NPR’s Books We Love is here with 384 books to peruse.
It’s the massive national version of what we here at WVIA do with Bookmarks — NPR staff and critics send in their favorite reads of the year. Then, as NPR Book of the Day host Andrew Limbong says, it takes a lot of spreadsheets to create the final, interactive list.
Books We Love launched last week. Tucked into this year’s list was a surprise for one local author: Susquehanna University professor Laurence Roth.
Roth published his memoir, “Unpacking My Father’s Bookstore,” through Rutgers University Press this year. In the book, Roth describes his life growing up in his father’s independent bookstore, J. Roth Bookseller of Fine and Scholarly Judaica in Los Angeles.
Roth’s book was nominated for the list by Marcela Davison Avilés, a book critic and producer with TomKat Media.
WVIA's Sarah Scinto spoke with Limbong and Roth about the annual list. The following has been edited for clarity.
Andrew Limbong, NPR's Book of the Day host
SCINTO: Let's go behind the scenes a little bit. How does Books We Love come together?
LIMBONG: It's a lot of spreadsheets. It's a lot of people in Google spreadsheets chatting each other.
So what happens is, every year around, I think, like late September, early October, an email goes out to everyone at NPR. So this request doesn't just go to the culture desk. It doesn't just go to our book critics. It goes to producers, editors, people in the business side, people in the finance department, and we ask them, what are some of your favorite books that you've read this year?
And so then we get, like, a deluge of book recommendations, and then the said spreadsheet battles commence. This year, we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 380 books, which I know sounds big and which I know sounds intimidating, but the size is sort of the point of it. There are little filters on the side to help you find exactly which book fits your taste, or whoever you're buying a book for. And what we're saying isn't that like, these are the 10 best books of the year. You know? What we're saying is, if you're looking for something to read, you are 99% likely to find something in here for you.
SCINTO: We're coming up on the end of the year and some people might be trying to hit their reading goals. If you had to recommend the last book someone should read this year, what would you pick?
LIMBONG: This is my spiel where it's like you should free yourself of the baggage of reading goals. You should just read for your own pleasure, because what happens is, you start cooking the books come December for something short to just like, hit those numbers. That being said, one really quick read is "Audition" by Katie Kitamora. It's kind of a thriller. It is kind of a puzzle of a novel, so it's not an easy to decipher book, but it is a fast read.
It starts with a woman. She's at lunch with this younger guy, and then in comes her husband, and all of a sudden, you're like, what's going on here? And it turns out, the younger guy thinks that the woman is his mother, and she isn't, but she might be. There's some weird psychological thriller aspects at play, where it's one of those books where halfway through, something happens and it sort of flips the narrative. And so you're kind of tempted to just read it again once it's done to fully understand what you just processed.
SCINTO: In doing Bookmarks, I've found people recommend books that help people escape something or understand something. Have you found that as well in working on Books We Love?
LIMBONG: I looked at the list of my personal picks at the end of the year, and it's a lot about people approaching middle age and feeling weird about it. It's a lot about, like, people like, struggling with the with the idea of parenthood, right? And it's like, wow, I'm really transparent. It's really a heart on your sleeve sort of year, based on my reading list, right?
For instance, one of the books I recommended was called "The Ten Year Affair" by Erin Somers. This is a book about a woman who meets a guy at a baby care class and she becomes infatuated with him. You could read this book in multiple ways. I think you can read it as from there, it goes into a parallel track, a parallel universe, sort of sort of deal, where on one side she chooses to cheat on her husband and go on this fling with this guy, and then the other path she doesn't. And the book sort of goes from there, and it's a really deep look at dissatisfaction, right? She lives in the burbs now. She's got two kids and a husband, and is feeling some sort of ennui about it all.
SCINTO: Books We Love seems to grow every year and it really resonates with people. Why do you think that is?
LIMBONG: I think why it resonates with people is because of its size. It's because there's so many books in it, and it's because it's a very democratic way of doing a year end list, right? Sometimes ... they're a very narrow view of what books the audience will like. And this, it's like if you're into reading at all, no matter what type of book you're into, you'll probably find something that you've read and loved. And so the chances are good that you'll find something else you'll love.
Laurence Roth, Professor of English, Susquehanna University
SCINTO: Tell us about your memoir, "Unpacking My Father's Bookstore."
ROTH: It's a book about growing up in my father's bookstore, J. Roth Bookseller of Fine and Scholarly Judaica. And as I say in the book, it was a microcosm of the LA Jewish community from 1966 to 1994 and it also reflected the acculturation of my father's generation of American Jews to the United States. So in thinking about how to write about that, I wanted to tell a history of the store, but I also needed to include myself in it. So I used memoir as a way of making myself a character, because I experienced so much of it, not only as a young child growing up in the store, but later, I actually worked in the store with my father. In fact, I was working for the store when ultimately it went out of business in 1994. It was a unique bookstore in Los Angeles. What made it so was that my dad carried the widest possible array of Jewish books and literature, not just religious books.
SCINTO: Books We Love dropped (last) week and you are on it. How did you find out about that and how did you feel?
ROTH: I listen to WVIA, and I had heard the NPR story that it had dropped, and I thought to myself, "Wow, that that's really cool. I want to check that out." So later on in the day, in my office, I had a moment, and I started looking through it, and I was floored to see that my book was on it. I just did a double take and then realized that it was one of the biggest honors that I could have imagined for my book. I felt just really, really fortunate that the book had had gotten the notice of Marcela (Davison) Aviles, who saw in it — I was really happy to see — exactly what I was trying to do. So I thought, there you go. Sometimes you write, you don't know who it's going to go to, and then you know things like this happen, and you realize my book has safely gotten to the people that I was hoping it would get to. It was a tremendous honor and a total surprise to find myself on that list.
SCINTO: Do you think you'll get many more readers because of the list?
ROTH: I certainly hope so. I know that I've gotten a lot of emails so far with people who have seen that. Of course, I'm an academic, so almost everyone I know listens to NPR and so that was great. But I also know that, you know, NPR is a really well-respected judge of books and culture, and that it means something for folks to see a book in there.
One of the things I hope that my book would remind people is how important independent bookstores really are to their communities. We often don't know how important they've been and how much they've contributed to our cultural and our social and our political life, until suddenly, one day, our favorite independent bookstore disappears. And then, even worse, oftentimes they are lost to history, and then no one ever remembers the good work that they did. So if my book is able to get people to go down to their local independent bookstore and shop there and appreciate all that they do, that would be a wonderful thing.
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You can find Books We Love through stories on wvia.org. And check out Bookmarks for all the books your neighbors and fellow WVIA listeners have been loving this year.
