2026
- On the Calculation of Volume (Book IV) by Solvej Balle
- Fresh off the Boat by Eddie Huang
- Will and Testament by Vigdis Hjorth
- Surviving a Borderline Parent by Kimberlee Roth
- The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
- The Devil of the Provinces by Juan Cárdenas
- No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
- Piranesi by Susanna Clark
- Leviathan by Paul Auster
- Among the Thugs by Bill Buford
- On the Calculation of Volume (Book III) by Solvej Balle
- On the Calculation of Volume (Book II) by Solvej BalleIn this second book of the 7-volume series, Tara Selter is continuing to live November 18th over and over. New patterns arise: the search for seasons to mark time leads her all the way north and all the way south. Her thoughts and behaviours become a mesmerizing routine. Her notes are markers of her life which appear nonsense to anyone else: disparate addresses, dates, meteorological conditions.
Tara searches for new ways to create (or at least feel) the duration of time – from her search for seasons, recurring visits to one café, and her obsession with researching the Roman Empire – all the while butting up against the harsh truth, she realizes, that she is in a container, that everything is a container, that her going around in circles is like an animal in a cage, never to leave. - Xala by Ousmane Sembène
2025
- On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
- The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? by Francisco Goldman
- Blow-up: And Other Stories by Julio Cortázar
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Solitaria by Eliana Alves Cruz
- The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
- James by Percival Everett
- The Island by Antigone Kefala
- Ultramarins by Mariette NavarroSome pretty language (the first few chapters especially describing the swim) but which shifted too far into metaphor throughout the novel that by the end I was wanting and expecting more. Some metaphors also felt overstretched or cheesy, like the pump malfunctioning:
"Captain, it appears that the pump is adjusting its tempo, that it's playing, to make…, don't take me for a madman, to make a kind of music. Captain, do you copy?" (77)
It felt too on the nose—the ship is a mechanical beast, the sailors think they're in control but they're not truly, nature follows its own rules, etc. - All Souls by Javier Mariás
- The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis
- Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
- Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico
- Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
- Ghostroots by Pemi Aguda
- Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior
- The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald
- The Governesses by Anne Serre
- Your Brain on Porn by Gary Wilson
- One by One in the Darkness by Deirdre Madden
- A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre
- On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) by Solvej Balle
- The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
- By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño
- The Bewitched Bourgeois by Dino Buzzati
- When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut
- The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures by Jennifer Hofmann
- The Apple in the Dark by Clarice Lispector
- On the Marble Cliffs by Ernst Jünger
2024
- Vita Nova by Louise Glück
- Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte
- Professor Andersen's Night by Dag SolstadThroughout the book, I thought Pal Andersen showed himself to be overcome with cynicism yet too weak to cut through it; self-affected and pompous yet deeply insecure of his standing in society, even of what he dedicated his life to (the study of Ibsen); because of this, hyper-aware of how he's perceived, and always needing to ensure that people know he's educated/knows things; both full of himself and completely empty, a bit sad, and a bit of an asshole; self-absorbed and narcisstic; completely twisted – unable to take action, angry at himself at his inaction, and then smoothing over his inaction, to pacify himself, with empty reasoning.
While he waffled throughout the book over whether to report this man to the police or not, I grew frustrated. He had all the power to change this situation and, yet, could never approach the point to do so. Towards the end, though, I began to understand a bit at what I think Solstad is trying to get at: Andersen's reasoning away of his inaction as emblematic of the death of God and the erosion of values, so that lack-of-value is a value in itself (i.e., Professor Andersen intellectualizing his noncommital inaction faced with witnessing a murder).
I also appreciated the character analysis of the various invitees at the Boxing Day dinner.
I wonder if the discussion of how the various characters' politics evolved from the 60s (radicalism) to the 90s (either stayed the course and now more traditional/conservative, or remained radical and followed the tide out with it) can be connected with Professer Andersen's inaction. How he is more traditional now, or at least is perceived more traditional now (e.g., he voted no to Norway joined the EEC in the 60s, a radical position, and then the same in the 90s, now a grey, dusty decision). He's trying to catch up to the times and remain true to himself, and grows frustrated at the distance between the two. So his inaction emerges from his attempts to 'be' both the 60s and 90s – eternally split between several versions of himself, always trying to 'do the right thing' or at least be perceived to have done it, always insecure at this split. - Vertigo by W.G. Sebald
- Revenge of the Scapegoat by Caren Beilin
- Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl
- South by Babak Lakghomi
- Almond by Won Pyung-sohn
- Earth Angel by Madeline Cash
- Space Invaders by Nina Fernández
- The Hearing Test by Eliza Barry Callahan
- Coexistence by Billy-Ray Belcourt
- City of Laughter by Temim Fruchter
- Aura by Carlos Fuentes
- The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor
- There Is No Blue by Martha Baillie
- The Guest by Emma Cline
- Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
- New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2 by Mary Oliver
- The Trinity of Fundamentals by Wisam Rafeedie
- Thursday Night Widows by Claudia Piñeiro
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto
- Emergency by Kathleen Alcott
- The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Same Same by Peter Mendelsund
- The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride
- The Mustache by Emmanuel Carrère
- Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg
- Antarctica by Claire Keegan
- Pew by Catherine Lacey
- Subway by John E. Morris
2023
- Ways of Seeing by John Berger
- People from my Neighborhood by Hiromi Kawakami
- Saving Beauty by Byung-Chul Han
- Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter
- Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
- The Sarah Book by Scott McLanahan
- Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
- Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano
- Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- So Late in the Day by Claire KeeganShort book. Essentially an excellent psychological close study of a regressive masculinity & misogyny bubbling just under the surface and how it breaks down a romance bit by bit. One-sitting read.
- Hey Whipple, Squeeze This by Luke Sullivan
- The Conductor and Other Tales by Jean Ferry
- Slows: Twice by Tess Liem
- Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
- Laissez-moi by Marcelle Sauvageot (twice)
- Flight by Lynn Steger Strong
- Pond by Claire-Louise BennettWritten in a conversational style; pauses and commas, small clauses
Slightly elevated language, though
Small ruminations on domestic life. Focus shifts gently from object to object: the pond, the neighbor, the window sill where she puts bowls of fruit. I particularly liked "Morning, Noon, & Night" – the second part.
Turned from this (above) into a tedious delirium, groundless, situation-less. The protagonist thinking and re-thinking and closing thoughts and re-opening them. Final couple of sections were like this.
"By the way": over 100 instances
"Besides which"
"As it turned out"
"From time to time"
Quite often I'm terribly disappointed by how things turn out, but that's usually my own fault for the simple reason that I'm too quick to conclude that things have turned out as fully as it is possible for them to turn, when in fact, quite often, they are still on the turn and have some way to go until they have turned out completely.
- The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
- Gods of Want by K-Ming Chang
- Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners: Volume 1 by Olly Richards
- Four Reincarnations by Max Ritvo
- Olga Dies Dreaming by Xóchitl González
- The Novelist by Jordan CastroA very modern novel grounded in a rich history of literature of small noticings. Here I'm thinking of Nicholson Baker's work, as well as *Drifts* by Kate Zambreno. I appreciated Castro's usage of this formula while also interweaving his own unique additions. I loved the humor of this book: the passage when the protagonist first mentioned Jordan Castro — hilarious.
I loved the mix of stream-of-consciousness, auto fiction, and metafiction in this work. It felt at once very straightforward and challenging to the idea of literature: what if my protagonist mentions reading *me*, following *me* on Twitter? Many relatable elements: trying to work on the Pandora's box of a computer, the psychological twitches and behaviors one goes through when procrastinating writing, the overall depiction of a certain kind of life. - The Fawn by Magda Szabó
- Copywrong to Copywriter by Tait Ischia
- White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link
- Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
- The Palace of Dreams by Ismail Kadare
- The Book of Blam by Aleksandar Tišma
- Novelist As A Vocation by Haruki Murakami
- Citizen Illegal by José Olivarez
- Foster by Claire Keegan
- Elena Knows by Claudio Piñeiro
- Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
- Toño the Infallible by Evelio Rosero
- Fear by Stefan Zweig
- Winter Recipes from the Collective by Louise Glück
- Pure Colour by Sheila Heti
- Essays Two by Lydia Davis
- Manhood by Michel Leiris (reread)
2022
- Death in her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh
- The Moons of Jupiter by Alice Munro
- Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow
- The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada
- Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada
- Exterminate All The Brutes by Sven Lindqvist
- L'instant de ma mort by Maurice Blanchot
- Either/Or by Elif Batuman
- Letters from Max by Sarah Ruhl and Max Ritvo
- The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carré
- Calamities by Renee Gladman
- I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeannette McCurdy
- An Apprenticeship, or the Book of Pleasures by Clarice Lispector (reread)
- Mona by Pola Oloixarac
- Drifts: A Novel by Kate Zambreno
- Thomas the Obscure by Maurice Blanchot
- An Apprenticeship, or the Book of Pleasures by Clarice Lispector
- Les choses humaines by Karine Tuil
- The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han
- Cosmogony by Lucy Ives
- Descending Figure by Louise Glück
- Achieving Our Country by Richard Rorty
- Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke
- Death Sentence by Maurice Blanchot
- Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabó
- Non-Places by Marc Augé
- The Longing for Less by Kyle Chayka
- Nine Horses by Billy Collins
- Chronicle in Stone by Ismail Kadare
- Adam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O'Donohue
- Second Place by Rachel Cusk
- Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby
- One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello
- Bulle / Chimère by James Thomas Stevens
- L'Existence prépositionnelle by Irving Goh
- Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
- Objects of Desire by Clare Sestanovich
- Manhood by Michel Leiris
2021
- The Idiot by Elif Batuman
- Art as Experience by John Dewey
- Kudos by Rachel Cusk
- Transit by Rachel Cusk
- Outline by Rachel Cusk
- The Space of Literature by Maurice Blanchot
- Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
- Design as Art by Bruno Munari
- Super-Cannes by J.G. Ballard
- The 8 Laws of Change by Stephen A. Schwartz
- La peste by Albert Camus
- The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir
- The Most High by Maurice Blanchot
- Home is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo
- Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
- The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins
- Small Hours of the Night ed. by Hardie St. Martin
- Temporary by Hilary Leichter
- Água Viva by Clarice Lispector
- A Village Life by Louise Glück
- Under the Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino
- The General of the Dead Army by Ismaïl Kadaré
- Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon
- The Young Professional's Guide to the Working World by Aaron McDaniel
- Night by Elie Wiesel
- The Frolic of the Beasts by Yukio Mishima
- The Works and Days of Svistinov by Konstantinos Vaginov
- Evening in Paradise by Lucia Berlin
- Language, Counter-Memory, Practice by Michel Foucault
- Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami
- Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
- Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
- Against Interpretation and Other Essays by Susan Sontag
- Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
- The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
- Nights as Day, Days as Night by Michel Leiris
2020
- Eclipse of Reason by Max Horkheimer
- L'Emploi du temps by Michel Butor
- Averno by Louise Glück
- The Chef's Secret by Crystal King
- Writing Degree Zero by Roland Barthes
- Molloy by Samuel Beckett
- Essays One by Lydia Davis
- Abigail by Magda Szabó
- Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
- Is, Is Not by Tess Gallagher
- Imitations by Zadie Smith
- Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar
- The Communist Manifesto
- Orientalism by Edward Said
- Montaigne by Stefan Zweig
- I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
- The Vatican Cellars by André Gide
- The Apple that Astonished Paris by Billy Collins
- La mort heureuse by Albert Camus
- Bibliostyle by Nina Freudenberger
- Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Glück
- Flappers and Philosophers by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Privilege, Power, and Difference by Allan G. Johnson
- Portrait du colonisé by Albert Memmi
- Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
- Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino
- Dangling Man by Saul Bellow
- A Dying Colonialism by Frantz Fanon
- Severance by Ling Ma
- Is Paris Burning? by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre
- Marcovaldo by Italo Calvino
- Normal People by Sally Rooney
2019
- The Last Summer by Boris Pasternak
- La Seine était rouge by Leïla Sebbar
- Je ne parle pas la langue de mon père by Leïla Sebbar
- The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (½ read)
- Swing Time by Zadie Smith
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
- L'immoraliste by André Gide
- The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
- Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
- Atonement by Ian McEwan
- The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie
- My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
- The Pledge by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
- Broken April by Ismail Kadare
- Journey into the Past by Stefan Zweig
- Un sac de billes by Joseph Joffo
- Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
- Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- Kitchen et Moonlight Shadow by Banana Yoshimoto
- The Journal of André Gide
- Les conquérants by André Malraux
- Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
- Villa Triste by Patrick Modiano
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
- Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino
- Essayism by Brian Dillon
- Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
- How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley
- The Door by Magda Szabó
2018
- Contes du jour et de la nuit by Guy de Maupassant
- Le message by Andrée Chedid
- The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot
- Fin de partie by Samuel Beckett
- Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Negative Space by Luljeta Lleshanaku
- The Human Stain by Philip Roth
- The Story of French by Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow
- Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
- France: A Modern History by Jonathan Fenby
- Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson
- Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
- Katalin Street by Magda Szabó
- The Kremlin Ball by Curzio Malaparte
- Minima Moralia by Theodor Adorno
- Londoners by Craig Taylor
- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
- Chanson douce by Leïla Slimani
- Possession by A.S. Byatt
- To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
- Le cœur à rire et à pleurer by Maryse Condé
- Feel Free by Zadie Smith
- La vie devant soi by Romain Gary
- Loving by Henry Green
- Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
- The Urban Revolution by Henri Lefebvre
- Candide by Voltaire
- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
- Gargantua by François Rabelais
- The Seventh Function of Language by Laurent Binet
- Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
- Mythologies by Roland Barthes
- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
- Crito by Plato
2017
- Look at Me by Anita Brookner
- Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
- The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
- On Truth and Untruth by Friedrich Nietzsche
- How to Be a Muslim by Haroon Moghul
- The Secret Daughter of the Tsar by Jennifer Laam
- Confusion by Stefan Zweig
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
- Dubliners by James Joyce
- Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton
- Montaigne by Stefan Zweig
- Revolutionary Summer by Joseph J. Ellis
- Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
- A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
- The Penguin Book of Modern Speeches ed. by Brian MacArthur
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
- White Noise by Don DeLillo
- The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor
- Point Final by William Lafleur
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
- The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- Sixty Degrees North by Malachy Tallack
- Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz
- The Circle by Dave Eggers
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- The Lonely City by Olivia Laing
- Sympathy by Olivia Sudjic
- Odessa Stories by Isaac Babel
- The Evenings by Gerard Reve
- 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution ed. by Boris Dralyuk
- The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
- The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel
- The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
- 1984 by George Orwell (reread)
- If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino (reread)
- Mythologies by Roland Barthes
- Das Reich by Philip Vickers
- The Invisible Collection by Stefan Zweig
- L'esclavage raconté à ma fille by Christiane Taubira
- Hermit in Paris by Italo Calvino
- A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov
- La Télévision by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
- Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
- Pacifists in Chains by Duane C.S. Stoltzfus
2016
- The Stranger by Albert Camus
- The Uses of Literature by Italo Calvino
- Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
- Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh
- Un papillon dans la cité by Gisèle Pineau
- Bird in a Cage by Frédéric Dard
- Erasmus of Rotterdam by Stefan Zweig
- Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
- On Writing by Stephen King
- White Sands by Geoff Dyer
- Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig
- The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig
- Into the War by Italo Calvino
- Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- This is Water by David Foster Wallace
- Fantastic Night by Stefan Zweig
- The Impossible Exile by George Prochnik
- Junky by William S. Burroughs
- The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
- Utz by Bruce Chatwin
- If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
- Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
- Eunoia by Christian Bök
- The Fall by Albert Camus
- L'immoraliste by André Gide
- The Story of B by Daniel Quinn
- The Metamorphosis & Other Stories by Franz Kafka
- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
- Viral Stories by Emily Mitchell
- How the French Think by Sudhir Hazareesingh
2015
- A Year with Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky
- Days: A Tangier Diary by Paul Bowles
- Encyclopedia of the Exquisite by Jessica Kerwin Jenkins
- The Kinfolk Home by Nathan Williams
- Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler
- Hemingway in Love by A.E. Hotchner
- J'aurais préféré vivre by Thierry Cohen
- Modern France by Vanessa R. Schwartz
- Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
- Open Secrets by Alice Munro
- The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
- At Home: A History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
- Rise to Globalism by Stephen E. Ambrose
- Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The Crucible by Arthur Miller
- The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
- Robert Frost's Poems with commentary by Louis Untermeyer
- In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
- The Art of Stillness by Pico Iyer
- Native Son by Richard Wright
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
- A Box of Matches by Nicholson Baker (twice)
- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
- The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
- Daily Rituals by Mason Currey
- Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
- Assholes by Aaron James
- L'étranger by Albert Camus
- Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
- Camus: Notebooks 1935–1942
- The Stranger by Albert Camus
- The Accidental Universe by Alan Lightman
- The Glass Cage by Nicholas Carr