The Story So Far . . .
Reading Reflections in 2026
Book covers of what I’ve read so far in 2026
For this week’s blog, I wanted to highlight a couple of books I read this year that have been stuck with me.
This year is the first time in a long time that I’ve felt like I am reading a variety of books for the genuine love of reading. When I was younger, series like The Percy Jackson books, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and the Twilight books kept me seated for hours! In college (both as a student and a professor), reading became work. Analysis served assignments, reflections served discussions, pacing served curricular needs. Though I loved crafting a course calendar and exploring how a reading might fulfill a curricular need, reading fiction for fun had not been a part of my life for the past 8 years or so. What brought me back was booktok’s obsession with “romantasy” (high fantasy settings with a central love story). I gave into the f.o.m.o. and found myself finishing a 500 page book about dragons and sex in a week. As many gripes as I may have with those books, I owe them a huge debt for bringing me back to the pages.
Maybe I don’t have much to add to the conversation. I’m certainly no literary critic, and generally enjoy almost everything I read. But, I want to move through the world thoughtfully, and I want to highlight two specific books this year that have helped me to do this.
I’ll try to keep things relatively spoiler free.
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
This might be one of my favorite books of all time. There’s still time to go, but I can’t imagine this book leaving me any time soon. This book is intentionally vague about the circumstances that led this group of women to be trapped. There are many questions about how they got there, how the world got there, how it’s being upheld, and why? While sparking numerous questions about this eerie world, the author makes little attempt to clarify how we got to page 1. Instead, the core of this story is the relationship of the women who carry some memories of their lives before being trapped, and the single young girl who has only ever known what it is to be trapped. Conflict arises as the young girl is desperate to learn while the older women are desperate to forget. This book is pretty dark, sometimes gruesome, and feels extremely real. Harpman’s protrayal of growing old, of dying, of shifting realtionships, of learning and discovery feel deelpy grounded despite the unfathomable fictional setting. I felt heavy upon setting this book down. In those 200 pages, I cried, I had to stop to breathe slowly, I felt frustrated with the characters and the author, and I conjured 1,000 attempts at making sense of the world in which these women exist. This book left me staring at a blank wall for a while after it was over, and is something I will certainly be revisiting in the near future.
Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller
Why Fish Dont’ Boy howdy was this unexpected! I love popular science (ologies and the weirdest thing I learned this week have been longstanding favorite podcasts of mine), and thought that I was going to have a lovely time learning about taxonomy, ichthyology, and a kooky scientist. What I got instead was something that was an absolute gut punch. As the author introduces David Starr Jordan, a famous taxonomist responsible for discovering hundreds of fish species, she also weaves in elements of her personal life. At first, this seems out of place, but as the story progresses, you learn more about Jordan’s uhmm … “complicated” legacy (I won’t share more at the risk of spoiling), and how his place in Miller’s life leads to meaningful and insightful revalations. As we learn about David Starr Jordan’s work, we also slowly start to learn about Lulu Miller’s family, her struggles with depression, and how she is grappling with her work. At first, Jordan seems like a guiding light. Someone who’s persistence in the face of adversity seems admirable. But, as the story of his life unfolds it becomes, well … I’ll again say complicated at the risk of reducing the severity of his actions. The thing I love most about this book is Miller’s careful approach to the combined biogrpahy and autobiography. It is one of the only times I’ve read a book and actually felt as if the author and I were on the journey of learning together, like we were on the same page (get it … book joke). Lulu Miller’s guides us through the process of grappling with our changing feelings toward the main character. The unraveling happens to us both, yet we come out of this undertsanding our humanity.
I read this AND listened to the audiobook. The audiobook is read by Lulu Miller and gave me better understanding of her perspective by hearing her tone of voice as she discussed her work and family. The audiobook has a very sweet surprise at the end, and don’t worry, you do actually learn why fish don’t exist.
Other books I’ve read this year include:
Butter by Asako Yuzuki
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
The Rainfall Market by You Yeong-Gwang
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
How Carrots Won the Trojan War by Rebecca Rupp
My Husband’s Wife by Alice Feeney
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
My current reads are:
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (audiobook)
Fuzz by Mary Roach
I track my past, present, and future reading using the app StoryGraph. If you’re on the app, let’s connect here!
What’s coming next …
… TBD
Alex
