volume in a multi book series by Karl Ove Knausgard came out.

[Dwight Garner]

Oh, God, you know, he came out of nowhere. Knausgaard. These books are said in Oslo. It's a series of novels. Basically. They're what we now call autofiction. I mean, they're mostly about a character who is very much like him. And what is so powerful about them is just he's sort of unflinching about his own life. It just. It's sort of. The books are kind of simply written, although they're powerfully written. He has a strong voice, but it's like watching a man lay bricks and suddenly you realize he's built the pyramids. You know, it's just this slow accumulation. And you only realize how grand this stuff is once you get a bit of distance and view on it. The first two books about his life with his father and his childhood and sort of growing up, I think are the best two in the series. And if you want to taste these books, those are the books to read. I even think book two is the great one.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Can you. Because I want to ask you a little bit more about this movement or this subgenre. How do we define autofiction or how do we understand.

[Dwight Garner]

I mean, we've reinvigorated. This is a new term, but it's an old. It's an old thing. I mean, you know, Jane Eyre is auto fiction. You know, David Copperfield, Joyce, you know, Portrait of an Artist is autofiction. But we've come up with this new term for it. And a flood of young writers have sort of reinvested this form with new energy. You know, a lot of them, I mean. I mean, not necessarily a youngish writer, but Elena Ferrante's novels are often viewed through this lens. They're autobiographical to a degree, but not quite the way others are. We're talking here about people like Rachel Kusk in her outline trilogy, Sheila Hetty, who wrote a book on How Should a Person Be, Teju Cole's novels about Nigerian immigrants and his own travels in Nigeria and, you know, in a way, and Ben lerner his novel 1004 and books like this. And I think Sheila Hetty's title How Should a Person Be? Is such a. It's almost the best book title of all time in my book, because it. That's what novels seek to find out and by writing about themselves, they're investigating themselves to find out sort of how a person feels about being in the world. And yet I also. I love these novels. And I understand why people sometimes say to me they hate them because, as John Updike once said, who wants to read another book about a writer? But. So I get both sides of this. But I'm a huge fan of these writers and what they're doing.

[Tina Jordan]

Can I ask a question about Knauskaard specifically? Yeah. If those books had been written by a woman, do you think they would have had the same impact?

[Dwight Garner]

That is so hard to say, but I don't see why not. What do you think?

[Tina Jordan]

I don't know. I feel like if a woman had been writing about changing diapers and cooking dinner and. I don't know.

[Dwight Garner]

I don't know. There's just something. I mean, it's the alchemy of the voice. And I think anyone writing about their. I mean, I think it was Barbara Pym who said, you know, the novel she wants to read, or just about a woman doing the dishes, like, that's the whole thing, and what's going through her head. And these are, in a way, those kind of novels, you know, just investigating his own psyche. A lot happens in them, but it's all very minor things. There'll be a few pages about, you know, going to the bathroom. You know, I mean, it's just like Indy's so good at just, you know, staring at things in a granular way. But, you know, he was. He was. He did go a long way. He put his face on these books. You know, he's a handsome man. And, you know, they were selling some sex, you know, especially at Oslo, who was a sex symbol and. But, yeah, it's a good question. I think it would be just successful. But it's a good thing to think about it.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Every photo I see of him, just, like, tousled hair, smoking a cigarette, like a coffee cup off in the corner, piles of books.

[Dwight Garner]

Can I. This is possibly the place to say one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. I was at a literary festival in Oslo, and Knausgard was down the way, four or five seats away. And I picked up a cigarette. Cause he was smoking. And he said, hey. And he threw me his lighter. And I missed it.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That's the most emasculating thing I've ever heard. Dwight, I'm so sorry.

[Dwight Garner]

I'll never forget it.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You mentioned Elena Ferrante. I want to stay a beat on this, because what eventually came to Be known as Ferrante Fever, became such a major thing, at least in literary fiction circles. The first book, my Brilliant Friend, was published here, translated and published here in 2011. There are four books that are now called the Neapolitan novels. The fourth book was published in 2015. It's called the Story of the Lost Child. This is a book that our 500 you know, authors and panelists called the best book of the 21st century so far. What do you remember about this moment and why these books, Tina, were so. So very popular.

[Tina Jordan]

I remember women passing them around the same way we passed around, you know? Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret, when we were in fifth grade.

[Dwight Garner]

That's so good. It's so true. I remember it, too, with my wife and her friends.

[Tina Jordan]

Yeah, we were all like, this is it, like, female rage.

[Gilbert Cruz]

And what was it? It's a story over these four books of two friends, of two friends in post war Italy, when the books start,

[Tina Jordan]

right, in post war Italy. Two very different friends and fierce friendship that waxes and wanes over the years. And the books just capture all the messy, difficult, hard parts of being a woman. Like, she does not flinch.

[Gilbert Cruz]

They're also, I have to imagine, was a bit of a juice behind these books because of the mystery behind who the author is.

[Dwight Garner]

Right? Do we know? Do we know, Tina? I mean, I.

[Tina Jordan]

You know, there's kind of no do

[Gilbert Cruz]

we know, though, so. Elena Ferrante is a name of an author whose true identity has never been officially confirmed. There have been lots of theories there. You know, we ran a story a few years ago about all the theories about who Elena Ferrante actually is, but at the time, at least, you know, I don't know that anyone knew. And there was this fun. And, like, who is this person?

[Tina Jordan]

Right, right.

[Dwight Garner]

It's such a hard trick to pull off in the modern age. I mean, only Pynchon, I think, has done it in the way that she's done it. I mean, it just. And there are so many new ways of tracking a writer's DNA from his or her prose, and it's amazing. This mystery hasn't been fully cracked.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Pynchon. Do you know this? It was Pynchon.

[Dwight Garner]

You say Pynchon.

[Gilbert Cruz]

No, I don't think. I think that is the way to say it.

[Dwight Garner]

Oh, I'm not gonna say it to him. If I ever meet him, it's Pynchon, all right. I can't learn a new way to say pinching at this age, anyway.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Fair enough. Dwight. A few years ago, The Book Review gathered, As I referenced, 500 authors and the like to vote on the best books of the 21st century. But in 2006, the Book Review looked back at the previous 25 years in great American fiction, and they came up with a list. And the only person who published a book that is still near the top of that list is Don DeLillo, because all the other authors, Toni Morrison, whose beloved was at the top, Philip Roth, John Updike, Cormac McCarthy, they are all gone.

[Dwight Garner]

Yeah. You know, it's funny. We've sort of found ourselves. I mean, you know, one of the salient points about the last 20 years is that we've lost this sort of post war generation. I mean, Saul Bellow died in 2005, Noren Mailer, 2007, John Updike, 2009. Philip Roth, 2018. Toni Morrison, 2019, Martin Amos, 2020. These were sort of the figures that filled the public skies. I mean, they were what American fiction was to a large degree during this period. And to sort of have them all vanish in this period, it's been interesting to watch who is going to kind of replace them. And in our culture, we may never replace them. You know, our culture's become so bifurcated, just the same way music has, that we'll never agree on things the way we agreed about these writers. You know, whether that was good or bad. There was sort of a. A mass consensus that doesn't exist anymore. And anyway, but it's, you know, we're seeing a new generation come up now. We're still the Franzens and the Zadie Smiths came up behind these writers, and now there's a new generation, but no one has quite, I think, filled their shoes.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah. Tina, we're gonna talk about one of your favorite topics, historical fiction.

[Tina Jordan]

That is one of my favorite topics.

[Gilbert Cruz]

In 2009, there was a book published called Wolf Hall. What a book.

[Tina Jordan]

I know. What a book.

[Gilbert Cruz]

So this is the first of Hilary Mantel's trilogy of books about Thomas Cromwell, the real life historical advisor to Henry viii. The other books are Bring up the Bodies and the Mirror and the Light. And these books were acclaimed and they were popular. And historical fiction as a genre again has been around forever. But this was sort of a moment when so much energy coalesced around these books and then they exploded. I feel like, to where historical fiction is one of the more popular genres in fiction.

[Tina Jordan]

I agree. And at the point where when Wolf Hulk came out, historical fiction was sort of in decline. There was not nearly the same amount being Published. It didn't. It wasn't selling. And then here came these beautifully written and researched books that immersed you in Tudor England in a story where, hey, you knew what the outcome was going to be, but you were still completely riveted.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah.

[Tina Jordan]

And it. That. And then. So Wolf hall and Bring up the Bodies. I believe both of those won the Booker, Is that right?

[Gilbert Cruz]

I think so.

[Tina Jordan]

I think that's right.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah.

[Tina Jordan]

And historical fiction just exploded. I actually went and did a quick look at recent Pulitzers, and 12 of the last 15 Pulitzers have, for fiction, have gone to historical fiction, which is astonishing to me.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Let's move to 2010 just to take you back, remind you what was happening in the world then. Many of us were on Facebook still. The iPad had just come out. Spotify was in its very earliest days. And that year two great books came out. Two memoirs by rock stars, Life, which was a Keith Richards memoir, and Just Kids by Patti Smith.

[Dwight Garner]

Yeah, it's funny. I mean, our ideas about the rock memoir have really changed in the past 20 years. I mean, these books used to be mass market quickies. And I miss. We pause for a moment to mourn the loss of mass market books. But they were little thin books you'd put in your pocket and they were about, I don't know, they're about Pink Floyd or something, you know, and he would carry it around. But they were quickies. And there's something to be said for quickies. I mean, sometimes a dashed off book is kind of what you want to read about something and you don't want to read 400 pages. But books like Keith Richards, books like Bob Dylan's memoir, Patti Smith's memoir, Elvis Costello wrote a great one. Lucinda Williams is pretty good. Gil Scott Heron. Did I say Springsteen already? His book is so well written. I mean, Born to Run. Yeah, Born to Run. I mean, I was just floored by it. And I don't think he had a ghostwriter. I was to learn that Lucinda did have one because I think she's such a great lyricist. And Lucinda, you could have written that yourself, would have been better. Anyway. I just think we've suddenly come to take this genre much more seriously and we expect more from these writers who are writing about their careers.

[Tina Jordan]

But I think the interesting thing is, and why we like them so much is they're much more unvarnished and franker, like Bruce Springsteen, Keith Richards, they don't care about burning bridges. I mean, any actor who writes a memoir, I don't care how old they are. It's still going to be carefully couched. Right? Like these rock memoirs are pretty, they're pretty blunt.

[Gilbert Cruz]

And there is something about the fact that, you know, musicians are often songwriters, they're often writers in their own, you know, in their own right, as opposed to actors or what have you. And so maybe it's more likely that someone who writes songs, someone who's creative in that way, will be more likely to write a book that feels true, that has good writing or something of that sort.

[Dwight Garner]

Yeah, I think it's definitely true.

[Gilbert Cruz]

We're all, you know, it's slightly outside the scope of this 20 year period, but you reference Bob Dylan's memoir, it came out in 2004, Chronicles, volume one. We're all waiting for volume two. It'll be the biggest joke and totally appropriate for Bob Dylan if he titled it Volume one with no intention of ever writing a volume two.

[Tina Jordan]

I don't think we're gonna see that book.

[Dwight Garner]

I don't see it coming either.

[Gilbert Cruz]

What a weird.

[Dwight Garner]

He's still out there doing it, but he doesn't, I don't know.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It's you is he is the best and he's so weird and he's the best. We're going to take a break and when we come back, we are going to pick up with another turning point, one of the literary classics of these past 20 years, 50 shades of gray. We'll be right back.

[Tina Jordan]

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[Gilbert Cruz]

Okay, Tina. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. james came out in 2011. This was a book that started as Twilight fan fiction.

[Tina Jordan]

It did.

[Gilbert Cruz]

We talked about Twilight, sort of the four book series of vampire romance novels. And E.L. james ended up writing a trilogy of books. Fifty Shades of Gray, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Free. Why were these books so popular?

[Tina Jordan]

These books were so popular because they were great smut. Can I just say that on the air?

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah. So what are they actually about?

[Tina Jordan]

They're about a kink relationship between an older man and a younger woman. Three books. It is a little over long. There is sex on almost every single page. That is what you read it for. Neil James can write sex. The rise of these books and the success sort of coincided with the Kindle. Fifty Shades of Gray was the best selling book of the decade. All right.

[Gilbert Cruz]

And the Kindle came out in 2007. So it had been around for a few years.

[Tina Jordan]

It'd been around. Okay. But so here was a book where maybe you didn't want people to see him reading it on the subway. Right. Like you could be reading these books and no one would know something. Like almost all of the first 250,000 copies sold were digital copies, which was just unheard of at that time.

[Gilbert Cruz]

At the time, in 2012, we had a story by then, publishing reporter Julie Bosman, and it sort of detailed the rise of these books and how ebook sales, as you say, were really the thing that helped it. It was initially published by a small Australian indie press. Print copies, word, short supply. And so it was those ebook sales that really propelled it to prominence and led to it being picked up by a major publisher for a seven figure deal.

[Tina Jordan]

Knopf no list Sonny. Meta bought it.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Smart guy.

[Tina Jordan]

Smart guy, Right. But also like these books, sort of, they really legitimized the romance novel part of the business. And don't forget that romance novels, even though they were a billion dollar part of book publishing and probably subsidized, you know, much of the rest of the business, they'd always sort of been looked down on.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah.

[Tina Jordan]

And boy, after these books, all of that changed.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I've never read these, I'm sorry to admit. Should I start tonight?

[Tina Jordan]

I think you can give him a skip.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You sure?

[Tina Jordan]

Yeah.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I don't have anything else to read.

[Tina Jordan]

I'll find something better.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Okay. In 2012, there was a giant thriller that came out. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. This was another massive hit, something that started its own little subgenre, made into a great, I thought, movie starring Ben Affleck. And it kicked off this idea that had been in mysteries and thrillers for as long as mysteries and thrillers have been around. Of the untrustworthy female narrator. What is this book about and why was it such a big deal?

[Tina Jordan]

So the book is about a marriage gone bad. And as the book opens, you. The wife is missing and you suspect something has happened to her. And you hear the story of the marriage in alternating chapters. The thing is, it's not just one untruthful, it's two. It's the husband and the wife. And you're right when you say that the untrustworthy narrator had been around. But often the untrustworthy narrator was like somebody who just wasn't setting out to deceive. They just sort of didn't know what was going on. Like, these two characters want to manipulate you. And it was pretty intoxicating.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Why was this such a big hit?

[Tina Jordan]

Because it was really well written.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It is a really well written book.

[Tina Jordan]

It is a really well written book.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I was surprised when it did not end up on our list of the top hundred books of the 21st century.

[Tina Jordan]

I was stunned. It's smart. It's well written. It's like nothing you've ever read before. The twist is genuinely shocking.

[Gilbert Cruz]

So many novels came in the wake of this book with the word girl in it, which, of course is like one of the most common words in the English language. But. But this idea of dark thrillers with potentially untrustworthy narrators in which the title had the word girl in it.

[Tina Jordan]

Yeah.

[Gilbert Cruz]

There are girls on trains. There are girls in windows. They're all over the place.

[Tina Jordan]

They're all over the place. Final girls, missing girls, luckiest girl alive,

[Dwight Garner]

Girl with a pearl earring.

[Tina Jordan]

That's before.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I want to use this time to say something that I think many people believe, which is that she needs to publish another book.

[Tina Jordan]

She does.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It's been 14 years. Obviously, Gillian Flynn doesn't need to do anything she doesn't want to. She certainly doesn't need to listen to me. But I have enjoyed all of her books and I am sort of sad that it has taken so long and we still haven't seen a new one. She's been working in TV and movies. She wrote the screenplay for Gone Girl and co wrote the screenplay for a movie called Widows, which is a great movie that is totally underseen. But come back. Come back. Gillian, I know you have your own publishing imprint. I know you're listening to this right now. Please come back and write a. Write your own book. We miss you.

[Dwight Garner]

This is why writers. I mean, it's important with a big success. I think I've heard this from many writers to publish another book quickly because the anticipation starts building and then if you wait too long, it's become this thing, this enormous weight to pull the previous thing.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I totally get that. If I were to put myself in her shoes. The longer time goes by, the more anticipation there is. It's already been almost a decade and a half. It's too much. Listen. But I think she's a great writer. Just put it out there, Dwight. Speaking Of Great Writers, 2015, a book came out that you. When you worked on a project at the Book Review, about the Funniest book since Catch 22 put on the list. This is a book called the Sellouts by Paul Beatty.

[Dwight Garner]

Paul Beatty, yeah. It's sort of, you know, it's set in la. It's just this wild, scabrous satire of black life in la. And you feel a direct connection between someone like Richard. Richard Pryor in this novel. I mean, he's aiming for the stars, he's pinwheeling. This is Monty Python meets Richard Pryor. And it's been a while since I'd read a book quite like that in terms of its topicality, dealing with situations in la. And it also has this. It bends into weird places. I mean, there are weird scenes in it and horses galloping through the streets and things that don't always make sense, but yet they make narrative sense to this book.

[Gilbert Cruz]

And.

[Dwight Garner]

And talk about writers who haven't published a book for a while. I mean, we haven't seen another book from him since this book came out. And I miss his voice. It's funny. These sort of. We've had so many great, great books by black writers in this decade. This is maybe the funniest one, you know, which is. And Colson Whitehead can be very funny as well, by the way. I'm not sure we've talked about him enough in this, but. Yeah, and also Paul Beatty edited this anthology of black humor, which is one of the best anthologies that I think anyone's ever put together, sort of historically, you know, and it just. It sort of recasts African American experience in this country. And I just think he's all that,

[Gilbert Cruz]

yeah, it was also interesting because he was the first American to win what I would argue is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, prize in English language publishing right now. Which is the Booker.

[Dwight Garner]

The Booker.

[Gilbert Cruz]

There was a moment. For most of its existence, the Booker Prize was something that you had to be an author who was a citizen of England or the British Commonwealth or Ireland or several other places. It was never open to Americans. In 2016, the sellout won the Booker Prize. George Saunders won the Booker Prize the following year, Friend Lincoln in the Bardo, and several writers have won since. It was a big deal at the time. I feel like the. The fact that the Booker has assumed its preeminent position in sort of the literary publishing award firmament in some part goes back to this, because once you open it to any book in the English language, you open the audience of people who care about the Booker Prize in the way that they do now.

[Dwight Garner]

I agree with that. At the same time, I'm sympathetic to those people who wish it had remained a UK phenomenon only because I remember when it would often introduce you to writers who'd never heard of before, which

[Gilbert Cruz]

was part of its drive.

[Dwight Garner]

And I guess the heyday of the book was back before the Internet. And so we really knew less about a lot of these writers than we were sort of introduced to us by the Booker Prize. And now it sort of competes with the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. It's like one of the three. But, yeah, I mean, Beatty deserved it.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I want to linger on literary prizes for a moment because something happened in the period of time that we're talking about here, the 20 years of the existence of this podcast that I argue was crazy, which was, for the first time since 1977, the Pulitzers did not award a Pulitzer for fiction. This happened in 2012, I believe two

[Tina Jordan]

of the finalists were Trained Dreams by Dennis Johnson and Swamplandia.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah. The third one was the Pale King. Oh, the Pale King by David Foster Wallace.

[Tina Jordan]

That's right. And I think it was one of. It made people understand, like what happens at the Pulitzers, which is you have a fiction committee that recommends a winner to the Pulitzer board, and they in turn can say yay or nay. And so they didn't think any of those books.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It's so bizarre to me to assign a task to a jury and say, you have to read a ton of books. Those books are brought to the board. Certainly very few people on that board read more fiction than anyone on the jury whose job it was specifically to read fiction. And they can take a vote. And if they don't reach a majority, there's no Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

[Tina Jordan]

Right.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It is absolutely wild.

[Tina Jordan]

Listen, in 1977, the previous time this happened, that was the year of Gravity's Rainbow. People were apoplectic.

[Dwight Garner]

Oh, wow.

[Gilbert Cruz]

We get things wrong all the time. One or two times in which we did not get something wrong. Dwight, to go back to an author that you talked about was when the Pulitzer board awarded Colson Whitehead twice the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, in 2017 for the Underground Railroad and in 2020 for the Nickel Boys, making him one of only a handful of authors who has received the Pulitzer twice for fiction, the others being John Updike and William Faulkner. And our favorite, Booth Tarkington.

[Tina Jordan]

Yes, Booth Tarkington. Don't forget him.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Colson Whitehead's amazing.

[Dwight Garner]

Yeah. Coulson. I mean, I still can remember the days when he was just. He was TV critic of the Village Voice, you know, and you felt in his critical prose that you're dealing with a major, major writer already. I mean, I just remember that. And when he started writing fiction, it came out of the gate, and you just sort of knew this was a special voice.

[Gilbert Cruz]

God, some people just have it. 2018. Tina.

[Tina Jordan]

Yes.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Where the Crawdad Sing by Delia Owens.

[Tina Jordan]

Right.

[Gilbert Cruz]

This was a book that Reese Witherspoon's book club sort of propelled into public view. Celebrity book clubs, you know, became, were, and still in some ways drive the publishing industry. Oprah started in 1996, but then you had all these other people come in.

[Tina Jordan]

You had all these other people come in. Rhys was definitely the biggest. I believe she started the year before where the Crawdad Sings, which seemed an unlikely pick for her. This novel about a young girl basically growing up in the swamps of North Carolina.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah.

[Tina Jordan]

And indeed, she wasn't the sole reason that this book became as big as it did, but she's certainly what got it started. And, you know, soon you had read with Jenna, you had all these other smaller celebrity book clubs. You had President Obama's reading list. That's a celebrity book club.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That is a celebrity book club. I mean, he. Well, just to touch briefly on smaller lisp. I feel like there's a younger generation who is paying attention to Dua Lipo's Book Club Service 95 and Kaia Gerber's book club, Library Science. Emma Roberts has belletrist. You know, you have these sort of younger, largely, you know, female stars who are making books part of their brand as well.

[Tina Jordan]

I agree. And very hipster books.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Can I Just say, is that a judgment? Are you saying that I'm just like,

[Tina Jordan]

just go and look at the books they pick and you'll see what I mean.

[Gilbert Cruz]

President Obama is not a hipster book guy. You know, when he started his summer reading list in 2009, it was a huge deal. And then he left office and he started releasing year end lists for books and movies and music. Really, really horning in on our territory here. Just shots fired this way. Why was that a big deal? When he started putting out his lists,

[Tina Jordan]

you know, it was so clear that he was actually reading these books. Right?

[Gilbert Cruz]

Was it?

[Tina Jordan]

I think it was, you know, he.

[Dwight Garner]

I wonder. But I bet he's.

[Gilbert Cruz]

More often than not, I bet he's

[Dwight Garner]

turned most of the pages. Okay, well, one of the great things about Obama's list, it sort of took you back. We like to think that our president swims in the same cultural waters that people do, you know, and that, you know, he reads books, he pays attention to music. It's just a sign of a curious mind. And it takes you back to sort of jfk, you know, in that era, being interested in culture. I do have a quibble though, with his list. I don't love them for this reason. They feel very focus group to me. There's something for everyone. They don't feel like a real person's reading this. To me, people read idiosyncratically and I'm sure he does too. And this list feels a bit like, let's find, you know, something for every person on your Christmas list. Yeah, so that's my slight drawback. I don't find many surprises on there.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I think you're right. And I think it's probably, you know, he's former president, like he can't be as sloppy as the rest of us or as you know, there are lots of people who are like single issue readers. I only read big histories. I only read thrillers. And then there are other people who are sloppy as hell and they're just sort of all over the place. It's totally unpredictable. I think he needs to fall somewhere in the middle.

[Dwight Garner]

Well, I hope that when he writes his memoirs when he's aged, he'll write about the books he really read during these periods. I'm not saying he didn't read these at all, but I bet he read a lot of books that don't make these lists and that was more true to his actual reading.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah, yeah. He's just reading 50 Shades of Gray over and over again on the Kindle. Tina, we're gonna jump ahead to 2020 when the book American Dirt was published.

[Tina Jordan]

Oh, boy.

[Gilbert Cruz]

This was. You don't talk about controversies. This was a book that was published in January 2020. It's by Jeanine Cummins, and it's a book about a mother and son as fiction trying to get out of Mexico and head to the US in order to escape drug cartel violence. When it came, you know, out, it was. The publisher had put so much energy behind, had a million blurbs, and then it started to get some scathing opinions. I would say it did, yeah.

[Tina Jordan]

From one reviewer in particular who accused the author of perpetuating racist stereotypes.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yes.

[Tina Jordan]

And there was an outcry.

[Gilbert Cruz]

There was an outcry. There was also. There was an accusation that the author had overstated her Hispanic heritage. There are also these photos that came to light from a pre publishing party, if you recall, in which some of the centerpieces should have been rethought, perhaps. I believe there was barbed wire involved in some of the centerpieces. So just a lot of stuff happened at the same time. And all of a sudden the question about is this book too problematic? Is this person the right person to write about Hispanic life, et cetera?

[Tina Jordan]

Right. It didn't help that she referred to her husband as an undocumented immigrant. In the context, it sounded like he was from Mexico, but in fact he was from Ireland. I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh. But it also doesn't help that she said, I think in an interview, but possibly in the preface or the acknowledgments, that maybe somebody browner than she should have written this book that also did. But I want to be very clear that it was the publisher who bore the brunt of this and not her. Like the tone deaf marketing, you know, the barbed wire party decorations, like, it led to this big discussion of how publishing signs up books. Right. You have this overwhelmingly white industry, and it is overwhelmingly white. Even today, they're the ones buying these books. And the way it went was maybe they're not looking hard enough for other people to tell these stories. And that's what this really became.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It also coincided with, to use an overused phrase, but I cannot think of an alternative one at the moment. The racial reckoning that occurred in the wake of George Floyd's death in May of that year of 2020, and a conversation started in the world of books, in the world of publishing, and in many of the spheres of popular culture across this country about who's in charge, who are the gatekeepers and who can write whose story? If you are a person who primarily identifies as white, can you write a story of a Mexican family? For example, in the case of this book, Dwight, you wanna talk about some good books and you're using the publication of 2021's Crying in H Mart, a book by Michelle Zauner, who's a musician who records under the name Japanese Breakfast. You know, this was a memoir that sort of mixes food with her personal life and her story of her family. This is something that it feels like a lot of writers did in this 20 year period. I'm thinking of a book by the chef Gabrielle Hamilton, which is a book about food, but it's also a book about growing up in Pennsylvania in the 70s or wherever it was, right.

[Dwight Garner]

That was blood, bones and butter. And there was this explosion of food memoirs during this period. It began with Bourdain and Anthony Bourdain entering the scene early in the 2000s. And books like Bill Buford, Dirt and Heat, I believe were his books. And Michelle Zauner, I mean, who knew that this woman best known as a musician writes this book and it's really good. And she had this built in audience which came to it. But that's not why the book sustained its popularity. It's become a cultural touchstone. I mean, it reflected, you know, American appetites, you know, the way we've expanded what American food means over the last 20 years in a way that's just been extraordinary to see. And her book captured that. And you know, Gabriel Hamilton, I mean, not every chef has a story to tell, but she really did growing up in this food family, in kind of difficult family at times. And. And Bill Buford's Keats, his books work because he's just this master investigator. He just dives deep into these situations, traveling to France and working for great restaurants. And he's just a good observer. And he takes you into these places and makes you realize why these things. In a way, food doesn't matter, but were it to matter, he tells you why. If you want to care about this stuff, he will tell you why this stuff might matter to your life and why food might be a gateway into aesthetics in general, to reading, to art, to literature.

[Gilbert Cruz]

And that's why he's a man after your own heart, I would say. So, yeah. I am going to bring this conversation to a close by asking you, Tina, to talk about the biggest thing in books over the past several years, I would say, which is so multiple things related. It's the rise of romance, fiction, the rise of bookstagram, the rise of booktok as a platform by which people make recommendations to each other, and then the rise of Romantasy, which is this portmanteau word that combines romance and fantasy. All of these things are intertwined with one another, and they have driven the book industry over the past several years to an extent that nothing else has.

[Tina Jordan]

That's right. So TikTok, I believe, started in 2017. The first BookTok hashtag is like, two years later. But during the pandemic is when it really exploded. And if you go back and watch especially some of these early, you know, BookTok videos, they're very emotional. They're like people fling books across the room.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That became the cliche.

[Tina Jordan]

That became the cliche. Right. And the first hits that came out of booktok were actually old books. Song of Achilles from 2011, we were liars by E. Lockhart. They weren't new books. And so publishers were perplexed by demand and didn't understand where this was coming from. Like, the Times ran a story on Song of Achilles, and the publisher and the author were like, we didn't know what was going on. We didn't know where this demand was coming from. But they wised up really fast, and booksellers did, too. You walk into any, not just a Barnes and Noble, but in any independent bookstore, and you would see a table of, like, the big recommended Booktok books right there up front.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah.

[Tina Jordan]

And so as far as Romantasy goes, like, one of the first writers who was championed was Sarah J. Maas.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Right. She's the author of the Acotar series, if I'm saying the abbreviation. Right. A Court of Thorns and Roses.

[Tina Jordan]

A Court of Thorns and Roses, Right. That's what I call it.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah.

[Tina Jordan]

So both her and Rebecca Yarros, the fourth wing, like, booktok, got behind those in a big way. And pretty much. I don't know how much time you spend looking at the New York Times bestseller list, Gilbert, but there was a period.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It's what I do every night before bed.

[Tina Jordan]

There was a period of time where, like, half the books on there were Romantasy.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Does it feel like that moment has peaked? Are we cresting a little?

[Tina Jordan]

We're cresting Romantasy. Sales are dropping. Publishers are scrambling frantically to figure out what will be the next Romantasy.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah. Tina. What will be the next Romantic?

[Tina Jordan]

I have no idea.

[Dwight Garner]

You can make a lot of money if you.

[Tina Jordan]

Yeah, if I got this right.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Let's get this on Polymarket. After the break, we'll find out just how well Dwight and Tina remember the past 20 years in books with a super fun and I assure you, not at all contentious quiz.

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[Gilbert Cruz]

Tina Dwight, if there's one thing you know about me, it's that I love books. If there's another thing you know about me, it's that I love books and games. And if there's a third thing you know about me, it's that I love books and games and causing my wonderful colleagues slight embarrassment. So we are going to wrap up this banner anniversary episode of the podcast by playing a little game. This game is going to be in four rounds. Because this is a book review podcast, we're going to call them four chapters. I'm going to explain the rules of each chapter as we go in. Please wait until I finish reading the entire clue before buzzing in. Tina, are you ready?

[Tina Jordan]

I'm ready.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Dwight, are you ready?

[Dwight Garner]

I am ready.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Excellent. Hands on buzzers. Let's play chapter one, which is called Thinking Fast and Slow. Every year. As you both know, the book review staff meets to think both fast and slow, argue, cry and laugh about our favorite books of the year. Ultimately, we arrive at our list of the 10 best books of the year. I imagine the two of you might remember some of these meetings with some fondness and maybe with whatever the opposite of fondness is. I'm hoping mostly you remember the list because that's what this round is about. I'm going to give you three books that all appeared on our 10 best list of that year. You're gonna name the year. Hands on buzzers. First question. The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford. And Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. What year? Dwight.

[Dwight Garner]

2008.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That is incorrect. Tina.

[Tina Jordan]

2015.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That is also incorrect. These are from 2006, which is the very first year of the book review podcast.

[Dwight Garner]

Do I get points for being closer?

[Gilbert Cruz]

You get points for being right. So let's try to be right. Next question. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. Room by Emma Donoghue and A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Tina.

[Tina Jordan]

2010.

[Gilbert Cruz]

2010. Correct. Nice.

[Dwight Garner]

Nice.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You look like you guessed, but you got it right. All right, all right. The Great Believers by Rebecca Mackay. There There by Tommy Orange and Educated by Tara Westover. Tina.

[Tina Jordan]

2018.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That is correct. And you should know because that was your first year on the show.

[Tina Jordan]

That's the only reason I know.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Well done. Trust by Hernan Diaz. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and Stay True by Hwasu Dwight.

[Dwight Garner]

2024.

[Tina Jordan]

Close.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Tina.

[Tina Jordan]

2025.

[Gilbert Cruz]

2022.

[Dwight Garner]

You know, can I say something? People have talked about how decades yous have feels. You know, the 80s felt like something. The 90s felt like something. And somehow the years that these past 20 years. It's hard sometimes to. I don't know if you guys feel the same way.

[Gilbert Cruz]

If you want to blame Covid for your performance in this round, I will accept it.

[Dwight Garner]

I just remembered I had long Covid.

[Gilbert Cruz]

All right, last grouping of books in this chapter. Here we go. Angel down by Daniel Krause the Director by Daniel Kelman and Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy. Tina.

[Tina Jordan]

2025.

[Gilbert Cruz]

2025. That is correct. If neither of you have gotten that right, I would have had to throw you both out of this position. That is the end of chapter one. Let us flip the page to chapter two, which is called Salvage the Bones. This is pretty straightforward. Answer these questions about major literary events from the last 20 years. Among the Mid Century Books giving a second life by enthusiastic book reviewers on TikTok and Instagram is what 1965 John Williams novel about an English professor at the University of Missouri, Dwight Stoner. Stoner. That is correct. Well done. Next question. Among the writers whose work has appeared on multiple Obama reading lists over the last 17 years is what author of quote, Southern noir crime fiction whose novels appeared on Obama's summer reading list in 2022, 2023 and 2025?

[Tina Jordan]

Tina S.A. cosby.

[Gilbert Cruz]

S.A. cosby. That is correct. Next question. Over the past 20 years, the book Review podcast has featured interviews with a ton of major authors, sometimes more than one per episode. One notable 2009 episode of the podcast Predates Me featured a conversation with Stephen King as well as an interview with what tennis legend about his memoir titled

[Dwight Garner]

Open Dwight Andre Agassiz.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That is correct.

[Dwight Garner]

It's a good book.

[Gilbert Cruz]

All right, we're doing great here. Next question. Romance and YA novelist Colleen Hoover has become one of the best selling authors of recent years. In 2022, her novels reportedly sold more copies than what perennially bestselling religious text? Tina?

[Tina Jordan]

The Bible.

[Gilbert Cruz]

The Bible. Heard of it? Next question. Dan Brown's the Da Vinci code famously spent 136 weeks on top of the New York Times bestseller list. That's our list. Since then, Brown has published four more novels centered on adventuring symbologist Robert Langdon. All four of them went to number one on our list. Name one of them. No Brownheads. No in the House. Those novels are the Lost Symbol, Inferno, Origin and the Secret of Secrets. That is the end of chapter two.

[Tina Jordan]

I don't like those books.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That is not germane to the question of whether or not you remember their titles. We're gonna move to chapter three, which is called say Nothing. Audiobooks have become an increasingly popular way for readers to experience books. I'm going to play you a clip of a famous person reading an audiobook. You get one point if you can name the famous person reading and you get another point if you can name the book that they are reading. Here's a hint. This is the one place in this episode where we are going to deal with some books that are not necessarily from the last 20 years. Let us begin.

[Dwight Garner]

Citizens of New Hampshire could not get

[Gilbert Cruz]

enough of our town.

[Dwight Garner]

We felt about the play the way other Americans felt about the Constitution or

[Gilbert Cruz]

the Star Spangled Banner.

[Tina Jordan]

It spoke to us, made us feel special and seen.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Do either of you know the person reading or the name of the book being read?

[Dwight Garner]

I thought for a second it sounded Like Meryl Streep, but she has not done this, and it's not her.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Dwight, you should have buzzed in because it was Meryl Streep.

[Dwight Garner]

Oh, no way.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Meryl Streep reading Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, which only came out a few years ago, so you were definitely on the right track there. Okay, we're gonna go to our next pairing of reader and book.

[Dwight Garner]

When Mr. And Mrs. Dursley woke up on the dull gray Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Anyone? Yep.

[Dwight Garner]

Well, I mean, it's Harry Potter. Do you have to name the individual Potter title?

[Gilbert Cruz]

No, no. Harry Potter.

[Tina Jordan]

Yes.

[Dwight Garner]

I can't name. And the narrator is so famous, and I know it, and my kids know it and my wife knows it. I can't remember his name.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I believe this is the first book which is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Or if you live in the United Kingdom, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. And the Jim. Jim audiobook narrator is Jim somebody. Okay, that doesn't count. The audiobook narrator is Jim Dale. Jim Dale. I will leave it to our scorers to figure out how to apportion points there while we move on to our next clue. In Santo Domingo, the land he loved

[Tina Jordan]

best, what Oscar at the end would

[Dwight Garner]

call the ground zero of the new world.

[Gilbert Cruz]

The admiral's very name has become synonymous with both kinds of Foucault and large quite well.

[Dwight Garner]

Junot Diaz. That's his novel, the Oscar.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Wow.

[Dwight Garner]

What's the full title?

[Gilbert Cruz]

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wilde.

[Dwight Garner]

Yes. Who was reading it? I don't know.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It is Lin Manuel Miranda. Who's reading that? Tina, are you tanking this? Put your finger on your space bar. You got to be in it to win it.

[Tina Jordan]

Okay, fine.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Next. Flu.

[Dwight Garner]

While Tom was eating his supper and stealing sugar, his opportunity offered. Aunt Polly asked him questions that were full of guile and very deep, for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Dwight, Nick Offerman is reading correct. It's Twain. It's Tom Sawyer.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It is.

[Tina Jordan]

It's Tom Sawyer.

[Gilbert Cruz]

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Very good. Let us finish off this highly successful quiz with chapter four, which is titled the Line of Beauty. Since we have started recording the book review podcast, 20 novels have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. As we discussed, no award was given in 2012, but two books, one in 2023. In this round, I'm going to give you the first line of a novel that has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction since 2006. And you are going to tell me the title of said novel. Tina is audibly excited. Okay, book number one. When he woke in the woods, in the dark and the cold of the night, he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Dwight.

[Dwight Garner]

The road.

[Gilbert Cruz]

The road. Correct. The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Next book. The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north. North, she said, no. Dwight.

[Dwight Garner]

The Underground Railroad.

[Gilbert Cruz]

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. Correct. Because he had enjoyed almost every advantage since birth, one of the few privileges denied to Benjamin Rask was that of a heroic rise. His was not a story of resilience and perseverance or the tale of an unbreakable will forging a golden destiny for itself out of little more than dross.

[Dwight Garner]

Benjamin Rask.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Okay, that is Trust by Hernan Diaz. Oh, yeah. Okay, next. First line. First I got myself born.

[Tina Jordan]

Is Jeffrey Eugenides.

[Gilbert Cruz]

The good guess, but it's not Jeffrey Eugenides. Also, that's an author, not the name of a book.

[Tina Jordan]

True.

[Gilbert Cruz]

This is Demon Copperhead, which is the book that won the Pulitzer alongside Trust.

[Tina Jordan]

Got it.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Okay, next clue. Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass. Tina. James James by Percival Everett. That is correct. You guys look so excited to have done this. You both did better than I would. Unfortunately, we have to have a winner and someone who is not the winner. Our producers are telling me that. Dwight Garner.

[Dwight Garner]

This means two extra weeks of vacation, right?

[Gilbert Cruz]

Dwight Garner, you have won the book review podcast, 20th anniversary episode quiz.

[Dwight Garner]

Rarely has a winner felt more like a loser.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Let's do it again in 20 years. I don't have anything for you. I want to buy you a cocktail somewhere. All right, Dwight, Tina, thank you so much for coming on and looking back at the past 20 years in publishing. The past 20 years in the Book Review podcast. I had such a good time. Tina, thank you so much.

[Tina Jordan]

I had a great time, except for the quiz.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Dwight, thank you so much.

[Dwight Garner]

This was fun.

[Gilbert Cruz]

The book review is produced by Sarah diamond and Amy Pearl with help this week from quizmaster Alex Barron. It's edited by Larissa Anderson and mixed by Pedro Rosado. Original music by Dan Powell and Elisheba ITU Special thanks to Dalia Haddad. We always want to hear what you think about the show, so send us an [e-mail] I'm Gilbert Cruz. Thanks for listening.

[Smokey Bear Announcer]

This wildfire season, Smokey Bear has a reminder for all of us. Only you can prevent wildfires. For more than 80 years. He's taught us how to prevent unwanted wildfires through his tips, like using the Drown Stir Drown Feel method for putting out campfires. Every responsible action makes a difference. Learn wildfire prevention [e-mail] brought to you by the USDA Forest Service, your state forester, and the Ad Council.