The journalist, novelist and cultural critic Chuck Klosterman is best known for writing about rock music and pop culture in astute essay collections like “The Nineties,” “X” and “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs.” But Klosterman got his start in college as a sports journalist, and with his new book, “Football,” he has finally devoted an entire collection to the sport that has fundamentally shaped him alongside American society at large.

“I’ve unconsciously been thinking about football for most of my life,” Klosterman tells host Gilbert Cruz on this week’s episode. “I decided at some point, I do want to write a book about sports. You know, I’d always mentioned sports here and there in the culture writing I had done, or the kind of conventional pop culture writing I’d done, but I wanted to do a real sports book. And initially my idea was it would be about basketball — but over time it became very clear to me it had to be about football, for a variety of reasons. … It seemed as though if you’re going to do a sports book, particularly as it relates to society, there is only one choice in the United States.”

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A new year means new books are on the way! So many new books. On this week’s episode, host Gilbert Cruz talks with fellow Book Review editors Joumana Khatib and MJ Franklin about the upcoming fiction and nonfiction titles they’re most anticipating between now and April.

Here are the books discussed in this week’s episode:

• “Vigil,” by George Saunders
• “Where the Serpent Lives,” by Daniyal Mueenuddin
• “Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings and the Rebirth of White Rage,” by Heather Ann Thompson
• “Five Bullets,” by Elliot Williams
• “Lost Lambs,” by Madeline Cash
• ”Half His Age,” by Jennette McCurdy
• “A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness,” by Michael Pollan
• “On Morrison,” by Namwali Serpell
• “Language as Liberation: Reflections on the American Canon,” by Toni Morrison
• “Clutch,” by Emily Nemens
• “Murder Bimbo,” by Rebecca Novack
• “Kin,” by Tayari Jones
• “Cave Mountain: A Disappearance and a Reckoning in the Ozarks,” by Benjamin Hale
• “Lake Effect,” by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
• “Now I Surrender,” by Alvaro Enrigue
• “The Keeper,” by Tana French

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.