Book #1 of 2026. I probably would’ve never found this book, but I was going to take a writing class and it was one of the assigned readings so I bought it and read it, and then the class was canceled. But the book ended up being good. The story of a teenage Jehovah’s Witness and his friends and family set in the San Francisco Bay Area. This was published in 2010, so all of the locations in the story took me back to my days in the Bay Area. I really knew nothing about JW, so that part of the story was interesting. I think anyone who has been involved with any kind of fundamentalist religion might enjoy this book. A solid 
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just finished Booker Prize winner Flesh.
very literary, very spare, about a man who gets buffeted through life from security guard to multimillionaire and back again, the point being fate is going to take you where it will. Bleak but it lands.
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So what has everyone been reading? I took a playwriting class so read a number of plays and didn’t have a lot of time for anything else. Less work travel (which is where I get big chunks of time to read).
Aside from the above book, I’ve read:
POETRY:
Every Day We Get More Illegal by Juan Felipe Herrera
NONFICTION:
The Way of Excellence: A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a Chaotic World by Brad Stulberg (read for our work book group)
FICTION:
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan - short (novella) Irish like in the 1980s at Christmas
Coded Justice by Stacey Abrams - thriller - better than I expected. Book Club pick
PLAYS:
Our Town by Thornton Wilder
Speed-the-Plow by David Mamet
Amadeus by Peter Shaffer
Top Girls by Caryl Churchill
The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by August Wilson
Wit by Margaret Edson
Some reading ideas here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/books/summer-reading-bucket-list.html?unlocked_article_code=1.kVA.mcsX.yqiT4zcGS6is&smid=url-share
Finished This Is Running by Raziq Rauf last week; highly recommended as is his Substack
Currently reading The Lucky Ride by Yasushi Kitagawa, which I picked up randomly from the New Arrivals shelf at the Library. The tag on the back, where the ISBN number is, says “FICTION/Magical Realism” which fits in with other Japanese authors I’ve read: a bunch of Murakami, Before The Coffee Gets Cold/Tales From The Cafe by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
I also have Get The Picture by Bianca Bosker on my table, subtitled “a mind-bending journey among the inspired artists and obsessive art fiends who taught me how to see”
Listening to American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins.
It’s the story of a woman and her kid making the perilous journey North through Mexico after her entire family is slaughtered by a cartel.
Very depressing in parts of it. Brings in to focus the helplessness of people who choose to migrate to El Norte.
Three more books finished.
Headshot is a novel about young female boxers. I’m mixed on it. I wasn’t enamored with the omniscient narrator. The writing was back-and-forth punchy like an actual boxing match, but all of the boxers had a sameness about them. Three stars.
A Woman Of No Importance was one of the book club picks. I never have known about this book if not for that. An American woman who was an amputee, became one of the most important people in the French resistance during World War II. This would make a terrific movie or miniseries. Four stars.
London Falling is incredible. Patrick Radden Keefe is one of my favorite authors and he writes non-fiction like a novel. I saw him speak here at one of our independent bookstores and he said he found out about the story when he was in London filming Say Nothing. One day a guy who was visiting the set met him and asked, “Aren’t you a journalist? I might have a story for you.’ And then proceeded to tell him about his friends who had lost a son, seemingly by suicide, but that was never confirmed, and there were too many questions still lingering. He met the parents and wrote an article for The New Yorker. This book came out of that article. Five stars for sure.
I finished this last month. It was a good read for sure.
I’m re-reading some of my bookshelf to see how it lands years (sometimes decades) after the first time. Right now I’m in the middle of a copy of The Great Gatsby that was a birthday present my family got for me when we visited Shakespeare & Co on vacation a couple weeks ago. Before that it was The English Patient. Both have held up well.
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I’m going to read last ndo falling. I read the new Yorker article and it’s very much my gaff so that’s up soon
Just finished theo bakers how to rule the world
It was very very good. It’s difficult to overstate how good it was
The other amazing book of my summer holiday has been the escape. Pippa York and David Walsh
Pippa Yorke (formerly Robert Millar) was in my earliest introductions to the tour. A climber, an absolute savage going uphill and a formative memory. The book with David Walsh is fascinating. They should to a travelogue show. I think I learnt more about “trans” from this, than anything else. It’s both thoroughly entertaining and informative
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What?! I never heard anything about her transition. I definitely remember him in the Tour.
It’s amazing
Book #17 for the year. 
This is the true story of Argentinian grandmothers who fought to find their stolen grandchildren, some searching 30 or 40 or more years. Very extensively, researched and documented, it shows the importance of science and scientific research. And also the power of the maternal bond. I knew very little about Argentina‘s political history or the fact approximately 30,000 people were “disappeared” and babies stolen. Very much recommended.
Re-read Anna Karenina, again.
To Kill a Mockingbird. Great Gatsby. Now reading Little Dorrit and The Scarlet Letter.
Nonfiction just scientific journals and papers this year. I like aviation themed nonfiction (Beryl Markham, Ernest Gann, for example, Apollo program biographies) but so far none this year. 
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rereading name of the rose. Incredible that this was a No 1 NYT bestseller, an entire chapter deep diving on Franciscan heretics
