《纽约时报》首席书评人对谈：2026文学震颤、AI阴影与难读之书的奖赏

M.J. Franklin: I'm M.J. Franklin, and this is the Book Review from The New York Times.

M.J. Franklin: Today, we have a special treat because we are talking with our New York Times staff book critics.

M.J. Franklin: I'm here with

Jennifer Szalai: Jennifer Szalai, and I review nonfiction.

Dwight Garner: And Dwight Garner, I review fiction and sometimes nonfiction.

Alexandra Jacobs: And Alexandra Jacobs, I'm the same as Dwight, but not as good.

M.J. Franklin: All stars, and that is why I am excited to talk to you today. You are our three staff critics, which is notable because in general, in the book world, I think you can probably count on one hand the number of full-time traditional staff book critics. Three of them are in this room. You

Alexandra Jacobs: I try not to think about this too much cuz that's too much pressure, and I can't take it.

M.J. Franklin: Well, the pressure is off, but the praise is there. The praise is heaped on. So, I'm excited to talk to you for that reason, but also I'm excited to talk to you because I feel like you're kind of mystery readers. We know the final product. We know the reviews that you put out, but we don't get to peel back the curtain, talk shop, gab as you're thinking, all of that stuff. I think for most readers, not just critics, but most readers, reading can be very solitary. So, to get some of the smartest readers, the smartest writers, the smartest thinkers all together in a room and just talk about books. That's what we're here to do. I want to start simple and broad with the year 2026 overall. Can you give me one word or phrase that summarizes books and reading this year? Think of this as the vibe check, just the opening salvo. What has books reading been like for you this year? Jen, you seem lost in thought, so I'm going to start with you.

Jennifer Szalai: Okay. You know, to distill it to a word or a phrase, for me at least, it feels like sort of a searching year.

M.J. Franklin: A searching year?

Jennifer Szalai: year. You know, I write specifically about nonfiction, and nonfiction does connect to the world that we're living in. And just trying to figure out what that world is, what's going on, where it's going. That's what I've noticed in some of the books that I've been writing about. So, for me, that's the word. I'm not sure if it's the right word, but that's the one that came to mind.

M.J. Franklin: Does the searching feel exciting? Does the searching feel tedious? Does the searching feel forced, belabored, or just like a naturalistic evolution of our thinking, of our of our confusion this year?

Jennifer Szalai: Yeah, I mean, I think it has to do partly with the fact that so much has transformed all over the world, just in terms of the role that this country plays in shaping other countries' experiences. So, that's the word that comes up, and I I think I use it maybe because it's vague. To [laughter] be honest, that's why I'm using it, cuz I'm not sure I'm ready to pinpoint.

M.J. Franklin: But, Jen, you mentioned that you're thinking about this because of non-fiction. Dwight, Alexandra, you both review a mix of fiction and non-fiction, but how does that sound to you? Is it a searching year?

Dwight Garner: The word I would pick for this year is probably impudent. Uh in terms of in terms of the fiction I loved, um you know, I I think the four or five novels and books of stories I loved the most this year were just kind of um angry and smart and witty and took on the world in original ways. I can't really, you know, they're sort of omnidirectional books. They came from all over the place, and it's very hard to put them under one umbrella. I felt this was a particularly good year for for fiction, and um I felt lucky to be alive in reading and have health insurance throughout the entire period. Um I really had a great year, and I um there were some books I I didn't like so much this year, but I um I I'm very impressed with the fiction that came out.

M.J. Franklin: What does impudent mean?

Dwight Garner: Oh, impudent, I mean, it just um a little bit angry, witty, taking nothing seriously, refusing received notions of anything, respecting nothing, you know, in a good way. And we could talk about the exact books, but I I even felt that way about the best nonfiction this year. I mean, it was great to read Garry Trudeau's biography for example, you know, the creator of Doonesbury, and books like that. You feel these These are just great, interesting, funny minds and and what's better than that?

M.J. Franklin: Um I loved what you just said in the middle of that. You said, "Just happy to be alive and reading."

Alexandra Jacobs: Oh, agreed. I feel the same.

Dwight Garner: Yeah, I'm I'm constantly amazed. And I have to remind myself because, you know, book critics uh we get we get down sometimes, too. And then I have to remind myself, well, Dwight, you're doing the one thing that you wanted to do with your life, which was read books. You're getting paid to read books for a living. And um I have to like remember that. I mean, I I feel very lucky to have the job that I have.

M.J. Franklin: Here, here, cheers to that. What about you, Alexandra? What's the word I'm looking for? word?

Alexandra Jacobs: Uh well, like in Bye Bye Birdie, what's the word, hummingbird? [laughter]

Alexandra Jacobs: Right. Well, uh thank you for the Bye Bye Birdie citation. I would choose oppositional.

M.J. Franklin: Oppositional.

Alexandra Jacobs: Yes. What I perceive going on in fiction, I'm definitely seeing a sort of split between like the big sort of rich social novel that goes across class lines as opposed to sort of the kind of attenuated spare book of the self that is more internal and whatever. That's that.

Alexandra Jacobs: That's what I saw in in fiction. Uh and the medium novels for me kind of fell away. And it just the things that really stuck in my craw or whatever, whatever non-cliche thing that is not a craw, uh were the big ones and the little ones, you know? And then when I say oppositional in nonfiction, yes, I agree with Dwight. Angry. There's a defiance. There are sort of like defiant large nonfiction books or even just the Ari Emanuels popping into my head. You know, it was really like I as I called it a manifesto, it was it was like, "You know what? Anger's good. Time to be angry."

M.J. Franklin: Is there anything, though, out of all of what we've just said, out of this vibe, that feels specific or unique or different to 2026?

Alexandra Jacobs: Artificial intelligence. This gigantic shadow of artificial intelligence. It's kind of like Chuck Klosterman wrote about the '90s and he talked about how the internet was coming and almost there. And that's that's what's going on with artificial And what is more affected by artificial intelligence than the natural intelligence of books?

M.J. Franklin: Yeah, but did Are you saying that this feels like it's specific unique in terms of how we ourselves are approaching and thinking about literature or about the books themselves?

Alexandra Jacobs: subtextually affecting every book that's written right now. Uh well, if you have a pulse or you know, if you're at all engaged or or aware in the world, you know that books are sort of dissolving in into uh cyberspace or I don't even know what space it is. It's like that They're being scanned. They're being, you know, language itself is being radically revised and we're now in dialogue not just with each other, but with with machines. Even if you're avoiding it, even if writers are avoiding it and escaping into other worlds, I don't know how that can't inform what they're doing and how we're processing it.

Dwight Garner: I I actually felt um you know, I felt several times reading even serious books this year that I was I was in the presence of AI. I felt that writers were using it and I felt it, you know, there was some at least one writer this year, I think two that I've read in the past and I feel like their new book just had a bit more a bit more plump and had more information. They teased out things that maybe they wouldn't have teased out as much in the past. And we're not the police. I mean, we're not here to fact-check their AI. But I wonder when it will become part of a critic's job to ask these kind of questions.

M.J. Franklin: Yeah, that makes sense.

M.J. Franklin: Are you seeing that too in non-fiction?

Jennifer Szalai: I probably am. Um I think it's interesting with uh I you know, there's all kinds of non-fiction, but the books that really want to convey a lot of information, I do wonder sometimes how much of the information gathering process has been done with the assistance of AI in terms of the writing. I don't know. I mean AI takes all the writing that's out there and then sort of delivers something that's I guess the mean or the median prose um

M.J. Franklin: Well, we've yeah, we've identified a we've identified a chat GPT voice. I mean I think we even ran stories about the you know the M dash the contested M dash.

Dwight Garner: Yeah.

M.J. Franklin: And it's this interesting loop because AI is repeating that because humans use it and then all of a sudden this human thing becomes a symbol of this artificial thing and like the ouroboros just continues on and on and on.

Alexandra Jacobs: Well, there's also an economy of it like an economy of language as supply and demand. The fact is there's now more text being generated and than ever before. It's kind of makes text cheaper. So it it makes the duty of the writer kind of different.

M.J. Franklin: Well, how do you parse text? Like when you are reading I want to I want to peek into your brains a little bit more. When you're reading as critics are there things that you're always looking for things that you gravitate toward as critics as readers you you pick up a book you you always notice this element or you're seeing this thing.

Alexandra Jacobs: I think I notice webs. So like what can you know what Carol Gilligan would call like webs of social connection or whatever. I'm very impressed when worlds are built and connections are made. I mean it it's it's a kind of yucky word but sorry New York Times games but anyway.

M.J. Franklin: What about you Dwight?

Dwight Garner: I'm just looking for vitality. You know, the book's got to be alive before it can do anything else. You know, before it can have ideas before it can tell you about something or build a world. Like all of us here I pick up a lot of books each week and try to find the good ones. And you normally know within 20 or 30 pages whether this person has a voice where it's alive and can write.

M.J. Franklin: What makes something feel alive? What makes it something feel like it has a voice?

Dwight Garner: basically what it is is close observation. And people who describe things give your world back to you in a polished way more clearly than you've seen it for a while. Uh Martin Amis once called John Updike a quote a NORAD of close observation meaning he's seeing everything in like a fly would see it, you know, like the um and just brilliant images and that's part of it for me. Part of it is just telling me who I am and who we all are in a newish um smart interesting way.

M.J. Franklin: And honest honest way.

Dwight Garner: Honesty, yeah. I mean Philip Roth said um um style doesn't matter. Style doesn't matter to me. Voice matters, okay? There's a big difference between style and voice. And someone with a with a with a great voice, I'm just there.

Jennifer Szalai: I I I really like what you said Dwight about vitality. When I'm reading something I'm looking to be surprised. I'm always Those are the things that get my marginalia going, I guess. Which is, you know, a moment where an author either puts things in such a way so at the level of language or, you know, at the level of thinking, I guess, connects different things.

M.J. Franklin: Can you read your marginalia? Cuz that's another hallmark of my reading is that I take notes and then I and then I I cannot decipher my marginalia. I have to rely on my memory. We all know how that goes.

Jennifer Szalai: I have had instances where I have no idea what I was saying at a certain point when I read something, but for the most part I can decipher my little scratchings. But yeah, I like with a lot of non-fiction where the author thinks that their main purpose is to deliver information and that's that's definitely like a certain genre of book and it's it's an important genre of book, but I I like the author who also says, "No, you know, I also want to convey this story. I want to convey this idea in a way that is not just about doing the work." That they're they're doing something else with it that they they turn it another notch.

M.J. Franklin: Yep.

Jennifer Szalai: And that's always what I'm looking for.

M.J. Franklin: We just talked about what we look for big picture in books, what excites us. I want to pivot to individual book recommendations, but first I think we should take a quick break.

M.J. Franklin: And we're back. I'm M.J. Franklin. I'm chatting with our staff book critics Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs, and Jennifer Szalai. I want to turn to some specific books. I asked each of you to come prepared to talk about a 2026 book that you loved. Who wants to kick us off?

Alexandra Jacobs: I'll start.

M.J. Franklin: Yes.

Alexandra Jacobs: I want to put on readers' radar Nothing Random by Gail Feldman. This is one of the first books I reviewed this year.

M.J. Franklin: Nothing Random being specifically about Bennett Cerf,

Alexandra Jacobs: of Bennett Cerf, who co-founded Random House, which means he's indirectly responsible for a huge amount of what we're reading today.

M.J. Franklin: You just heaped huge praise on it. It's the new power broker. It's the book everyone should read this year. Why did you love it?

Alexandra Jacobs: Why did I love it? We're we're sort of in an era of group biographies. I think it's sometimes you know, it can be a little bit diluted. And and in the case of Bennett Cerf, he not only was this incredibly important seminal, dare I say subversive publisher, but he was also sort of this kind of questionable cultural figure, right? Because he went on What's My Line? And he wrote joke books that were just so groan-worthy. So, he has this legacy that is sort of divided, but she brings it all together in this just magisterial, funny, fast-moving biography. I mean, it's it's 600 pages, but it feels like 200.

M.J. Franklin: Alexandra, I'm sold. Um, what about you, Jen? What's a 2026 book you love?

Jennifer Szalai: So, this is a book that I actually just recently reviewed and it's called Will and Attention and it's by Meghan O'Gieblyn. And actually it maybe fits in with our searching theme. So, O'Gieblyn is somebody who grew up in the Midwest in a Christian fundamentalist family. She basically lost her religion in her 20s. I mean, she was very serious about it. She studied to go into the ministry and then eventually lost her faith and then she fell into alcoholism. And so this is actually a book of what happened after that, which is about a decade later she decided she would try to convert to Catholicism of all things. She started attending mass secretly. This was all secret. She kept this from her husband.

M.J. Franklin: Wow.

Jennifer Szalai: Um she started talking to a priest about converting. And then she failed to do it basically because the priest at a certain point asked her why she wasn't having babies. And she realized maybe this wasn't for her. Shortly after that she ended up falling into drinking again. And so this is a story it's one of those things that it sounds like on the surface a religious memoir as well as a recovery memoir, but in fact it's something that's a little weirder than that and I really appreciated it. She's very interested in large questions of meaning not only connected to religion, but also philosophy. And the title comes from a quote by the French mystic Simone Weil. And that sounds [clears throat] I know very cerebral. And it is, but it basically has to do with this idea of how we interact with the world. Should it be through the force of will or our powers of attention? And Weil saw those things as actually quite distinct and that attention has to do with something that's not willful. It's not about focusing on something really hard. You know, she's a searcher or a seeker. Um and and that fascinates me.

M.J. Franklin: Alexandra, when Jen brought this up, you started making excited hands.

Alexandra Jacobs: Now, I can't remember if it was for the alcoholism or [laughter]

M.J. Franklin: Wait, save us. What is your 2026 book that you love?

Dwight Garner: Well, I I I I think that my best book of this year, famously, perhaps infamously, is Marlon James's novel The Disappears. It's one of the best novels I've ever read. And um you know, you get you get to be you do this for a while, as I've done, and you're not used I haven't had a reading experience like this for a long time, like a long time. Um a book that just took me over and I felt that I was in the hands of a of a major writer. And there are a lot of brilliant writers out there that I love. I I think of kibitzing fiction writers. They're in touch with the world and I love them and I'll read them forever. But uh reading Marlon James's novel The Disappears, I felt like this was something like Dreiser. This was like This was like a a car with a big chassis, you know, and it's in for the long haul.

Dwight Garner: And um it just runs you over again and again and again. And adding to that, it does have the wit and the observation. It has like it's this enormous tree that flowers the weeds grow under and and you're aware of both at the same time and it I think it's extraordinary. So,

M.J. Franklin: I love that metaphor. An enormous tree that flowers with weeds under and you are like you notice both. I love that.

Dwight Garner: you're always aware of the of the goddamn tree. And um I you know, it made me feel The last thing I'll say about it is that it made me feel in a way I haven't felt for a long time. When you're young as a reader and you you think like these dinosaurs walk these great writers are walking the earth, whether it's uh Iris Murdoch or name name your person. And I felt like Marlon James is now one of these writers. I feel like you know, I'm living like 4 miles away from Marlon [ __ ] James. I just think this novel is built to last.

M.J. Franklin: Can you convince someone who sees this book and thinks this is too long, this is too violent, and just like write it off just based off of that. How would you convince someone to pick it up?

Dwight Garner: You know, I'm not sure this book is for everyone. I would encourage you to try. It's difficult in three or four different ways. The first way is it doesn't really get going for a pretty long time. I mean, it's interesting from the start, but you you can have this sense that, well, maybe this isn't going to come together. That's easy to have if you don't push on. B, it is a over-the-top, intense, almost brutal gay novel. I mean, the sex in this novel is more out there, raunchier than any book that I've read for a very long time. And we can part part of the reason the sex might be so forceful in this book, I think, is that male writers in general sort of backed away a little bit from this kind of intense feelings about sex, putting that into their fiction, worrying they'll be seen as, you know, name your whatever. Just just be seen as misogynistic, sex-obsessed louts. So, our male writers don't go there anymore in this kind of way, at least not very often. So, watching Marlon go there, not just go there, but go there and go there and go there. And then it's also quite violent, as you mentioned. So, this is not for everyone, but I would say that it's worth persevering. It's It's like one of those books you're in college, there's some reading that's almost like penitential reading. You have to read it to understand the world, even if it's not always easy. And I think this is one of those novels.

M.J. Franklin: I love this book, and then I also love just difficult books in general. There's something that is so rewarding about encountering a book that challenges you.

Alexandra Jacobs: And you mean it's difficult this one because it's painful to read or because it the prose is actually impenetrable and highfalutin or anything?

Dwight Garner: highfalutin at all.

Alexandra Jacobs: what's difficult about it? What do you mean exactly?

M.J. Franklin: it's the pain of it. It's the the heaviness of it. And then also quite literally, like the novel itself. And so so for me, it's a a challenging novel, but I finished this book and I thought Marlon James did that. And I I love that feeling when you finish a difficult book and you're like, I'm glad I stuck with it because I've gotten so much out of it and or I'm glad I read this book because I'm just thinking, I'm percolating and in this very active active kind of thinking.

Alexandra Jacobs: very challenging to find right now because of Dwight's

Dwight Garner: But it's not challenging the way like it's not like it's like the Ring trilogy, you know, you go to the opera and suffer for 15 cuz it's great, but you know, you're glad you survived it. This is not that kind of thing. This is like it's an intense experience all the way through and it's difficult in part I think because there's so many voices talking and you I I lost track almost, you know, I lost track a lot and I found it back again, but in the end it doesn't matter because they're almost it's almost like it's almost like um um a chorus. They're all singing together and it doesn't matter. They're telling similar stories and they branch off and uh it doesn't matter in the end.

Alexandra Jacobs: I felt the same way about American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee, yes. So this is freshly reviewed. I adored this book. I also feel it is a flowering tree and all of that. There is sex. There's even a little violence. I think it's incredible.

M.J. Franklin: And there are parallels in terms of the profile of this book and this author. Marlon James's previous book, A Brief History of Seven Killings, came out 10, 11 years ago. Similar for Pachinko and American Hagwon. So this is a big major writer, a heavily anticipated book that's been percolating for like a decade.

Alexandra Jacobs: Thank goodness I liked it. [laughter]

Alexandra Jacobs: No, I mean I I was I was anxious cuz you know, Pachinko was such an enormous phenomenon. I think this book is better than Pachinko.

M.J. Franklin: Tell me more.

Alexandra Jacobs: Well, first of all because it's about you would never to describe it, it's not going to sound glamorous or anything. It's about a Korean-American head of a private school and it involves this shadow world of of Manhattan of cram schools or hagwons. But the point is you wouldn't think that this would necessarily be a fascinating book cuz what does that matter to the average person, but she just completely takes us there.

M.J. Franklin: takes us there. And what makes it stand out? What makes it so special?

Alexandra Jacobs: it stand out is that it's a huge constellation of characters pursuing what we all are pursuing, which is, you know, striving and excellence and wanting things for their children and to move up in society and getting criminal even to do so. And it's so smart and it goes so fast.

M.J. Franklin: Yep. We were talking about the power of books to search, to form connections, to crack open questions and answers, and expand that way.

Alexandra Jacobs: Absolutely. And I just want to press this book into people's hands.

M.J. Franklin: So that actually leads me to my second question. I want to know what's a book, new or old, that you feel you're an evangelist for, that you will just recommend always and forever? Jen, take it away.

Jennifer Szalai: This is a book um Lives Other Than My Own by Emmanuel Carrère.

M.J. Franklin: Who, I don't know this book.

Jennifer Szalai: Carrère is a French writer. He's written a number of fantastic books. This one is, um, a very singular work of nonfiction that starts off he was in Sri Lanka with his then-partner when the 2004 tsunami hit. And so they're there when this horrible tragedy hits. They befriend this couple who's lost their young daughter, and so it recounts that tragedy and its aftermath. And then the second part of the book goes back to France, where his partner's sister has been dying of cancer. And she's a magistrate, a judge, and she and another judge who's also suffered from a physical disability had basically been using their powers as judges to try to help people who'd become indebted to consumer lending agencies. And they seem like totally disparate stories, but Carrère brings them together and it's just this extraordinary account of what it means to look at other people's lives and bring them together in this just moving, beautifully observed, utterly unsentimental way.

M.J. Franklin: I love books like that where you read it and you're like, I didn't know you could do that. My entire understanding of what this medium is has been expanded and I love that. Jen, thank you. Love that. Dwight, you're up. What's a book that you are an evangelist for? I mean, I'm tempted to say Make Way for Ducklings, but

Dwight Garner: Way for Ducklings, but um but [laughter] I won't. There's a series of books that I read when I was in my early 20s by Calvin Trillin. Trilogy? Yeah. Their their initial titles are American Fried, Alice, Let's Eat, and Third Helpings, which A it was compiled in an omnibus edition called The Tummy Trilogy. And it's basically Calvin Trillin traveling around America looking for things to eat. And he is so funny and witty and observant. And it gave me a sense of what a writer with a voice could do with material that was supposedly light. And then if we're talking about fiction, I've got to say Larry Brown's novel Joe. Well, you know, I've always been a big fan of Southern Lit writ large. But Larry Brown has this grit and this heart that just tears you apart.

M.J. Franklin: I love that. Alexandra?

Alexandra Jacobs: The book or books that made me, certainly the first one that come comes to mind is actually a classic, which is John Updike's Rabbit series, starting with Rabbit, Run. I think Updike The thing is you I believe he's fallen a bit slightly out of fashion. And but the close observation that Dwight was talking about earlier, it's just unmatched. You read it and you realize every single thread of daily human life is connected.

M.J. Franklin: Everything is connected. The web of everything. Incredible.

M.J. Franklin: Coming up, biological war, civil servants, and Hagwons. My next question, my next book that I asked you to bring, what's a book that you think readers should pick up if they want to understand the moment we're in? Jen, what did you bring?

Jennifer Szalai: Um this is a book that I I didn't review. It's from this year, but I thought that as a document of our moment, it was really incredible. Well, I think what it illuminated is what was happening at the level of these agencies, inside the government, the civil servants. We hear a term like the administrative state, and it's kind of a black box.

Jennifer Szalai: Yeah, people's eyes glaze over. I mean, understandably, you know, I mean, it's it sounds so abstract. And I think that's why this book is so important, because it humanizes it, shows the Stakes, and explains what's happening to the people who actually make the government run.

M.J. Franklin: All right, Dwight, what's a book that you think readers should pick up if they want to understand the moment we're living through?

Dwight Garner: Well, you know, MJ, my favorite works of fiction this year after The Vanishing One was Colson Whitehead's latest. He can and he has. He's written so many books across such a range of styles. I prefer his Harlem crime series to his more canonical titles. I think he's looser. Nancy Lemon's book about biological warfare. Um What she does is she knows a lot about biological war and how this could lead to the end of the world. It is terrifying, well-reported, and urgent.

M.J. Franklin: Go check it out everyone. Alexandra you're up.

Alexandra Jacobs: These are not the books that I want to recommend exactly because they don't necessarily need shouting from the rooftops. But the two I want to push, one is the wonderful world that almost was by Andrew, and Barbara Trapido, a novel called Brother of the more famous Jack. Terrible title. Brilliant, witty, British novel.

M.J. Franklin: Alexandra, any that you haven't gotten to that you want to mention?

Alexandra Jacobs: I'm I'm I'm out, baby. I'm out.

M.J. Franklin: Jen? [laughter]

Jennifer Szalai: Love and Hydrogen, a short story collection by Jim Shepard. It came out about 20 years ago. The title story is about two men working on the Hindenburg who fall in love. It is astonishingly brilliant.

Dwight Garner: I would add Trash, the novel by the the garbage man in Canada, Simon Perril memoir. Short, thin, razor-sharp.

M.J. Franklin: Thank you so much. This was great.

Jennifer Szalai: Thank you for having us.

M.J. Franklin: I'm MJ. The Book Review is produced by Sarah Diamond, Amy Pearl, and Patricia Zubadan, and mixed by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Dalia Haddad. We want to hear what you think about the show. So, send us an email at books@nytimes.com. And remember you can read all our reviews and features at nytimes.com/books. I'm MJ Franklin, sitting in this week for Gilbert Cruz. Thanks for listening.