February 2026 - What are you reading?

[Anonymous]

I just finished "Tilt". It is about a woman who lives in Portland. She is 37 weeks pregnant and shopping for a crib mattress in Ikea when a massive earthquake hits the area. The book did that jumping around in time thing as she reflects on her life while trying to walk home, which I often find annoying but I think it worked for this book. I thought the book was excellent.

[Anonymous]

Just finished Bunny by Mona Awad. It's a strange book has left me with many questions, but I'd spoil things by asking them here. Themes seem to be loneliness, mental illness, the power of imagination, and poking fun at graduate writing programs.

Moving on this evening to What Is Not Your iIs Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi.

[Anonymous]

Strangers by Belle Burden
A memoir of a marriage
She’s an incredible writer - it sucked me right it. NYC Mom of 3, former lawyer turned SAHM whose finance bro husband walks out on her during COVID. Fascinating and not bitter.

[Anonymous]

Reading- That’s Not How It Happened about a family with two children, one of whom has Down syndrome. The mother writes a memoir about the family and it is turned into a movie. I needed something fairly light after having just read I Who Have Not Known Men.

I just finished the audiobook of Strangers, by Belle Burden. I thought it was excellent

[Anonymous]

I’m in a noncommittal phase so partway through several:

Story of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang. I’m about 1/2way and may DNF because I don’t enjoy short stories or the genre, but I’ve read enough to understand why people praise him so highly. By coincidence, I read somewhere this week that he’s a technical writer in his “day job,” and I can see the influence. The stories show vivid imagination but combine that with a clarity and simplicity of language that I really appreciate.

Martyr!, by Kaveh Akbar. This was passed on by my high schooler, who said several teachers saw her reading it and commented on how much they liked it. I’ve barely started and have no idea where the plot will go (I like it that way so don’t read blurbs if the book came well-recommended) but the narrative voice sucked me right in.

Astonish Me, by Maggie Shipstead. Kindle says I’ve read this before but I SWEAR that’s not true!!! Only a few chapters in, but I suspect it will be good. Her book Great Circle was one of my favorite reads last year.

Garments Against Women, by Anne Boyer. This is a small book of prose-poems. Very much NOT my usual thing, but I read an excerpt on “not writing” in Celine Nguyen’s Substack and loved it so much I had to read more. And I’m loving this one so much that today I also ordered her more recent book. (Side note: Celine Nguyen is much more highbrow than I will ever be, but I adore her posts and highly recommend her Substack to any readers who are highbrow or highbrow-curious. Come to think of it, her most recent article may be where I read about Ted Chiang’s day job.)

And because that all sounds fancier than my usual, I just finished Murderbot #3 (my favorite so far!) and Katherine Center’s The RomCommers, which was sweet and fun.

[Anonymous]

Just started I Who Have Not Known Men last night!

[Anonymous]

just started Buckeye and liking it so far but hoping things pick up a bit given the length.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:just started Buckeye and liking it so far but hoping things pick up a bit given the length.

Same - agree with both parts of your sentence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:just started Buckeye and liking it so far but hoping things pick up a bit given the length.

NP. For me, they didn’t pick up. DNF at maybe 30%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m about 25 percent into The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave and it’s ok. I’m not having any trouble putting it down, despite the Whodunnit aspect. I’m finding anything not written by Daniel Mason to be hard to get into at this point.

I’m also rereading one of my favorite collections of short stories called Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu which is every bit as amazing as I remember it being.

I finished The Night We Lost Him. It was not very good. I cannot understand what I was supposed to be invested in and I didnt find any of the characters or their relationships the least biut compelling. Just a basic pedestrian read.

[Anonymous]

Listening to Crime and Punishment (which is annoyingly read by someone who doesn't have a Russian accent....) and reading Flashlight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Strangers by Belle Burden
A memoir of a marriage
She’s an incredible writer - it sucked me right it. NYC Mom of 3, former lawyer turned SAHM whose finance bro husband walks out on her during COVID. Fascinating and not bitter.

Thanks for the recommendation.

I read a long article about the author and the book and found it really interesting. Less the basic story and more the bigger questions of how well we can really know another person . . . or even ourselves until external events force us to dig deeper. Safe to assume there's more of that in the book itself?

Also glad to hear she's an incredible writer. I definiely have a soft spot for former BigLaw lawyers who write well in other contexts!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m about 25 percent into The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave and it’s ok. I’m not having any trouble putting it down, despite the Whodunnit aspect. I’m finding anything not written by Daniel Mason to be hard to get into at this point.

I’m also rereading one of my favorite collections of short stories called Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu which is every bit as amazing as I remember it being.

I finished The Night We Lost Him. It was not very good. I cannot understand what I was supposed to be invested in and I didnt find any of the characters or their relationships the least biut compelling. Just a basic pedestrian read.

I find all of Laura Dave's books to be similar. I kind of liked the first one I read but then DNF the others I tried. As you said, I just wasn't invested enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I Who Have Never Known Men - a post-apocalyptic novel by Belgian author Jacqueline Harpman, first published in French in 1995. It tells the story of a group of women imprisoned in an underground bunker by silent male guards, narrated by the youngest woman who has no memory of the world before the cage.

I like it so far. It's more philosophical than event driven.

You're speaking my language here! What other books that fit this description have you enjoyed?

[Anonymous]

Skylark. I am about 1/3 in. Normally, I don't like WWII novels. I find them repetitive. The two timelines make the book more interesting.