Truth be told, I was getting a bit nervous as the year was progressing along without any books rising to the top, setting themselves apart from all the others. Perhaps it’s like anything else, the more you consume, the less special. Until the month of May when one of my favorite authors, Fredrik Backman released My Friends. And the following month, another favorite author, Wally Lamb, who writes a masterpiece every decade, maybe less, released The River Is Waiting. Without a doubt, whatever these two men write is an instant purchase. I don’t need to read the back cover or listen to a summary, because they are both epic storytellers and always have a spot on my bookshelves or digital library. And then, September introduced me to the writing of Patrick Ryan by way of Buckeye, and just like that, another novelist has captured my interest.

1. The Let Them Theory, Mel Robbins 
2. If You’re In My Office, It’s Already Too Late, James J. Sexton, Esq.
3. Babel, R.F. Kuang
4. Sorry For The Inconvenience: A Memoir, Farha Naz Rishi
5. The Fall Risk: A Short Story, Abby Jimenez 
6. Becoming Bulletproof: Life Lessons From a Secret Service Agent
7. Women Who Run With The Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD
8. The Rules of Fortune: A Novel, Danielle Prescod 
9. To Be Loved, Frank G. Anderson, MD
10. How To Do The Work, Nicole LePera, PhD 
11. The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt & The Fire That Saved America, Timothy Egan 
12. ***My Friends, Frederik Backman
13. Normal People, Sally Rooney
14. ***The River Is Waiting, Wally Lamb (there are some authors you just download b/c you know you will feel all the feelings when you read them – before chapter 1 is even done, you’re sunk
15. It’s OK That You’re Not Okay: Meeting Grief and Loss In A Culture That Doesn’t Understand , Megan Devine
16. Good Night, Irene, Luis Alberto Urrea
17. The Bible Says So: What We Get Right & Wrong About Scriptures Most Controversial Issues, Dan McClellan
18. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Elf-Involved Parents, Lindsay C. Gibson, PhD
19. The Dead Romantics, Ashley Poston
20. ***Buckeye, Patrick Ryan
21. Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir
22. The Next Day, Melinda French Gates
23. The Measure, Nikki Erlick
24. Braving The Wilderness, Brene Brown

My favorite three:

“Because it’s been a painfully short life, the blink of an eye, a single summer’s day. Ted’s chest hurts, like crying without oxygen, because grief does so many strange things to people, and one of those things is that we forget how to breathe. As if the body’s first instinct is to grieve itself to death. Soon Ted will stand up and discover that he’s forgotten how to walk too, that happens to us all when the love of our life falls asleep for the last time, because when the soul leaves the body, evidently the last thing it does is tie our shoelaces together. In the weeks following the death we trip over thin air. It’s the soul’s fault.”

“You can look back at the past, just don’t keep staring at it.”

“What is it about time that confounds us? We spend it. We save it. We while it away. We waste it. We kill it. We complain about not having enough of it, or about having too much of it on our hands. We regret what we’ve done with it. We give it away. We want it back. We say “time and again” when something is bothering us and “it’s time” when something is supposed to end. Felix saw it so clearly: all we should ever want of time is more of it. Life was so simple when it was reduced to the barest of necessities: more time; more air; more Duke Ellington.”

Here’s to finding worthwhile reads in 2026. Happy reading!