I read 10 books and audiobooks last month. Here’s the list:
Bunny by Mona Awad
I can see why people like this book, because what a trip it is. Ultimately, this is not really my kind of thing though, so I won’t be picking up the sequel.
The Underbelly by Gary Phillips
The character (a homeless man trying to find the perpetrator of a crime) and the setting (the homelessness nonprofit complex and the streets of Los Angeles) hooked me, even though the mystery was pretty blah. I put several of Phillips’ books on my list at the library.
How to Suppress Women’s Writing by Joanna Russ
Important work which I mostly can follow, but there are parts that I just do not understand about old works of literature because I haven’t read them and I don’t understand the literary criticism about them. I.e., I’ve never read Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and I certainly don’t know which poets she took inspiration from, nor which poets’ work is influenced by hers. So when Russ writes about Dickinson’s work being isolated (“She wrote it, but she’s an anomaly”), I am not nodding along with thoughts of “this fits”. I read this so I can have a bit of an inkling about what to look for.
White Rural Rage by Tom Schaller & Paul Waldman
A long polemic about how rural White America has been stoked by reactionary groups and politicians to hate most progress and how that endangers a pluralistic United States. Filled with fact after fact that meticulously illustrates and connects all the threads. Very well written, and well organized, but the broad parameters of the phenomenon are well-known. Also, this is not a solutions polemic; the part on how to solve this (rural self-organizing) is but a percentage point or two of the whole audiobook’s length.
A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps by Jeremy Black
I am a map geek and I love railroads. A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps was both super cool but also frustrating. The cool part is 100 maps of railroad routes from all over the world and throughout history. The frustrating part is that I want to see the detail, and this books takes large maps and makes them fit on pages smaller than 11 inches by 9 inches.
Wool by Hugh Howey
I almost put this down early in the story, because the beginning is grim AF. I was afraid this would turn out to be grimdark in SF. Stuff like The Walking Dead gets to me for all the hopelessness. And the purpose seems clearly to make the reader feel as hopeless as possible. After that, the story finally gets into a more plot-driven story where the good folks are fighting against a shadowy cabal running things. The setting could be a generation ship or a Republic fighting against an Imperial government, but in this case it’s a giant underground silo containing what’s left of humanity built to withstand the apocalypse that occurred on Earth’s surface.
In the Moon’s House by Mary Robinette Kowal
The four main books in the Lady Astronaut series are my favorite of any series in a long time. Just amazing stories. This is a nice little short story morsel about backup astronauts set in the same universe.
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
In a post-apocalypse world of sheltered haves in a city and have-nots kept excluded in a wasteland outside the city’s walls, a woman works for a foundation that has discovered a way to travel to other timelines in the multiverse. Because people can’t travel to another timeline while the parallel version of themselves still live, traversers are mainly people from poor backgrounds who are thus likely to have died there.
The setup is ripe for both excellent plotting and incisive social commentary. The title itself could refer both to worlds across the multiverse and to the worlds of the city and the desiccated country outside. In one world, Cara escapes from the clutches of Nik Nik that Road Warrior-esque ruler beyond the city. In another, Nik Nik is the nicer younger brother of the ruler, and she can maybe experience a little of what might have been.
So far, the favorite book I’ve read in 2026.
Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
Another book that I can see why people like it so much, but which wasn’t for me. Sunny is introduced to a world of Leopard people and juju by kids she meets at her new school, discovering that she has a latent talent for it. Thereafter follows her juju school adventures with her newfound friends. But there’s something about the plot that didn’t click with me, though I struggle to put my finger on exactly why.
Socialism . . . Seriously by Danny Katch
A few years ago Haymarket Books offered a bundle of their ebooks as a freebie. As a liberal/progressive who flirts with socialism, I am on the lookout for stuff that can help me be comfortable with socialism because damn but I love their ideals. This turned out to be another book I almost gave up on this month, but ultimately liked.
What I didn’t like: Katch has an early chapter that is a day in the life of what he terms as a bad day in a socialist utopia. The idea being that even bad days pretty good compared to now so why not take a gander at everything that follows in this book. Except that day in the life is unappealing AF. He also has a few chapters taking down the system of capitalism taking potshots at a whole lot of associated stuff. And I find that sort of thing tiresome.
But it’s markedly better when he gets into the things he has on his socialist agenda. Unions. Returning land to indigenous peoples. Revolution, not reform. He also acknowledges and doesn’t simply hand-wave away some criticisms of socialism. Am I convinced? No. But he makes a good case.
Summary from StoryGraph
