I’ve marked ones that really stood out to me with asterisks. I’m always open to recommendations; typically, I tend to enjoy contemplative short stories, rich world-building speculative fiction, and books that help me understand the world better. Let me know what you liked and why!

Currently reading

• Eating to Extinction, by Dan Saladino
• And Still the Waters Run, by Angie Debo
• The Labor of Care, by Valerie Francisco-Menchavez
• Land of Milk and Honey, by C Pam Zhang —

2024

1. The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett
2. *Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner
3. *A Place for Us, Fatima Farheen Mirza

2023

1. The Great Pretender, by Susannah Cahalan
2. The Sorrows of Others, by Ada Zhang
3. The Next Supper, by Corey Mintz
4. *Afterparties, by Anthony Veasna So
5. *Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin
6. The House of Doors, by Tan Twan Eng
7. How I Won a Nobel Prize, by Julius Taranto
8. Gold Diggers, by Sanjena Sathian
9. The Vegetarian, by Han Kang

2022

1. The Unity of Mistakes, by Marianne A. Paget
2. I’m Glad My Mom Died, by Jennette McCurdy
3. The Trauma of Everyday Life, by Mark Epstein
4. *Ballad of the Bullet, by Forrest Stuart

2021

1. *The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin
2. *The Obelisk Gate, by N. K. Jemisin
3. *The Stone Sky, by N. K. Jemisin
4. We Need New Names, by NoViolet Bulawayo
5. All You Can Ever Know, by Nicole Chung

2020

1. Know My Name, by Chanel Miller
2. *The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries
3. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong
4. The Customer-Driven Playbook, by Travis Lowdermilk and Jessica Rich
5. The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle
6. Dear Girls, by Ali Wong
7. *Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi
8. There There, by Tommy Orange
9. *The Culture Code, by Daniel Coyle
10. Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah
11. *Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
12. *Minor Feelings, by Cathy Park Hong
13. *Happy City, by Charles Montgomery
14. Catch and Kill, by Ronan Farrow
15. Whistleblower, by Susan Fowler
16. Give and Take, by Adam Grant
17. Who Says You’re Dead?, by Jacob Appel
18. *Fatal Invention, by Dorothy Roberts

2019

1. Fear, by Bob Woodward
2. Citizen, by Claudia Rankine
3. *Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson
4. The Opposite of Loneliness, by Marina Keegan
5. *Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin
6. Blue Nights, by Joan Didion
7. Hunger, by Roxane Gay
8. Becoming, by Michelle Obama
9. When, by Daniel Pink
10. The Scalpel and the Silver Bear, by Lori Arviso Alvord
11. Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou
12. Night Sky with Exit Wounds, by Ocean Vuong
13. Ego is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday
14. *Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri
15. Electric Arches, by Eve L. Ewing
16. Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri
17. All the Single Ladies, by Rebecca Traister
18. So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo
19. Educated, by Tara Westover
20. Exhalation, by Ted Chiang
21. *Severance, by Ling Ma
22. Covering, by Kenji Yoshino

2018

1. Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann
2. The Sellout, by Paul Beatty
3. Men Explain Things to Me, by Rebecca Solnit
4. *Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, by Beverly Daniel Tatum
5. *The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
6. *The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, by Ken Liu
7. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
8. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
9. Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck
10. Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck
11. The Pearl, by John Steinbeck
12. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
13. The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert
14. *Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi
15. Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight
16. We Were Eight Years in Power, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
17. *Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
18. One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez

2017

1. The Emperor of All Maladies, by Siddartha Mukherjee
2. *Trespassers?, by Willow Lung-Amam
3. The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande
4. *Americana, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
5. *The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman