All the Books I Read in 2026
(Ordinarily I don’t keep a record like this, but Padma Viswanathan was curious to see the complete field out of which my top ten would eventually emerge, so here it is. I’ve arranged these in reading order.)
Lobster by Guillaume Lecasble
Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story by Julia Wertz
Shyness and Dignity by Dag Solstad
Mice 1961 by Stacey Levine
Thorpe by Mary Dutton
Sad Planets by Dominic Pettman and Eugene Thacker
Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson [reread]
This’ll Make Things Easier by Attila Veres
Robot Artists & Black Swans: The Italian Fantascienza Stories by Bruce Sterling
Collision with Chronos by Barrington J. Bayley
The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail
Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems by Larry Levis
Vigil by George Saunders
Broken Utopia by Ryan Boudinot
A Certain Young Man by Raeden Richardson [unpublished]
Rumors of Peace by Hope Coulter
Every UK Hit Single 1980 by Richard West
The End Times by Benjamin Percy
Brawler: Stories by Lauren Groff
Dreams That Burn in the Night by Craig Strete
Inter Ice Age 4 by Kōbō Abe
Wake Now in the Fire: A Story of Censorship, Action, Love, and Hope by Jarrett Dapier and AJ Dungo
Annihilation for Beginners by Charlie J. Stephens
About, Above, Around: 50 Prepositions by Mark Mayer
The Mariner: A Static Drama in One Act by Fernando Pessoa
Social Fiction by Chantal Montellier
Three Six Five: Prompts, Acts, Divinations (an Inexhaustible Compendium for Writing) by Lucy Ives
Watch and Wonder: Birding as a Spiritual Practice by Ragan Sutterfield
The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts by Kim Fu
Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez
Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe
A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
Dengue Boy by Michel Nieva
Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
City of Rats by Copi
The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly
Authority: Essays by Andrea Long Chu
Bury Me Already (It's Nice Down Here): Comics on Pregnancy and Parenthood by Julia Wertz
On the Calculation of Volume, Book IV by Solvej Balle
Creased Comics by Brad Neely
City on Fire by Don Winslow
Fractals by Eli Cranor [unpublished]
The Illuminated Man: Life, Death and the Worlds of J.G. Ballard by Christopher Priest and Nina Allan
H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life by Michel Houellebecq
Fourteen Ways of Looking by Erin Vincent
Counter-Clock World by Philip K. Dick
House of Geishas by Ana Maria Shua
Masters of Sleep and Other Stories by Zhu Yue
Canon by Paige Lewis
Yotsuba&! 16 by Kiyohiko Azuma
Grave Goods by Fernando Iwasaki
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
The Disappearing Act by Maria Stepanova
Angel Down by Daniel Kraus
My Death by Lisa Tuttle
The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin [reread]
The Story, Issue 1, edited by Chris Harrigan
The Last Taxi Driver by Lee Durkee
The Dog Meows, the Cat Barks by Eka Kurniawan
Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View by Edward McPherson
The Empires of J. G. Ballard: An Imagined Geography by David Ian Paddy