Listen (:39)
June 29, 2026
I’m still of the mind that reaching the halfway point of the year is a good time to reflect on the books that have influenced, shaped, and highlighted the past twenty-six weeks. This is my third year compiling a reading list, and this year I stopped writing a short, one-sentence micro-review that usually served as a summary. It was an admittedly fun challenge to distill someone’s work into one sentence, but, in too many cases, it limited the scope and minimized its impact on me as a reader and on the other books sharing shelf space. This rang particularly true for new releases, which were more numerous this time around. The list below is presented in reading order from January 1 to June 29, 2026.
1. Bread of Angels by Patti Smith
2. The Awakenings and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin
3. The Names by Florence Knapp
4. Twelve Churches by Fergus Butler-Gallie
5. Every Third Thought by John Barth
6. Parade by Rachel Cusk
7. Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro
8. What is Otherwise Infinite by Bianca Stone
9. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
10. Hotel Oblivion by Cynthia Cruz
11. Departure(s) by Julian Barnes
12. Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
13. The Near and Distant World by Bianca Stone
14. Vigil by George Saunders
15. Black in Blue by Imani Perry
16. Getting to Reparations by Dorothy A. Brown
17. Junglekeeper by Paul Rosalie
18. Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
19. Blank Space by W. David Marx
20. Cape Fever by Nadia Davis
21. The Boundless Deep by Richard Holmes
22. The Copyrighter by Daniel Poppick
23. On Freedom by Timothy Snyder
24. Hemlock by Melissa Faliveno
25. Letters From the Dead by Isabella Valeri
26. The Deserters by Mathias Énard
27. The Book of Records by Madeline Thien
28. Scorched Earth by Tiana Clark
29. Simpatico by Sam Shepherd
30. The Wax Child by Diamond Forde
31. The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Voung
32. A Long, Long Way by Sebastian Barry
33. The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby by Tom Wolfe
34. Sonnets for a Missing Key (and some others) by Percival Everett
35. Every One Still Here by Liadin Ni Chuinn
36. The Infamous Gilberts by Angela Tomaski
37. Solar Bones by Mike McCormack
38. Little Constructions by Anna Burns
39. The News From Dublin by Colm Tóibín
40. One Sun Only by Camille Bordas
41. The Sea by John Banville
42. Suit or a Suitcase by Maggie Smith
43. Transcription by Ben Lerner
44. Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry by Ana Limon
45. My Dear You: Stories by Rachael Khong
46. London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
47. Son of Nobody by Yann Martel
48. Love Thy Stranger by Bart Ehrman
49. The Burning Earth by Sunil Amrith
50. Night Owl by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
51. Dear Writer by Maggie Smith
52. Philadelphia: A Narrative History by Paul Kahan
53. Copenhagen by Michael Frayn
54. Samuel Beckett is Closed by Michael Coffey
55. Certainty by John Twelve Hawks
56. Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found by Andrew Graham-Dixon
57. Horses by Jake Skeets
58. The Witch by Marie NDiaye
59. Waterline by Aram Mrjoian
60. First Love by Gwendoline Riley
61. Witches by Steven Veerapen
62. Be Easy by Adrain Matejka
63. A World Appears by Michael Pollan
64. True Colors by Kory Stamper
65. New Poets of Native Nations, edited by Heid E. Erdich
66. Underlake by Erin L. McCoy
67. America, A Love Story by Camille T. Dungy
68. Questions 27 and 28 by Karen Tei Yamashita
69. The Republic of Memory by Mahmoud El Sayed
70. This is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin
71. Land by Maggie O’Farrell
72. Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World by Victoria Johnson
73. Æthelstan: The First King of England by Sarah Foot
74. Sublimation by J. Isabel Kim
75. The Waves by Virginia Woolf
76. The Old Waves: A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane
77. Collected Poetry and Prose by Wallace Stevens
78. Wellwater by Karen Solie
79. Burn Me Back by Peggy Robles-Alvarado
80. The Palm House by Gwendolyn Riley
81. This Vast Enterprise by Craig Fehrman