Books That Make Our Critics Laugh
The Book Review29 Maalis 2024

Books That Make Our Critics Laugh

Earlier this month, the Book Review’s staff critics — Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai — released a list of 22 novels they have found reliably funny since Joseph Heller’s landmark comic novel “Catch-22” came out in 1961. On this week’s episode, they tell Gilbert Cruz why “Catch-22” was their starting point, and explain a bit about their process: how they think about humor, how they made their choices, what books they left off and what books led to fights along the way. (“American Psycho” turns out to be as contentious now as it was when it was first published.)

“There are only a very few number of books in my lifetime that have made me laugh out loud,” Jacobs says. “And some of them no longer make me laugh out loud, because the thing about humor is it’s like this giant shifting cloud, this shape-shifting thing that changes over the course of our lives and also the life of the culture.”

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(600)

Why We Can’t Resist a Great Bookstore

Why We Can’t Resist a Great Bookstore

What is it about a bookstore? You walk in planning to browse for a few minutes, and somehow an hour later you’re still wandering the stacks with an armful of books you can’t seem to put down. For this...

21 Elo 26min

This Reporter Can Tell Us What Nuclear Apocalypse Looks Like (Encore)

This Reporter Can Tell Us What Nuclear Apocalypse Looks Like (Encore)

Imagine, if you will, that for unknown reasons North Korea has just launched a nuclear bomb at the United States. What happens next? The journalist Annie Jacobsen has imagined exactly that, and spent ...

14 Elo 45min

Let’s Talk About the 50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century

Let’s Talk About the 50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century

What are the best thrillers published since 2000? That was the question that the team at The New York Times’s Book Review posed to hundreds of writers of every kind of crime fiction, from legal thrill...

5 Elo 51min

Book Club: Let’s Talk About ‘John of John’

Book Club: Let’s Talk About ‘John of John’

Early in Douglas Stuart’s new novel, “John of John,” the Booker Prize-winning author describes a peculiar irony: “What skinned him was that the closer he got to home, the more lost he felt.” It’s a pa...

1 Elo 55min

Let’s Talk About the Best Books of the Year (So Far)

Let’s Talk About the Best Books of the Year (So Far)

The editors at The New York Times Book Review spend almost the entire year discussing, debating and sometimes arguing about the year’s best books. We’re halfway through 2026, which means it’s time for...

24 Heinä 39min

Sophie Elmhirst on the True Story of a Shipwrecked Couple

Sophie Elmhirst on the True Story of a Shipwrecked Couple

Today we want to bring back an episode from our archives.  It’s about a book that has real beach read vibes. There’s a lot of water. It’s a relationship drama. And it’s also a daring story of survival...

17 Heinä 31min

This Author Says You Shouldn’t Be Intimidated by ‘The Odyssey’

This Author Says You Shouldn’t Be Intimidated by ‘The Odyssey’

If you can’t tell your Eurylochus from your Telemachus, fear not: Your primer on “The Odyssey” is here, just in time for Christopher Nolan’s new film adaptation of the 3,000-year-old epic. Madeline Mi...

10 Heinä 43min

Jill Lepore on What to Read This Fourth of July

Jill Lepore on What to Read This Fourth of July

The United States is celebrating its 250th birthday this summer, giving Americans a chance to reflect on the nation’s past and imagine its future. Who better to help us make sense of this moment than ...

3 Heinä 52min

Suosittua kategoriassa Vapaa-aika

nikotellen
antin-matka
ihan-oikeesti
sita
everypodi
unicast
the-harlin-show
tahtitehdas
mutsiputki
rss-viihde-media
oral-sex
kaikkea-hyvaa
20-30-40-podcast
mysteeripodcast
terkuin-jenna
kasper-ja-mikko
rss-ropettajainhuone
rss-nikotellen
himocast
junnut-pelissa