Hello, I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the book review

podcast. It's a long holiday weekend here in the United States, and hopefully you're using some of

that time to catch up on some of this year's best books. If you need help with that, please find our 100 notable books of 2024 list.

One very notable book is James by Percival Everett.

This retelling of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn just won the top prize at the National Book Awards.

And so, we're bringing you our book club episode from earlier this year, in which host

MJ Franklin discusses James with book review editors, Greg Coles, and Jumanica Tea.

In this time of Thanksgiving, we remain grateful to all of you for continuing to listen to our show.

Enjoy the conversation.

Hello and welcome to another book club episode of the book review podcast. I'm M.J. Franklin.

I'm an editor here at the New York Times book review. For our May book club selection,

we're talking about Percival Everett's latest novel James. And joining me to discuss it are two

wonderful colleagues. First up, a returning voice you know and love, Jumana Kativ. Jumana, welcome.

Thanks for having me, MJ. Jumana, you were last year for our Erescia episode, I believe, and I remember you mentioned

you could talk about Percival Everett's work all day. So for this episode, it only felt

fitting to have you back. Thank you. It's nice to be taken so literally.

The book for you podcast, where we take everything literally and literarily.

An institutional memory is long.

Well, thank you for coming back. And also with us is Greg Coles. Welcome, Greg. Thank you,

MJ. Pleasure to be here. Greg, I believe you were last on the show for our Best of 2020 episode where you spoke so eloquently about the fraud. So listeners, if you haven't listened

to that, go check that out. I also want to shout out, you wrote a few weeks ago a beautiful

appraisal of Alice Monroe after her death. And listeners, go spend time with that. It's incredible.

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