Scott Brocato recently spoke with Andrew Limbong, NPR’s Culture Desk Correspondent and “Book of the Day” podcast host, about the "Books We Love" interactive list, and his own favorite books of 2025.
Scott Brocato:
Let's start with how many books have you personally read in 2025?
Andrew Limbong:
Oh...interesting. Hang on. Do you mind if I get it on the Google sheet? It's all kept on a secret--it's not that secret--Google spreadsheet. Let me just pull it up.
Scott Brocato:
Well, I have a number in front of me that says 384. I don’t know if that’s all--
Andrew Limbong:
Oh, I haven’t read 384 books! (Laughs)
Scott Brocato:
That’s like seven books a week, man!
Andrew Limbong:
No, I'm personally at 52. 384 is the number of books included in this year's edition of Books We Love, which is a collection of book recommendations from across NPR. So it's like everybody. That's like editors and producers and people on the business side of things. And so, yeah, that's our big list.
Scott Brocato:
Do you choose which books you want to read or are they assigned to you? What is the process amongst everyone?
Andrew Limbong:
So what we do is we ask everyone what books they've read, right? And obviously not everybody is involved in covering books, right? Not everybody is involved. Like these are like politics reporters. These are, econ producers or whatever. And so these are just the books that they read in their off time that they've loved, right?
And so for me personally, some of these books are books that were assigned to me, but mostly they're just books I happened to be attracted to. And I think what's interesting is that this is...how we do our year-end list is a very democratic way of doing it, right? We're not saying these are the books you got to read in 2025. It's, hey, here's a big stack of books; you're going to find something that you love.
Scott Brocato:
Well, let's dive into a couple of your nonfiction favorites. I personally lean toward nonfiction books myself. One is “Claire McArdle: the Designer Who Set Women Free,” by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson. How did she, McArdle, who was a lesser-known designer, set women free, and why do you feel her story is so compelling?
Andrew Limbong:
So if you are a woman who's ever enjoyed pockets in her dress, you knowthat that's a big deal. There's a big pocket disparity when it comes to gender and fashion, right? She really revolutionized women's wear to make it more practical. So a lot of athleisure, you think about like a woman, a hoodie, that you can trace that to McArdle. You think about the way a dress moves, where you can actually move your limbs and do stuff, right? That goes back to McArdle.
She was working in the ‘30s and ‘40s. And what she did was she was sort of frustrated with men, particularly European men, male fashion designers, and what they were trying to squeeze women into, right? And so the title is a bit of a play. So she's, like, literally “setting women free” and allowing them to move around.
And I think it's interesting, even if you're not interested in fashion, if you're not interested in women's wear, the book is an examination of America looking for its own aesthetic identity, right? So much of our visual language up until that point when it came to clothing was taking cues from Europe. And McCarter was like, nah, chill, we've had enough of that. Let's do our own thing. And so it's a really interesting look at not just fashion, but America at the time.
Scott Brocato:
Well, another recommended nonfiction book--as a part-time musician, it fascinated me—is called “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Cost of the Perfect Playlist” by Liz Pelly. Talk about that book and the “cost of the perfect playlist.”
Andrew Limbong:
Pelly is a longtime music writer that I've long been a fan of. And this is a real look at Spotify and how it influences musicians. And it's very much looking at the musician as through a labor perspective, through a labor lens; looking at the musician as a worker and how the things that Spotify can do behind the scenes can impact a musician's bottom line, their ability to pay rent. And a lot of that, you can see that happening in playlists placements, right? Like if you are an up-and-coming band or an artist and you get placed on the right place, that can sort of make or break your career. On the flip side, there's all this reporting going around about Spotify sort of using AI-generated music to sort of populate their playlists, and that can be an issue.
I think what I love about nonfiction--and I don't know if this why you're drawn to nonfiction-- is that it makes you stop to think about something that you use daily and maybe don't think that much about, right? If you think about how often people are just throwing on Spotify, right? I'm on streaming services. I've got a couple records here and there, but I'm mostly listening on streaming, and I don't think that hard about it. But this book really makes you just stop and wonder what is going on behind the machine: how is the sausage being made, and how is that impacting the people whose art you are enjoying?
Scott Brocato:
Let's throw in a fiction title. I believe one of your favorites is “Audition” byKatie Kitamura, I've seen the title in a lot of places. Talk about what that's about and why you recommend it so highly.
Andrew Limbong:
It's funny. That's a really hard question to tell you what it's about. So it starts with a woman, she's getting lunch with a younger man. And then her husband sort of walks in and you're thinking like, and the scene that's said is like, what's going on here? And what happens is the younger man thinks that the woman is his mom. And she isn't, I don't think...? I'm still digesting it because something happens midway through the book where it completely upends your perception of the narrative. And so you're constantly wondering, what's going on here? What's happening? And it's a really intricate puzzle of a book, right? It's a quick read. It's a pretty short book, but it's one that I think you could reread immediately after finishing it.
Scott Brocato:
Let's talk about next year, 2026. What books are on the horizon for 2026 that you're either looking forward to reading or maybe you've already read and can recommend early?
Andrew Limbong:
Oh, let's see. Let me think, let me think...what's coming up?
I know! I haven't read it yet. but I've been a longtime fan of Scott McClanahan. He is a writer out of West Virginia who writes these kind of weird and esoteric and yet still literary fiction that is semi-autobiographical, but not really. You know, he plays that line of like, is this real? Is this true? Who knows? He's got a new one coming out next year and it's his first in a long time, and I'm excited to see what he's got cooking.
Scott Brocato:
Andrew Limbong from a host of NPR's Books We Love. Thank you so much for talking with us on KRWG Public Media.
Andrew Limbong:
Thanks a lot, Scott.
