December 13, 2025

by Andrew Limbong, host of NPR's Book of the Day podcast

Hey newsletter readers! Got a ton of great responses to last week’s email about the big, intimidating books in your life. Some of your emails below. As always, the inbox is bookoftheday@npr.org. And if you want to hear the latest author interviews from across NPR, subscribe to NPR’s Book of the Day podcast. Here’s this week’s letter!

As seen on TV

There’s a new collection from the late Pulitzer Prize-winning poet John Berryman out this week. It’s titled Only Sing, and it’s an extension of his career-long work of writing poems dubbed “Dream Songs.” I remember picking up a copy of Berryman’s The Dream Songs back in college. It wasn’t for a class or anything. But it was during a moment in my life where I was spending a significant amount of time crushing beers and listening to the great American rock band The Hold Steady – who name check Berryman in their song “Stuck Between Stations,” and include a fairly conspicuous shot of the book in the music video. So of course I had to buy it. Ah, to be young, drunk and impressionable.

As we discuss on Books We've Loved, Kitchen Confidential was one of the books that shaped my idea of what's cool. Bloomsbury USA

It’s funny what penetrates at that age. As an adult I find the whole thing a bit embarrassing – did I think buying the book would eventually lead me to a fantastical life of reading and rock music? Well, yes. I thought it contained at least a few of the answers of what it meant to be a cool guy. Similarly, I bought a copy of Anthony Bourdain’s memoir Kitchen Confidential, hoping it had similar answers. As we talk about on this week’s Books We’ve Loved podcast, it does… and it doesn’t. But when you’re young, you’re looking for any path forward. And who better to look to for that than the artists you revere? (For those of you screaming “Your parents! Responsible adults in your life!” – come on, you remember being that age, don’t you?).

And so, when I got a breathless email from a publicist this morning that Taylor Swift is filmed in her new docuseries listening to an audiobook, and that sleuths have found that book to be Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods, the fun-hating, self-serious adult in me rolled its eyes. Do her fans seriously think reading a book that Taylor Swift also happened to read will unlock some secret to life? But then I thought back to buying that Berryman book and realized, maybe it will. At the very least, they’ll read a good book.

I can rattle off a few more books I picked up after seeing them on TV – but what about you? Have you ever been influenced in this way? How did it turn out? Let us know at bookoftheday@npr.org.

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TBR Pile

The Berryman book is one of a few named in this week’s The Book Ahead. Also listed is one of the books I wrote about for this year’s Books We Love! Not a bad book release month for me, I suppose.

My colleague Ivy Buck wrote about some of NPR's favorite cookbooks of the year. NPR

Speaking of Books We Love, it’s the holidays, meaning it’s house-party season. If you’re playing host and looking for some new foods to cook, my colleague Ivy Buck pulled out a few cookbooks from the list.

Our taxation policy is linked to our democracy. That’s the argument made in Vanessa S. Williamson’s new book The Price of Democracy. It’s a fascinating look at our tax history from colonial times to today, writes book critic Ericka Taylor. “Anyone who cares about preserving democracy would be well served by reading it.”

Mailbag!

Tbh, I thought I’d get more emails dunking me for not reading Moby-Dick, so thank you! Here are some of your big, intimidating books:

Charmaine J. wrote: “Over several decades I have tried to read Ulysses by James Joyce. Page 6 was about as far as I got. Last year I committed myself to finishing it. I got as far as Chapter 16. Still there. However, after abandoning Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, I tried again and fell in love with it. Never wanted it to end!”

Dolores D. wrote: “Gazing at the bookcase full of paperbacks directly opposite my armchair, I started noticing the fattest spines and decided it was time to tackle some of them. I started with the biggest one, An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears, an engrossing historical fiction set in Restoration England, clocking in at just over 700 pages. I turned next to my nonfiction shelf and selected PrairyErth by William Least Heat-Moon, over 600 pages in hardcover about the geography -- and, to a lesser extent, the people -- of Kansas. His use of language is so engaging, I think I would enjoy reading him write about anything. Don't be afraid of Moby-Dick; when I read it, around age 20, at the behest of the English major I was dating, I liked it a lot more than I expected to. It's evident that the plot is an excuse to expound on the whaling industry, but I truly enjoyed the writing. Parts of it are even funny.”

Nolan R. wrote: “My husband read and loved Infinite Jest. We are both librarians and recovering English majors, so our home is full of large, beautiful, classic editions of books gifted to us by loved ones that have slowly become ornaments to a path untraveled. The most glaring – and a comrade in the "I'll read it someday" crowd – is War and Peace, which I have read the first 20 pages of probably the same number of instances; I always stumble upon it while dusting our large bookcase, read a few pages, and then get back to work once I realize I still have much of the bookcase to finish cleaning. I continually look at the gorgeous editions of Middlemarch and Don Quixote that also sit on this shelf, waiting for the day that I finally throw my hands in the air and begin the task.”

See you next week!

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