I usually do an end-of-the-year reading roundup, and last year I didn't because I wasn't posting. So I thought I might do it belatedly, but then I looked over the list of books I read last year and realized there really weren't that many great books.
I could whine about The Decline of Readable Literary Fiction, but honestly I think it's more of a me-problem than a problem with contemporary authors. I am so discouraged and downhearted about the world these days that I don't think I give anything a fair chance. I should probably work on that.
One major change in my so-called reading life has been that twenty-five or thirty years ago, I don't think I read any non-fiction at all. Maybe the occasional self-help book (I remember The Artist's Way and Eat Pray Love(meh)), but nothing else.
That has gradually been changing, until this year most of my 5-star reads are nonfiction (I still read mostly fiction, but the books I really enjoyed this year were mostly non-fiction).
I don't know that I have a good explanation for why or how that happened. Maybe part of it is the rise in narrative non-fiction-- books that are about science or history but are told like a story. Part of it is that I find it harder and harder to find fiction that I want to read. My reading tastes haven't kept up with the times.
So instead of listing the books I gave five stars (which is how I usually do it), I will just tell you the ones that stood out to me when I scanned down the list. Some of them I didn't even "like," but these are the ones I'm still thinking about.
Fiction:
Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su
Dayswork by Jennifer Habel and Chris Bachelder
Playground by Richard Powers
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
All Fours by Miranda July
Non-Fiction
Challenger by Adam Higginbotham
Shakespeare: the Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench
The Emperor of All Maladies (I know, it's old)
Source Code by Bill Gates
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
In My Time of Dying by Sebastian Junger
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
The book I've had the most luck recommending to people is The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. People love that book. I liked it, didn't love it, but I re-read it with my spouse a couple of weeks ago and it really is a good story. I probably enjoyed it more the second time through.
So that's it. I will go back to posting occasional reviews of books I read soon, because I've read some books in 2026 that I've been thinking about lots. Let me know if you have recommendations for me.
Related posts:
2022 Reading Wrap-up (the second half of that one is about writing reviews on Goodreads)
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