New Books I’m Looking Foward To This Year (First Half of 2026)

Every year I tell myself I’ll be more “intentional” about what I read. Every year, by February, I am surrounded by library holds, preorder receipts, and a TBR that looks less like a plan and more like a dare. The first half of 2026 is shaping up to be one of those stretches.

Honestly I was beside myself when I did the research for this post, so many of my favorite genius authors have new books out this year, I can hardly stand to wait. This is part of the Top Ten Tuesday book blog link up hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

This is less a declaration of literary taste and more a snapshot of what I want to be thinking about in the first half of the year, even if I don’t finish them all. (I won’t. But I’ll try.) Dear god rush the future towards us would ya so i can hold these in my hot little hands?

Vigil by George Saunders

An oil-company CEO in a metaphysical waiting room feels like classic Saunders bait: absurd enough to laugh at, sharp enough to turn uncomfortably inward. If it works the way I suspect, this won’t be about redemption so much as reckoning — the quiet, nagging kind that lingers. Really its the kind of moral reckoning we wish some people would have but don’t, I don’t know if that will be satisfying or not, but I’m curious enough to give it a go.

Python’s Kiss by Louise Erdrich

Python’s Kiss is a collection of short stories about lineage and place and long memory, and Erdrich has been working on it for 20 years, and for someone who writes so prolificly to work on something that long you know it is going to be good. And her daughter has done some artwork inside it? I expect these to feel less like tidy narratives and more like windows into something larger that’s still happening. Also I recommend partronizing her bookstore.

The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change by Rebecca Solnit

I’ll read everything she publishes. In recent times i went off her mailing list because she was repeating all the thoughts I had read in other peoples’ newsletters, both with and without attribution, but her memoir is still one of the best I’ve ever read, Men Explain Things to Me is fantastic, and this is billed as another hope book, making the case that our current situation is the last gasp of dying empire and the new world in inevitable and, ok, I’d like to spend some time thinking about that.

Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez

Xochitl Gonzalez is a master of writing about Brooklyn, the whole Brooklyn, not just the particular white kind attached to a few neighborhoods you’ve heard of. Brooklyn as pressure, as gentrification, as family loyalty, and as ambition all pulling at once. I love her perspective on many things, and have been annoyed that her best writing in the last few years has been hidden behind a very expensive paywall. Finally now something for the neighborhood.

Brawler by Lauren Groff

Another author whose work I will read, whatever it is, I’m excited for this book of short stories. I’m glad to see her returning to more recent times with this collection… Brawler looks like another close study of domestic life under strain.

I’m Always Looking Up and You’re Jumping by Hanif Abdurraqib

This man is a genius architect of sentences and this long delayed book of poetry will probably be even more genius if the delay is related to perfectionism. #justsayin. Same feeling about Erdrich applies.

Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer

A man facing a career crisis takes a vague-sounding job as an archivist to a Baroness in a villa in Italy. In Andrew Sean Greer’s hilarious, witty hands its surely going to be the kind of fantasy that comes with pitfalls you can’t even imagine imagining. Apparently there’s urn theft, ancient plumbing problems and “a youthfully self-constructed emotional obstacle course”. After Less is Lost I will read anything this man writes and enjoy every moment.

The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI by Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctrow is the prolific writer I dream of being, with his memex blog of public notes and thoughts he writes nearly daily, sending out in to the world notes, rants, links and really clever sentences. I read it by email and so have likely already read a good chunk of this work before it gets made into a book. But I’m here for it anyway. Doctorow tends to aim his skepticism at systems rather than individuals, and knowhing him this will read less like prophecy and more like an excellent thought experiment.

The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game by C. Thi Nguyen

Read a review of this that intrigued. In it, Nguyen writes “value capture occurs when you get your values from some external source and let them rule you without adapting them.” With all kinds of examples of ways we let others’ games dictate our lives, this one will be a thinker.

John of John by Douglas Stuart

Anyone from somewhere who’s left for a reason and then gone back later has to reckon with what he left behind, and people aren’t going to let him forget it, and that’s certainly what happens in this, it sounds like. Something about the windswept cold island landscape and all the pieces together is attractive to me.

It’s going to be a sweet year for reading. What are you looking forward to?