I Read a Book a Week and Here are My 9 Favorites I’ve Read in 2026

I’ve been reading Gonzalez since she started her “Brooklyn, Everywhere” column in The Atlantic. Last Night in Brooklyn is her third novel, billed as a Gatsby-esque account of Brooklyn in the dawn of the Great Recession and on the brink of mass gentrification. Gonzalez is a native Brooklynite, and reading her work has helped me develop a deeper appreciation of my neighborhood as a recent transplant. I love the way she embraces the first-person POV in this new novel with protagonist Alicia Forten, whose distinct voice instantly transported me to a bygone era. Alicia narrates the summer of 2007, as she falls into the company of the wild and promising fashion designer La Garza and her own investment banking cousin, both of whom pull her into the glittering orbit of all money can buy—and the pain of what it cannot.

One of my favorite novels of all time is Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, a recounting of the Vietnam War which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In the same way that The Sympathizer offered the point of view of a Vietnamese person caught in the conflict, Chung’s newest follows Chinese-American journalist Ellie Chang whose military plane is downed in North Korea during the Korean War. She is saved by Emma, a North Korean woman who claims her as a long-lost daughter. Together, the pair journey to the southern border, hoping to reunite Emma with her actual daughter, and find their lives forever intertwined. As a Chinese-American, I was deeply moved by Ellie’s struggle to navigate her own identity, as well as enthralled by a minority POV on an oft-forgotten international conflict.

Sophie Gilbert is one of my favorite writers, and when she published Girl on Girl last year, I immediately added it to my TBR. I finally finished it earlier this year, and it was enlightening. Gilbert’s fascinating reporting explores how the integration of porn culture into mainstream media in the ‘90s has profoundly affected how we view women’s bodies today. After turning the last page, so much of my experience as a woman felt validated, and I recommend this book to everyone I know who is impacted by beauty culture.

This is Reese Witherspoon’s most current book club pick and the sophomore novel of journalist Alexandra Andrews. I have a known weakness for murder mysteries and love of art history; Andrews combines both in this sinister and propulsive plot. It centers on Clare Bast, a woman of working-class origins who marries into old money. Her half-finished art history Ph.D. languishes as she cares for her daughter and plays the part of devoted wife to her lawyer husband. That is, until she is implicated in a grisly murder at the home of a seductive art dealer. It has everything I want in a thriller: glamour, glitz, vibrant characters, a pressing question and a woman at the center of it all, trying to find herself.

As I mentioned, I’m a total nerd for art history and have followed historian Katy Hessel for quite some time. She’s the voice behind the popular Great Women Artists Instagram and podcast series that highlights the work of female artists, both living and dead, across mediums. In 2022, she published The History of Art Without Men, examining the forgotten women artists from the 1500s onward. I finally picked up a copy at my favorite used bookstore/café and have read a chapter every night. It’s such a joy to dive into the work of brilliant women, like Artemisia Gentileschi, Evelyn de Morgan, Katsushika Oi and Edmonia Lewis, who have otherwise been overlooked by the cannon.

In anticipation of Emerald Fennel’s Wuthering Heights adaptation staring Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie, which came out in February, I reread Emily Brontë’s gothic classic. It tells the story of an orphan named Heathcliff who falls in love with the daughter of his benefactor. A revenge saga ensues as he seeks to get back at two generations of families who wronged him. Considered “morally transgressive” in its time, Wuthering Heights is a complex look at race, social class dynamics, love, rage and abuse. It’s far more than “the greatest love story of all time” and has a depth I think not even Jane Austen could attain.

I’m a total nut for classic literature—I host a book club dedicated to the genre. And it was through said book club that I was introduced to Naomi Kanakia, the author of the popular newsletter Woman of Letters. Her new book is an extrapolation of her essays exploring how and why “the great books” can still be relevant to contemporary life, attempting to provide context while grappling with arguments against them. Kanakia is challenging me to examine my own love for the classics, and to find new ways of discussing them.

Rufi Thorpe published her hit novel in 2024 to critical acclaim. This year, Elle Fanning stars in the new AppleTV+ series based on the book, which I found both hilarious and packed with depth. Through the titular character, who finds herself pregnant with her English literature professor’s baby and turning to OnlyFans as a flexible income source, Thorpe examines family relationships, the taboos of sex work and the double standards women must face as mothers and breadwinners. (And after you’ve read the book, watch the show. It’s the only TV show I care about in 2026.)

The Committed is Nguyen’s 2021 follow-up to The Sympathizer, and my only regret is that I didn’t read it sooner. Whereas The Sympathizer followed the unnamed North Vietnamese spy as he attempted to further the Viet Cong’s agenda during the Vietnam War, The Committed ironically sees him turn into a capitalist as he enters the seedy drug-dealing scene of Paris in the ‘60s. Everything I love about Nguyen’s work is there: Razor-sharp commentary on politics, race, modern day imperialism and colonialism, dry humor and pithy observations about the paradoxes of Western thought and the lived realities of the people it exploits.