Books I’m Reading in 2026 — A Running List

For more than five years, I’ve published a retrospective each January listing all the books I read during the previous year. For 2026, I decided to try something different. Instead of waiting until the end of the year, I’m keeping a running list that I update as I finish each book.

Rather than simply listing titles, I’m including a sentence or two about each one. My hope is that these brief notes will be helpful to anyone looking for something good to read.

If you have books to suggest, please leave them in the comments. I’m always looking for ideas—especially ones that lead me to books I might not have discovered on my own.

1. The Power of One, Bryce Courtenay

   A coming of age story of a South African boy intent on becoming a boxing champion and the major influences and mentors in his life. A must read!

2. Educated, Tara Westover

   Memoir of a backwoods Mormon who left home for an education. Focuses on her complicated relationship with her family. Fascinating!

3. King of Ashes, S. A. Cosby

   A screwed up man lets a drug deal go south. Financially savvy brother swoops in to save him. Sister runs the family crematorium because gang put the Dad in a coma. They all get tied up in gang violence and murder. Violent, but engaging.

4. Speaking from Among the Bones, Alan Bradley

   Book five in the Flavia de Luce mystery series. The precosious 11-year-old solves the murder of the local Church organist, whose body was found when they unearthed the remains of the Church patron, Saint Tancred. This series is one of my guilty pleasures.

5. Slow Horses, by Mick Herron

   For various indiscretions—real or manufactured—spies from the Service are exiled to Slough House, a dumping ground for damaged careers. There they are relegated to boring, humiliating work and quietly forgotten. In the first book, Slough House finds itself maneuvered into taking the blame for a kidnapping engineered from within the Service. There are a lot of characters to keep track of, but given there are follow-on novels the investment of time will pay off.

6. Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman, Patrick Hutchison

   The author chronicles his adventures fixing up a cabin in the Pacific Northwest. With friends, perseverance, and many missteps he gradually transforms from completely clueless to competent craftsman. I love reading books set in the Pacific Northwest where I lived for many years.

7. Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books, by Aaron Lansky.

   An amazing, fascinating, and sometimes humorous story of how one man’s passion led to the creation of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA. My book club chose this one. I thought it might be boring but I couldn't put it down! I want to learn Yiddish.

8. In the Bleak Midwinter, by Julia Spencer-Fleming.

   The first in a murder mystery series where a female Episcopal priest teams up with a local police detective to solve two related murders. It takes place in upstate New York, which is what attracted me to the story because I was raised in Albany. I look forward to reading another in this series. The priest is an ex-army helicopter pilot, so she has survival skills that come in handy.

9. Anxious People, by Frederik Backman

   A bungled bank robbery leads to an unexpected hostage situation at an apartment open house. Told with humor and compassion, the story jumps through time as the author slowly reveals the lives and struggles of each character.

10. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

    Set in a future where clones are created to provide organ donations, the story follows three students raised at a mysterious boarding school where they are treated humanely, unlike most clones. We follow Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy from childhood to adulthood as they gradually discover the true purpose of their lives.

11. The Sisters, by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

    A man reflects on his life through his long, complicated fascination with three sisters whose presence shapes his sense of identity, memory, and possibility. Written in a nonlinear style that is often captivating and sometimes tedious.

12. Heartwood, by Amity Gaige

    When a woman vanishes while hiking alone, the search for her becomes a multi-voiced story told through rescuers, witnesses, and the pages of her own journal. Full of twists and shifting perspectives, Heartwood turns into less a story about the missing hiker herself than about the people drawn into the search, making it an unexpectedly gripping page-turner.

13. Sarah’s Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay

    While investigating a story for a French publication, a woman unearths a hidden family secret whose painful legacy divides those around her, even as it illuminates her own life with new purpose and understanding.

14. A Fountain Filled with Blood, Julia Spencer-Fleming
The second installment in the Reverend Clare Fergusson and Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne series, this mystery unfolds in a quiet upstate New York town where a proposed spa resort stirs old tensions—and new violence. As bodies surface and secrets seep through the community, Clare and Russ must navigate faith, duty, and desire to uncover a truth far darker than anyone expected.

15. Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, Mary Wollesncraft Shelley

    The original story is strikingly different from the films it inspired. The creation of the creature happens almost “offstage,” described in only a sentence or two. Instead, the novel turns its gaze toward loneliness and isolation, the cruelty of judging a being by appearance, and the selfishness and moral failure of Victor Frankenstein.

16. Orbital, Samantha Harvey

    A lyrical novel set aboard the space station, told through the lives of its inhabitants as they witness Earth’s breathtaking beauty and reflect on life, wonder, and the peculiar demands of living in orbit. Its prose is luminous and contemplative. Yet for all its grandeur, the book confirmed for me that my own happiness belongs not in weightlessness, but with two feet planted firmly on the ground.

17. Out of the Deep I Cry, Julia Spencer-Fleming

    In this compelling mystery, Reverend Clare Fergusson and Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne investigate the disappearance of a local physician, uncovering long-buried secrets along the way. Amid the suspense, the simmering and forbidden attraction between the Chief and the Reverend briefly surfaces when the two are trapped together in a flooding cellar. In this third book of the series, I wonder if the Reverend's Episcopalian parish will ever fire her for detecting more than preaching!

18. The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester

    The remarkable true story of a brilliant but troubled American doctor, confined to an asylum for murder, who became one of the most prolific contributors to the first Oxford English Dictionary, forging an extraordinary partnership with its chief editor from behind locked doors.

19. The Way of Wanderlust, Don George

    A rich collection of travel essays gathered over forty years, with Don George providing personal introductions that reveal the circumstances, inspirations, and serendipity behind each journey.

20. Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan

    An epic novel that follows Anna Kerrigan from childhood to adulthood during the World War II era. Infused with mob intrigue, love, hope, corruption, and ambition, the story traces Anna’s journey from parts inspector to diver in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where the war opens doors previously closed to women.

21. The Evolutionist, Avi Sirlin

    Historical fiction based on the life of Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently developed the theory of evolution by natural selection alongside Charles Darwin. Set amid Wallace’s explorations in Indonesia, the novel also highlights his discovery of the dramatic differences in species between neighboring islands, a boundary now known as the Wallace Line.

22. The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt

    The Goldfinch is an unconventional coming-of-age novel in which two damaged young men (Theo and Boris) navigate trauma, loss, beauty, addiction, and survival in very different ways before their lives converge again in adulthood. Like Theo himself, the reader can feel lost while moving through the novel’s long corridors of memory and obsession, but by the end the story reveals itself as deeply philosophical, asking how art, friendship, and human connection help us endure suffering and make meaning from chaotic lives.

23. Down the River unto the Sea, Walter Mosley

    A gripping crime novel featuring Joe King Oliver, a former NYPD detective whose career was destroyed more than a decade earlier by a calculated frame-up. Now working as a private investigator, Joe is drawn into two intertwined cases: uncovering the truth behind his own downfall and defending a death-row inmate accused of murdering two police officers, a man who may also have been framed.

24. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

    Hemingway’s sparse writing style made me feel as though I were traveling alongside Jake and his friends from Paris to Spain, drinking, cavorting, fishing, watching bullfights, and navigating the undercurrents of jealousy, longing, and frustration that ripple through the group, much of it centered on the free-spirited Brett. Aimlessness permeates the novel. The group’s prodigious drinking appears, on the surface, to be socializing, but ultimately serves as a means of avoiding their personal troubles and, for some, dulling the lingering wounds of World War I.

25. Becoming Trader Joe, Joe Coulombe and Patty Civalleri.

    Perhaps my least favorite book I’ve read this century. While Joe Coulombe’s creation of Trader Joe’s is undeniably an interesting story, the book itself is poorly written and suffers from a lack of structure and organization. Rather than presenting a clear narrative, Coulombe relies on a collection of anecdotes and cutesy labels, such as “Mac the Knife,” to describe phases of the business and aspects of his customer base. Given that Mac the Knife is a serial killer, I found the metaphor more baffling than illuminating. The book reads less like a finished memoir and more like an early draft. A skilled developmental editor could have helped shape the material into a coherent and engaging story. As it stands, the book feels unfocused and repetitive, with interesting ideas buried beneath uneven execution.

    I finished it only because it was a book club selection. Otherwise, I would have set it aside long before reaching the final page. Unless you’re a devoted Trader Joe’s enthusiast, I’d recommend spending your reading time elsewhere.

26. Telephone, Percival Everett

    I was three-quarters of the way through the book when I learned Everett created three versions, each with a different ending. While the three storylines in the book are interesting, I expected the stories to come together in the end, and that the storyline of his ill daughter would be resolved. Instead, the book abruptly without resolution on any of the storylines. The two other endings (which I found on the internet) were much more satisfying.