Dustin White

9. Vigil - George Saunders

I’ll confess to being a Saunders fanboy and also that I found this to be perhaps his weakest effort. It’s a slim book but I struggled to get engaged with it. It makes you think, like all Saunders does, but won’t stick with me

8. What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through The Fire - Charles Bukowski

It’s Bukowski, there are poems of profound depth and feeling, and poems which make you think maybe he’s not a great person

7. Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream - Megan Greenwell

Hard to read this and not feel like we are all screwed and nobody with any power has any interest in preventing it from happening

6. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams

Structuring society in a way that doesn’t allow gay folks to be gay hurts them and everyone else surrounding them.

5. The Nenoquich - Henry Bean

“Is it that I don’t love her, or that I can’t stand her loving me?”

A seducer - out of boredom, curiosity - breaks up a marriage just to see if he can, causing immense pain and disaster. Well written but man does the narrator suck.

4. The Deeper the Water, the Uglier the Fish - Katya Apekina

Sometimes you can’t rely on the people who should have your best interests at heart to protect you. Who can you rely on and how do you forge a life anyways?

3. Television - Lauren Rothery

Some of the characters are deeply unlikeable, which made this one tough at times, but a lot of people are inherently unlikeable and why shouldn’t there be books about them, too?

2. The Director - Daniel Kehlmann

A novel that asks how you’d capitulate, what values you’d sacrifice to survive and make art in the face of murderous authoritarianism feels regrettably timely and prescient

Lord if you ever need to rehearse, I’d love to help

The “prosecute the former regime at every level” candidate has my vote in 2028.

1. Angel Down - Daniel Kraus

Was scared to start this one since it is one sentence, which seems gimmicky, but it’s propulsive and imminently readable, you pause not because of the lack of periods but to contemplate the horror and grotesqueries of war

My 2026 reading thread:

57. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny - Kiran Desai

56. The Sisters - Jonas Hassen Khemiri

55. Stone Yard Devotional - Charlotte Wood

54. 10:04 - Ben Lerner

53. Flesh - David Szalay

Reading goal accomplished 🥰🥰🥰

52. I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman

51. Vineland - Thomas Pynchon

Cat

50. The Ice Storm - Rick Moody

49. Intermezzo - Sally Rooney

48. McGlue - Ottessa Moshfegh

47. Discontent - Beatriz Serrano

46. The Portable Dorothy Parker - Dorothy Parker

45. Swamplandia! - Karen Russell

44. White Teeth - Zadie Smith

43. Whites - Mark Doten