ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
If you look at a lot of year-end best-of lists, things can get a little repetitive. Except for NPR's Books We Love, which is a roundup of our favorite reads this year, because it is more than 350 titles long, so you know it has some under-the-radar books. Andrew Limbong is host of NPR's Book Of The Day podcast and is here to talk us through some of them. Hey, Andrew.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Where should we start?
LIMBONG: I'll let you decide. Do you want to pick romance or sports?
SHAPIRO: I will always choose romance over sports, Andrew (laughter).
LIMBONG: Well, funnily enough, that was a trick question.
SHAPIRO: Oh, no.
LIMBONG: Yeah. Because I've got for you two baseball-themed romances.
SHAPIRO: Show me any other best-of list that has two baseball-themed romances.
LIMBONG: Exactly. Exactly. Come at us, you know?
SHAPIRO: Tell us about one of them.
LIMBONG: The first one is called "The Art Of Catching Feelings," by Alicia Thompson. And the premise is this. Daphne gets too drunk at a baseball game and starts heckling one of the players until he starts crying. I don't know if this qualifies as, like, a meet-cute or something, but, you know, they start getting to know each other and, well, you know, it kind of just goes from there. It is a cute and charming contemporary romance.
SHAPIRO: And what's the other baseball romance book on the list (laughter)?
LIMBONG: (Laughter) Yeah. This next one is - it's a little bit more historical. It's set in the 1960s, and it's called "You Should Be So Lucky," by Cat Sebastian. It's about a baseball player named Eddie and a reporter named Mark. And these two guys end up having to work together, and they also end up falling in love. And obviously that's complicated, considering the time, and Eddie, you know, can't be out and play pro sports at the time. But Mark is not interested in, like, a secret closeted relationship, and so the tension sort of builds from there.
SHAPIRO: All right. A couple titles for romance baseball lovers.
LIMBONG: (Laughter) Yeah. You know, that Venn diagram is really...
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
LIMBONG: ...Big, you know what I mean?
SHAPIRO: Yeah. Yeah. What have you got for non-fiction lovers that might have flown under the radar for most readers this year?
LIMBONG: Yeah. I want to shout-out this book called "My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music's Past, Present, And Future," by Alice Randall. Randall is a Nashville-based songwriter, and she wrote this book that's both, like, a personal reflection of her own journey through the music business, but it's also making historical links to Black figures in country music that, you know, history has sort of washed over as time has gone on. And, you know, it's particularly interesting to read now, because now is kind of an interesting time in country music with, like, Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" being, like, at the top of the Billboard charts for, like, months. And then there was all that discords over Beyonce's "Cowboy Carter" not getting any nods at the CMAs.
SHAPIRO: I thought we were talking about under-the-radar things (laughter).
LIMBONG: Yeah. Yeah. So it's like look at all these, like, over-the-radar things, and you, like, cop this book that's a bit under the radar.
SHAPIRO: Cool. Well, among these under-the-radar choices, is there one that you're surprised did not get more attention this year?
LIMBONG: Yeah. There's this book called "American Spirits," and it's a short story collection by this author named Russell Banks, who died in 2023. Now, Banks is a pretty big name who writes a lot about Upstate New York where he spent a lot of his time. And, you know, this book is a lot about, like, the culture clashes that can occur there. So it's pretty timely, and it's, like, political - not like electoral politics, but about just the politics of being neighbors. But there's that big new Paul Schrader movie out now called "Oh, Canada," that's based on a Russell Banks novel. This movie is starring, like, Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi, and I had assumed that the buzz from that movie would have put this book on more people's radar.
SHAPIRO: Well, now it's on ours. So...
LIMBONG: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: ...Andrew Limbong, thanks a lot.
LIMBONG: Thanks a lot, Ari.
SHAPIRO: You can find all 350-plus of those titles at npr.org/bookswelove. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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